Right after the Fourth, we headed to the Central Coast to spend a few days camping with my cousins. The plan was to hang out at the beaches, visit Hearst Castle, and see some other local attractions. This was my first time camping, so I was quite excited about sleeping in a tent, sitting around the camp fire. Christopher and Melanie kept on talking about smores, but we did no such thing. Mom and Dad worried about how Zachary and I would handle it all. They even made provisional plans to leave, but we loved it. We are talking about plans to do it again next year.


The first thing we noticed was the drastic change in temperature along the coast. The daily highs barely eclipsed the nightly lows in LA.


How many campers do you need to put up a tent? Answer - Not that many as long as you have a direction wielding CPA that follows directions.


We grabbed a shady camp site at the edge of the campgrounds that ended up providing us with much privacy, lot's of space to put up four tents and a mini-forest that we could climb the trees in.


On our first day of sight-seeing, we saw the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas. It was well past the time of the year to see baby seals just born. All we saw were the adolescent seals that were waiting around for their old skins to shed.


Of course we trekked it up the hill to see the castle. Notice the lack of warm clothing. If you ever go visit the castle, please remember that is a lot warmer at the top than it is at the bottom. I didn't think much of the castle. There were no princesses there. What kind of castle doesn't have princesses.


After Auntie Jenny and Auntie Celia left to go back to work, Uncle Derek, Chris and Mel stayed with us for a couple of more days. Here we are at Moonstone Beach. We built a castle that survived high tide.


Some might wonder what we did with Chang. He came with us and stayed at the camp site to watch our stuff.


Good times.