And The ADVENTURE Continues...: June 13 and 14 2015 Boat ride Lopez Lake, Road trip up CA-1 and installing solar panels

Saturday June 13- Installing solar panels, boat ride on Lopez Lake and a trip up Highway 1

Amy and I had a 9am boat ride around Lopez Lake. Even though the lake is down to only 25% there is still plenty of water in it. It was a nice ride a little windy and cool at times. We took our time and enjoyed the 2 hour ride. We learned about the history of the lake, hiking trails that were throughout the park and the wildlife that lived in the park. Nice morning. As we were enjoying our boat ride the boys were working on our solar panels. They were able to put 2 out of 3 up today but Mike needed some more bolts so after lunch we went out for our drive up Highway 1.

Highway 1 runs along the Pacific Coast and what some beautiful scenes of the beach and the mountains. As we were going along Amy spotted zebras, yes, zebras. They were in a open field with cows! We later found out that they belonged to the Hearst’s ranch. Further up the road we did see the Hearst Mansion way up on the mountainside side. As we continued about 4 miles up we stopped at the Elephant Seal Rookery. We had heard of elephant seals but to see this many at one time was a site. The seals are protected as they were heavily hunted for their oil that their numbers were reduced to 50. Now their population has grown to over 23,000.

We turned around and made a few stops along the way. One of the stops was Moonstone Beach. Here the sand is course and a brownish black color. The moonstones are a semi translucent stone with white running through it. I think I found a few but not really sure. They are not easy to find. We also saw the Morro Rock in Morro Bay. We returned to the campground and had dinner and called it a night.

Sunday June 14- Rest day

We were pretty worn out from our pace so we decided to not go anywhere today. Mike completed the install of the third solar panel and just needs to finish up the wiring and then we can test them out. We had homemade pizza for dinner prepared by Chef Jeff and sat around the fire.