John Bernstein’s Web Site

Avila Beach + Oceano Dunes

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:31:29 -0700

For Leanne’s birthday I gave her a “coupon” for a weekend away to ride ATVs on the sand dunes. So on Friday Leanne & I headed down to Avila Beach for a three day weekend of fun. We decided to drive down Highway 1. Just past Big Sur we stopped at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. There is a very beautiful path that has a view of a water fall and the ocean. Along the path we took pictures of the waterfall, ocean, and wild flowers.
An hour and a half further south we saw a very interesting sight: a herd of about a dozen deer. Well they didn’t exactly look like deer. My friend at work told me they’re elk. What’s so interesting about a herd of elk? They were all standing lined up facing the highway. It was just so dang odd we had to stop and try to get pictures of them. I guess the truck spooked them and they started running off. Leanne managed to get a few pictures of them as they ran off.
Just 10 minutes further down the road (a few miles north of San Simeon) we saw lots of “grey bumps” on the beach. Not just lots, HUNDREDS of them. Elephant Seals! We parked and walked along a marked path looking at the hundreds of elephant seals. The seals come to this beach for birthing, breeding, molting their fur, and resting. Some seals would just lay there flipping sand on their backs. Others would get in a little fight, maybe defending their spot of sand? The sounds they made were amusing, some sounding like deep gurgling rhythmic belches.
Back in the truck again we continued down the road to Avila Beach. Avila Beach is a small enclave a couple of miles north of Pismo Beach. It is just a small little town nestled between a canyon and the ocean. Our hotel, Avila Lighthouse Suites, was beautiful. All of the rooms are suites, the front half being a sitting room, the back half being the bed room. Our balcony looked out over the ocean. Every morning: coffee on the balcony watching the sun come up and the fog burning off. The picture at the top of this page is the pier across from our hotel. The evening we arrived we walked around the “main street” (which is only 2 blocks long) and enjoyed the local farmer’s market / street fair. We decided to have dinner at the Old Custom House restaurant at the end of the main street. Thus began my quest to sample the local clam chowder with every meal.
Saturday morning we woke up, had coffee on our balcony, then grabbed a little grub at the hotel’s galley then wandered across to the beach. Naturally I couldn’t resist playing in the swing set. We walked down the beach a bit to the pier. Leanne took some beautiful pictures of the pier.
I said we were going to ride ATVs on the sand dunes, so what are we doing walking on the beach? Exactly! So, back to the room we went to get ready for the dunes. We hopped in the truck and drove down Grover Beach (right next to Pismo). We stopped at BJ’s ATV Rentals and reserved two ATVs for the morning. Then we drove on to the beach. Not “to” the beach. We drove ON to the beach. Oceano Dunes is one of 6 State Vehicular Recreation Areas, this one just happens to be on the beach. We drove about two miles down the beach (good thing I have four wheel drive) to BJ’s camp site. There we got our ATVs, a lesson in how to operate them, and some good tips on what to do, and more importantly what not to do. We had two hours of fun zipping around the dunes. At first it was a bit frustrating as we both got our back wheels dug in to the sand. A really nice guy kept helping us out, lifting the rear of our ATVs up and moving us to a better place. We eventually got the hang of it and started exploring around the dunes. We found a couple of areas where we built our confidence zipping up and down the sand. Leanne kept “practicing” on one hill, each time attacking it a little more aggressively. I wasn’t watching her because I managed to get my ATV stuck again. When I finally got unstuck I saw Leanne about 10 feet away from her ATV walking towards it. Oh oh! Apparently her ATV decided to buck her off and launched her in to the air. OUCH! After that, Leanne would send me up ahead to scout out safe paths. Leanne later confided in me “I would watch you go zipping along, and if I could see your flag the whole way, I knew it was safe and I would follow.” So, basically, she was watching to see if I fell off the edge of a dune... if i did, she wouldn’t follow that particular path. Smart, eh? All in all we had a blast riding the ATVs. I definitely want to go back again next year. Especially now that we’ve done it once and learned how (and how not to) ride the ATVs, the next time should be even more fun.
After riding the ATVs we headed back to Avila Beach and had lunch at the Fat Cat’s Cafe on the harbor. The food was ok (yes I had the clam chowder), but sitting outside was great. However we both could feel the aches and pains coming on from riding the ATVs.
Sunday morning we woke up, had coffee on the balcony again, then decided to get a hot breakfast at the Old Custom House. Talk about a filling breakfast. Afterwards we headed up the road to go see the Hearst Castle. I wasn’t sure what to expect. When we got to the visitor center we checked in and got our tickets. First up, a 40 minute IMAX style movie about W.R. Hearst and the building of Hearst Castle. The tour we took showed us the Neptune Pool, one of the guest houses, and part of the first floor of the main house, “Casa Grande.” The scale of the building was impressive, but they really are just concrete structures with pretty facades on them. I guess I’m a bit biased after having seen so many of the great castles in Europe. After the tour we returned to Avila Beach to relax and rest. On the way back we took a short detour to see Morro Rock. A kite festival was going on, with some of the largest kites I’ve ever seen.
Monday (today) we drove home on Highway 101. Our wonderful weekend is now ended.
Click here to see an album of photos from our trip.

Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me

Fri, 9 Feb 2007 19:20:11 -0800

Leanne’s birthday present to me came in two parts. The first part was an antique map of South America, printed in 1856. Late last year Leanne and I went to South America for an adventure vacation. Knowing that I love (and collect) antique maps Leanne tracked down and got for me a very unique map of South America. What is unique is that the map shows the Galapagos Islands in their proper location. Most maps show the Galapagos Islands as an inset on the map.
The second part of my birthday present from Leanne was an evening out in Berkeley to see a taping of one of my favorite radio shows, “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!” We left work a little early and drove over to Berkeley. After driving around a bit we found a parking lot near the campus that was close to both Zellerbach Hall and the restaurant we went to, Downtown. Yeah, that’s the name of the restaurant, Downtown. Its a very nice restaurant with a bright open design. The food was good and the service was even better. I would certainly recommend it.
After dinner we strolled over to Zellerbach Hall for the performance. While waiting to get inside the hall I noticed all of the other people there to see the show. “Uh, Leanne, all of these people are strange!” “Yeah, they’re just like you!” Touché. Yeah, but how many of them can say “I design cameras”? Yeah, I thought so.
Every time Leanne has tried to listen to an episode of WWDTM she usually turns it off after a few minutes asking “Why do you think this is so funny?” Well, much to my amusement, Leanne laughed during the entire evening’s show. Probably the funniest moment during the show involved the sign language interpreters. At the start of the show Peter Sagal, the host, remarked that this was the first time there have been sign language interpreters for the show. “That’ll work well for radio!” remarked Paula Poundstone, one of the show’s regular panelists. OK, so that wasn’t very funny, but when Peter Sagal quoted Ronald Reagan as saying “That was harder than crapping a pineapple!” it set the panelists off in hysterics trying to get the sign language interpreters to keep signing “Crap.” Then somehow ferrets got brought up. It just went downhill from there. Needless to say, I don’t think much of that part of the show will make it on to the radio.
WWDTM is available as a podcast from Apple’s iTunes. I highly recommend subscribing to it! It is one of the funniest shows on radio.

Happy birthday to ME!

Sat, 3 Feb 2007 20:54:43 -0800

Happy birthday to me! The day started off with a hike to Rancho San Antonio. Leanne and I did a 2.5 mile loop, just past the farm house. I got lots of phone calls: Dag, Leslie, Drew to name just a few (no, I didn’t try to make that rhyme on purpose).
Leanne’s parents gave me the funniest dang card that played the “Chicken Dance” when opened. Well, unfortunately Leanne had her camera ready and set to record video while I danced the Chicken dance. Why I’m posting this to my web site I have no idea!
Later on in the evening a bunch we got together with a bunch of my friends for dinner at Buca di Beppo in the Prune Yard. Its a family style Italian restaurant where they bring out gobs and gobs of food. Leanne had the Pope Room reserved for us. Why is it called the Pope Room? Because there is a bust of the Pope sitting in the middle of the table on the lazy susan! Every time someone wanted a dish or a drink they would rotate the Pope. Leanne put party hats, noise makers, and bottles of bubbles for everyone to play with.
We had a good crowd at dinner: MAR (a.k.a. Pumpkin... ask Leanne why), Dan, Evil Mike & Dorena, Matt & Jill, Kramer, Tricia & Frank, Frank’s kids Jennifer & James, and last but not least Halnia. You may be wondering why Dan has a telephone handset. Not a telephone, just a handset. Somethings you just shouldn’t ask Dan why.

First South America Photo Album Posted

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 19:13:05 -0800

Today I posted the first photo album from our South America trip. The first album is a collection of pictures from “Day 1 - The Otavalo Market.” The photos in the album are a bit unorganized. I did organize them in Aperture, however when I imported them into iWeb for some reason iWeb decided to apply its own ordering. I’m not sure what criteria it used, some sort of pseudo-random algorithm I’m sure.
I’ve also posted the journal entry for Day 1.

South America Journal

Tue, 2 Jan 2007 22:22:54 -0800

Believe it or not, I finally have our South America web page up. I’m still working on it (there’s only one entry so far), so there will be frequent updates to it during the coming days and weeks. The main page is a blog style journal, with the newest entries at the top (scroll to the bottom to see the first entries). There is an RSS subscription link on the journal page which you can use to subscribe to the journal. This way you’ll be notified when new entries have been added. The two best Mac news readers for reading RSS subscriptions are NetNewsWire and NewsFire. Of course, you can also use Safari or Firefox as a news reader.
I’ll try to make as many of the pictures and as much of the text live hyperlinks as I can. This should make the journal a bit more interactive and interesting. As always, feel free to email me with any suggestions, comments, or questions.
So how do you get to the journal? Just click on the map above. Or, click on the “Travels” link at the top of most pages.
The map above is from the fabulous David Rumsey Map Collection.