Pining for the Fjords

For Day 1's coverage, click here , and for Day 2, click here . On Day 3 of the trip, we woke up in Pismo Beach and wandered over to Penny's All American Cafe for a great diner-style breakfast (Penny's sponsors the annual Pancake Eating Contest, so you know they're legit); on our way back, we wandered the boardwalk one last time, waving goodbye to this particular stretch of the Pacific.  We packed up the car, checked out, and hit the road, heading in a northeasterly direction, in toward the central coast. Bye, Pismo!  It's been fun! On our way to wine country, we stopped in San Luis Obispo at the mission named for the town (it just dawned on me that the town might actually be named for the mission...).  It was a pretty, peaceful place, and we wandered around a bit, stopping to take pictures and visit the museum on site. After finishing up at the mission, we hopped back in the car and continued on toward Paso, with wine tasting on our minds.  O

For Day 1's shenanigans, click here . When last I blogged, Chris and I made it to Pismo Beach via LA and Solvang, and we were tucked in bed after an evening of (over) indulging on strong beer.  Because of this, Day 2 of vacation dawned a little fuzzy.  Huzzah.  Time for foods. On our way to breakfast, we strolled along the boardwalk and to the Pismo Beach pier.  Unsurprisingly, not many folks were awake and on the pier at this hour, so we had it pretty much to ourselves, with a few fishermen and pelicans. On the way to the pier J.J. Abrams envies my lens flare. Eventually, we tired of wandering the pier, so we headed on to breakfast at Mon Ami, a local place known for its crepes.  Both of our picks were delicious, and they offered great coffee/tea drinks, as well as giving us a cute little courtyard for sitting and enjoying the morning. A map of the area on the courtyard wall. Oui, crepes! We strolled back through Pismo on the way t

If you fancy a good Facebook-stalking of Chris or I, you may have noticed that we've been on vacation the past week.  For the next few blog posts, I'll be handling the day by day details of our trip to the 805 area code. A bit of backstory first.  We always laugh at ourselves for booking vacations to cold, rainy locales, thoroughly enjoying them, of course, but then lamenting the idea of a beach vacation where all we need to pack is a towel, bathing suit, and 2-3 good books.  A few months ago, we decided we were going to have a beach vacation, gosh darn it, so we did some research into where we could drive  (flying would make things too expensive) and where we could afford to stay (this eliminated San Diego).  We ended up booking a stay for 3 nights in Pismo Beach, CA with one night to follow in nearby Paso Robles, right in the heart of the central coast's wine country.  We've visited the area before (when Chris was interning with Dreyer's Ice Cream in Bakersfiel

Over the past few months, we’ve been really lucky in that the area in which we live – northwest Peoria – has expanded, adding some great new restaurants not too far away from us.  One of these is the Dubina Brewery, which opened about 8-9 months ago and is about 3-4 miles from our house.  That’s too far for walking, so if we want to go, we need to ensure we don’t get overly celebratory there, as we’ll need to wait to sober up to head home.  Noms at Dubina While that’s not a major issue, we’ve also been thinking how nice it would be to not have to drive everywhere around us; many great things in our area of town are just outside walking distance from our house but are somewhat annoying to have to reach by car.*  We still have our road (both of us) and triathlon (only Chris) bikes, and we absolutely love them, but we’re hesitant to take bikes that cost that much** and chain them up outside a local bar.  We’ve been pondering looking into some cheap cruiser style bikes for t