Cambria Vacation Home and Side Trips

Cambria is a small town with only 3000 residents, but it's famous for its abundant vacation homes. We rented a house and ended up with much more than we bargained for: quiet nights, wooded surroundings, distant ocean view, clean new home, all at the price of a motel room. A few side trips to Hearst Castle and other central California destinations make it a wonderful getaway.

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Cambria has two large communities for vacation homes. The north Cambria is close to the Moonstone Beach and Shamel Park, which provides spacious area for family activites. The south Cambria, where our rental home resides, is a bigger and newer community. Generally speaking, the houses on the hill have a distant ocean view and are surrounded by trees. The houses that are "ocean front" are more crowded with neighbors.

The area is very quiet all day long with very friendly neighbors. At dawn, we wake up to enjoy the coastal fog come and go. At day, we watch the red-head woodpeckers busy pecking the pine trees. At dusk, we enjoy the beautiful sunset on the deck. At night, we count the countless stars on the clear sky. And finally, before we go to bed, we let the window open and hear the sound of the ocean waves. Life cannot be much easier than this.

Hearst Castle is famous for its collection of arts and furniture, and of course, the luxury decorations of the buildings, the pools, and the gardens. Besides the tour, don't miss the book shop to see the pictures of the celebrities who visit the castle and the Imax show in the theater, "Building the Dream". While taking the tour, in addition to the decorations, I also try to picture in my mind what the lifestyles maybe like in the 30s and 40s. This makes the tour more interesting.

We have taken both tour 1 and tour 2 and they are well worth the time and money. We will find time to go back again for the other two tours. A tip for you: There are not many photo time during the tour since the tour moves very fast, so grab every opportunities you can while in the outdoors. Inside the castle, no flash is allowed.

There are several central coast cities that are attractive to visitors, they are all within a day's trip from Cambria.

San Luis Obispo: The mission in the city is the biggest in the central California and also one of the oldest. It's clean and well maintained. If you have never visited any of the historical missions of California, this is the one you don't want to miss. Many shops around the mission give you the small old town flavor.

Solvang: Danish town in California? A shopping paradise and many photo opportunities.

Santa Barbara: It's a little bit far, about 2 hours drive, but it's worth it. Beautiful weather, beach, and abundant art museums, it's a tourist town with endless activities.

Wine Tasting: I didn't realize that Americans are so much into wines these days. Six years ago when we first visited, there were nothing but farms. Now the central coast is filled with vineyards.

Well, besides the activities mentioned above, we choose to stay at "home" a couple of days to really enjoy the weather and just relax. Cambria is much warmer and less rainy than San Francisco during the Thanksgiving weekends. Whether strolling on the trail or on the beach, it gives you the pleasant sunny winder days feelings.

Since we had so much free time, we cooked our own favorite food. There are no big food stores in town so we brought all the groceries from home. The kitchen has a lot of utensils, dishes, and basic seasonings. The water quality is not good so we had to buy a lot of drinking water.

Four days in Cambria during Thanksgiving pass quickly. We both feel that this is a perfect getaway destination worth our recommendation. Just like one of the house guests who wrote in the guest book: "It reminds me that life can also be so quiet and so easy". On our way back to the San Francisco Bay Area, our real home, we are once again stuck in the traffic, the crowd, the jam, whatever you call it. We look at each other, without words, we both know that we start missing the "Light House", the place we called "home" for 4 days.