Costanoa

On Friday, Mike flew up from SD to spend the weekend with me. Although finals are fast approaching, I somehow managed to forget about all of that as soon as he flew in and we had the most fabulous weekend. I definitely wouldn't have traded our weekend for outlining.

Anyhow, on Saturday morning we drove down HWY 1 to a place called Costanoa (www.costanoa.com --> definitely check it out). It was only about 90 minutes south of SF...not far at all and the day was lovely. The sky was blue and the sun was out. Most importantly though, IT DIDN'T RAIN! I swear I haven't seen the sun for 30 days, so this was a total treat. On the way down there we stopped at Half Moon Bay and took a quick peak.















We arrived at Costanoa around 1pm, and decided to have a picnic on some cliffs overlooking the beach. We feasted on wine, chocolate, and split a sandwich we had picked up in SF. I think the area we had lunch at was called the Tidepools. It was just right across the 1 from Costanoa.

After lunch, we drove into Costanoa and checked in. We had booked a Tent Bungalow for the night. Costanoa is just east of the 1 and offers a lot of different options depending on how much you want to spend. You can drop a couple hundred dollars and stay in their lodge or one of their cabins, or you can just bring your own tent or RV and pay for the space. The Tent Bungalow we booked is right in the middle. Although Mike bought a new tent and *really* wants to use it, it seemed inconvenient for him to fly all the way up here with it along with all of his camping stuff.

The Bungalow was perfect for us. The tent is made out of heavy duty waterproof canvas. It had a bed, 2 nightstands, a TV table, a basket of towels, a coat rack, lamps, heated matress pad, and 2 Adirondack chairs right outside where you can just hang out and read your book. As for bathroom/shower facilities, they have these things called Comfort Stations. They come complete with flushing toilets and hot water. The showers are actually outside, which was kind of cool. Each Station also has a fireplace that you can cuddle up next to.

After unloading the car, we changed our clothes and put on some hiking boots. We hiked out to Franklin Point. It was a nice and easy walk, but very muddy due to all of the rain we've been getting. Of course, Mike had to make the walk more interesting by climbing up and over rocks instead of just staying on the path. What can I say...he's just adventurous.

(NOTE: This whole writing a story and posting pictures thing is taking too long and is getting lame. I'll post the rest of the pictures in a separate post).

Our walk lasted about 2 hours and was awesome. We were so lucky that the weather cooperated with us. We went back to our Bungalow and had a snack of cheese, bread, fruit, and crackers which we had bought in SF before we left. Where ever we are, there's bound to be a lot of food :)

Since we were pooped from the drive and hike, and we were about to go into a food coma, we took a little nap before dinner. Although Costanoa has a restaurant and they were serving a good dinner, we decided to go somewhere else for dinner. We woke up, got dressed, and hopped in the car to go to Davenport. Now, I'm not sure where I heard this, but I thought Davenport was going to be this really cute ocean town with places to eat and walk around. So we're driving down the 1 and all of a sudden we're in Santa Cruz. Davenport was only supposed to be 5 miles south of Costanoa. We obviously missed something. So I called Costanoa for some info. I asked the guy where it was and he says "You can't miss it. It's right off the 1 where the big cement factory tower is." Cement factory?! This is not my image of a cute ocean town. So then I ask "Well, there are places to eat there right?" And he says "There's A restaurant." What?! Only one restaurant? Ok, scratch Davenport. I made a quick phone call to a friend from Santa Cruz and she gave us a recommendation of a great sushi place. We ended up having dinner at Mobo's in SC and it was great!

After stuffing ourselves on sushi, we drove back up to Costanoa. But not without stopping at Davenport. We most definitely saw the ONE restaurant (it was basically a bar that served food) and we were glad we didn't go there for dinner. By the time we got back it was after 9pm and it was COLD! Inside of our tent you could see your breath!! We had left the heating pads on our bed on while we were gone, and were disappointed to find that they didn't work!! This was the one downer of the whole trip. A maintainence guy came out and told us there was nothing he could do because they didn't have any extra. Thankfully I had two extra blankets in the car and we piled those on top of us. Without those, we might have froze all night. But we made it through the night with no problems.

We woke up on Sunday around 9am and headed over to the restaurant for breakfast. Breakfast for 2 was included with our room and was pretty good. It had the basic stuff: eggs, bacon, sausage, cereal, coffee (important for Mike), OJ, etc. After eating, we headed back and took showers and packed up the car. After talking to the Activities Director (Oscar Allan) we decided to head over to Ano Nuevo to see the elephant seals and then to Rancho del Oso to see the Redwoods. The weather on Sunday wasn't as nice as it was on Saturday, but still no rain and that was good enough for us.

Ano Nuevo is just a short drive south and is famous of having a ton of elephant seals. Just off of the coast is an island that has a house on it. The house has long since been abandoned because the seals took over it! Now only researchers are allowed there. Although I would really like to go there and see a seal just chilling in the bath tub. The hike out to the beach is just 3 miles round trip. Unfortunately we found out that we missed the most exciting time for watching the elephant seals. From the December-March the males and females come here to mate. Now, I watch a lot of Discovery Channel and I knew that the bulls were big, but I found out from a docent just how big they are. The males can get up to 5000 pounds and 15 feet long!!! That is incredible! Mike & I are mostly defintely coming back during mating season to really see this. All we saw on Sunday were a few pods of "weiners" (pups that have just been left by their mothers and have to figure out the whole "how to be a seal" thing on their own). It was cool to see wildlife in its natural state, but I just wish they were more active. They kind of just sat around and slept. But as the docent told us, this isn't Disneyland and there's no show.

We then drove to Rancho del Oso to do a hike into the redwoods. Of course, we had to stop for lunch first. We had another picnic on the beach right across the street from Rancho del Oso and finished off all of our food. By the time we finished however, it was already 3pm and it had started to drizzle. The hike we wanted to do was about 4 miles and we didn't know how much it was going to rain. Also, we had managed to forget to bring a backpack, so it would have been hard to carry snacks and water with us. So with that, we drove back to SF (well, Mike drove and I fell asleep).

Oh! I forgot to mention, we saw whales! Well, not up close. But we were able to see quite a few Gray whales who were migrating north come up for air. That was pretty cool.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience. It turns out that nature isn't all that far from the city. I'm going to try to make it a habit of going out there. It was peaceful and nice to see the ocean and beach again. Mike's visits are always fun for me (and for him too I think) and we're excited to go back again.