The next leg of our trip took us from Yosemite out to the coast. We took a fairly direct route, and ended up at Pismo Beach, where we went to a little joint called Chipwrecked, which I was disappointed with. But I loved being back on the coast. I got an almond milk latte which cleared up a lot of my concerns.

The drive out of Yosemite was slightly disastrous — both Henry and Grant began getting car sick. We took many, many short breaks on the verge of the road for them to stand outside the car looking green. Whenever Grant started picking up rocks to throw, we knew he was good enough to get back in the car. Something we talked about a lot, driving through California, was how lovely and different the landscape was every few hours. We drove down out of the mountains into rolling hills. The hills eventually settled down into very flat apparently fertile farmland (hard to tell in the middle of winter), with lots of signs that argued with each other about dams. We came up on another range of hills that let out onto the sea.

From Pismo Beach, we continued down the central coast to Buellton. We stopped at a winery on our way to Split Pea Andersen’s, which is where we used to go as little kids (as good Danes). We stayed at the Inn and had delicious split pea soup for dinner. The inn had a pool, so we went swimming even though it was just a little bit too cold for outdoor swimming, in the evening, in February.

The next day we swept into Solvang to do some laundry at the laundromat there, and to check out the town. We wandered around (visited a great bookshop!), got coffee, pet a lot of dogs, and really enjoyed the cutesy architecture. We also took the kids to visit OstrichLand, which, ho boy, was really something. They loved it! I thought we each would lose an eye. It did give me a chance to tell Bob about Australia’s Great Emu War. Unsurprisingly, he did not believe me. From Solvang, we headed south to San Clemente. Selected pictures: