The Romantic getaway

Mary and I spent a romantic weekend in San Luis Obispo last weekend as an anniversary gift from our wonderful children. It was a weekend at the famous Madonna Inn, the place of hundreds of unique rooms. http://www.madonnainn.com/ The gift was for our 30th anniversary which we received last year. Anticipation make the experience even better so we decided to savor the anticipation for a whole year before going. Both of us had ideas of where to visit and how to spend our time. I hoped to see the natural wonders of the area, do some hiking and driving. Mary was looking forward to window shopping and seeing some quilts and craft shops.

Mary being the mature member of the couple (emotionally that is, not age-wise) allowed me to get my way and we set off to see some sights. This is Morro Rock sitting in - wait for it - Morro Bay! We had set out to find a mountain road but we accidentally past the turn off and ended up in a state park. Since we were there Mary agreed to take a walk down to the beach which was about 2 miles away in very deep sand.

It was also very windy and cool. Mary was a good sport and slogged through the sand. Unfortunately for me the deep sand was not doing my recovering knee much good and each step further on was getting more and more painful. I realized after a certain point that if we did make it to the ocean I probably wasn't going to make it back.

Along the trail we noticed this sign warning of unexploded ordnance in the area. Apparently this was a range at some point in the past. I was all for plunging into the bushes to see what I could find for a souvenir but Mary restrained me. Rats!

When we got back to the Jeep Mary dumped the ballast she had taken on in her shoes. I guess it was pretty sandy!

After a drive up into the hills to see some micro wineries and some very prosperous cattle ranches we headed off to San Luis Obispo to see what Mary had come to see: shops and sights!

This is the water wheel at the Apple Farm Inn, a competitor to the Madonna Inn. We decided we were staying in the better of the two. The Apple Farm Inn looked too snooty for us.

We checked out the creek walk behind the shopping district. Mary made it across the stepping stones in the creek walk. We saw the mission in the center of town, walked up and down the main shopping streets and Mary even bought a couple of small items to help out the SLO economy. That night we had dinner at the Madonna Inn restaurant where I had a steak that was so big that even I could not finish it. A most interesting thing occurred during the dinner. A private party set up near us complete with a band and danced to waltzes, tangos and the like. There were many young people but also a few middle aged couples and even a couple that looked to be in their 90s. Some of the dancers were quite good. The girls were dressed in elegant evening gowns but the young men were looking a bit scruffy. They should have been in evening dress. We surmised that it was a dance club or graduation night for a dance class since most of the people traded off for each dance.

All too soon it was time to leave the Madonna Inn and head back home. But since we couldn't bear for the weekend to be over we decided to stop for a couple of hours in Solvang, a town with a Danish influence. The weather was perfect and it was a great way to end the weekend.

We had the best time ever and we owe it all to our children and their wonderful gift.

I will be out of town on business the rest of the week, so all of the Citizen Grouch groupies who wait eagerly for updates will have to wait until the weekend. Try to be brave in the meantime.