To be honest, 2024 would be another year for me, continuing with things I left off from 2023 and being yet another normal year. As an introvert, I expected most of the things this year would be another year of the same: going to work, building and maintaining personal sites/blogs such as this one, continuing with my self-paced online learning, spending time with watching vTubers and playing video games, and having high hopes of searching (and hopefully winning) a new job. All in all, just another year of the same. That’s what I thought anyway.
But then again, I needed to break this all the same cycle that I’ve been living since the pandemic. My bro, his wife (my sis-in-law), their son (my nephew), and I decided to travel out of town for the weekend. Originally, we were going to visit our youngest sister, who lives down in SoCal, 1 so we can visit her family and the new baby boy. Unfortunately, because the baby boy was only 3 months old and is unvaccinated with the COVID vaccine, it was safer if we not visit and wait until the end of the year for Christmas. 2 Because of this, we were not going to travel eight hours by car, and instead, go on a trip that’s a little closer to home.
On July 26 to the 28, We decided to visit one area of California that not a lot of non-Californians are familiar with. We call this area SLO CAL – San Luis Obispo (County), California. The county is one of the main attractions of California’s Central Coast, and it’s a series of beach towns, farms, and vineyards located between NorCal 3 and SoCal. It was a good four-hour drive from home and it was a weekend well-spent.
My very short history of SLO CAL
The first time I’ve been to SLO CAL was close to 20 years ago, when my youngest sister graduated from Cal Poly SLO. We went to SLO4 and had a graduation luncheon at a teppanyaki restaurant in Pismo Beach. We were only there for three days, so we didn’t get to do much traveling and visiting the local cities and towns around SLO CAL.
Then some years later, my bro’s job required him to do some visits to Paso Robles to do some QA testing with their software systems there. I wasn’t visiting there or anything, but there is a little bit of a family connection there. He applied for another position in the same company, which now allows him to work at home 5 and no longer requiring to travel to Paso Robles again.
It has been awhile that SLO CAL was mentioned in the family again, therefore we decided to spend our weekend there at other cities/towns outside SLO.
Atascadero
We booked our hotel here. We didn’t tour around Atascadero that much, since this was not one of our planned destinations. My bro tried to find a hotel in Paso Robles, but all of their hotels there are booked. Atascadero is the next city/town right after Paso Robles and decided to book our hotel there.
Based on the surroundings around the freeway that we took, Atascadero is primarily the hills, farm land, orchards, and vineyards. We of the SF Bay Area have Napa and Sonoma Counties, as well as another city close by to our hometown in Alameda County called Livermore. We’ve got vineyards there too, and I believe that the more high-end wine bands also come from Napa and Sonoma. I’m not much of a wine drinker, but I do love visiting vineyards and learn the craft and process of fine winemaking.
We stayed in SLO CAL for 2 days and 2 nights. We left the SF Bay Area in the late afternoon Friday and reached the hotel not too late at night. Then we began our day on Saturday all the way till late night. Lastly, we spent a few hours around the region until after lunch, where we traveled back up North to home.
Morro Bay
One of the sweetest, iconic beach towns in the Central Coast, Morro Bay was just nice, homey, and quite busy. We went through their coastal downtown area for lunch, then hung out at the beach, took some photos at some interesting spots, and then some. It was around a fifteen-minute drive from Atascadero, and the roads weren’t that busy, even on a Saturday. We stayed at Morro Bay until around 3pm, then drove back to the hotel.
Here are some of my favorite shots of Morro Bay below.
Be
Most of the restaurants in Downtown Morro Bay were seafood restaurants, which also included Coastal Mexican cuisine, sushi, and Japanese seafood cuisine. We decided to go to a restaurant that has a more local Californian fare to it because we’re Californians.
I was happy that this particular restaurant also served Cioppino, an original seafood stew concocted by the Italian immigrant family in the North Beach area of San Francisco. I would just talk about the dish itself as my first Local Made blog post, but I decided to share it here anyway. It was delicious, heartwarming, and very light for a tomato-based soup too!
One last thing about Morro Bay – it’s also a historic spot, both for California and for the Philippines. The first Filipinos landed here in Morro Bay via the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade back in the 15th-16th Centuries. The landmark is here:
Be proud. We have been here for many centuries!
Paso Robles – Sensorio
I suggested to the fam that we should leave early at around 7:00 pm so we can eat dinner before it gets dark, but they prefer having dinner when the sun sets. That way, the light exhibits would be on. Majority rules, so we eventually arrived here at Sensorio.
Sensorio is a vast exhibit of lights in different themes, from a field of lights to towering geometric shapes of lights. It’s located behind the hills with an entrance that seemed inconspicuous from the highway. Sensorio is open during the night hours for obvious reasons, so the entrance may be easily missed. You would have to rely on your Google Maps/Waze and your eyes to see a small sign that says Sensorio next to the road. When you take that road, it’s even a lot more remote, as you can only see a slightly winding road surrounded by the wilderness. Eventually, you will reach an open parking lot area with guides that will take you to the next open parking space.
Please, do check out the website for more information and admission passes. We went for the All-Access Pass because we planned to eat dinner there and want to see all the exhibits and we want to eat dinner at the Terrace too.
I’ve taken a few photos of Sensorio. Luckily, I own a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra with its super-powerful camera. But taking photos at night can be a bit tedious, as you would have to wait a few seconds to keep your camera phone still after you press the shutter. I didn’t take as many photos because I was engulfed with the colorful lights and the awed at the sights. Plus, we were having a bit of a time constraint and we had to go through all of them before the park closes.
The Sensorio website has a beautliful gallery of the sights. Here are mine:
We went back to our hotel just some five minutes before Sensorio closed. The All-Access Pass not only gave us access to all their light exhibits and chill at the Terrace, but we also had free drinks at the Terrace drink bar. There were food trucks, as well as their eatery cottage. There is also a stage with a live performance going on, which is really nice too. We felt truly spoiled and happy and most of all, refreshed.
The next day, we checked out our hotel and drove back home. But before that, we stopped by the outlet shopping center in Gilroy. We stopped by there on our way to SLO CAL, and we stopped by again before we reach home.
CONCLUSION
SLO CAL is one of the places that don’t get enough attention outside California. The region deserves recognition as a hot tourist spot along with Yosemite, Point Reyes, Mt. Shasha, Lake Tahoe, and even the more recognizable ones like Disneyland, Hollywood, the Golden Gate Bridge. California ain’t always about the glitz, glamour, and technology, we’re all about the environment and nature too! Take it from me, a Californian for over thirty years.
My hometown is a suburban city also surrounded by nature. I could go to the coastal towns in my local area or even walk along the trails along the SF Bay if I needed without traveling too far. But SLO CAL is one of those perfect places where I can still enjoy Californian nature away from home.
If you are curious about SLO CAL, here are the websites I linked:
Here is my very first travel blog. I could write more, but I want to focus more on the place itself, rather than writing about my personal feelings or writing about what my family and I did in every detail. I would say that you should experience what we did on your own, and you be the judge.
Maybe I’ll write a better travel blog post in the near future. I’m planning on traveling a bit more very soon!
Sounds like a really nice trip! I honestly never really traveled much myself. The most my family has ever done is small day trips. But the pictures you took are really lovely, looks like a pretty place!
We haven’t gone on a week-long trip as a family since my father passed away. My mom would occasionally go on a few solo trips to the Philippines. We mostly had small day trips, too, but we’re slowly trying to plan longer trips since our family is gradually extending with little children.
One of the main reasons I started travel blogging here is that I have another long trip coming up at the end of September. I’m going out of the country to the Philippines. I haven’t been to the Philippines since I was a child, so I will be arriving there as a complete tourist while meeting with relatives I last saw for so long. Sadly, it will only be for two weeks, and my mom, who is currently there, will be coming home with us. And so, my next travel blog – maybe it’ll be a short series too – will be about the Philippines. Not only this will be just vacation, but this will also be something personal too.
Hope you get well soon, and then you and your family may plan for long trips too!
Aw, that sounds really hard, but I hope that trip will be everything you want it to be. =3
Wow what a beautiful place! And Sensorio seems so cool! We have something similar to that here but I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s only in the winter though I think (though it is not particularly Christmas/Holiday themed. I have never gone. It sounds like you had a lot of fun and a really great trip. I love road trips and traveling, they are so much fun!
Hello Kadie, welcome! Before Sensorio, my family and I visited a similar lights exhibit at our local zoo last year. This was during Thanksgiving week, too. Because it was in the zoo, everything was animal-themed, but we could only see some of the light exhibits because we arrived a little too late. One lesson learned – don’t wait till it’s dark to go. Could you wait until the doors are open instead?
I haven’t been on a trip that doesn’t involve visiting relatives for the longest time, so that weekend was a complete refreshment. I’ve got a longer trip coming up at the end of September, so I’ll write more about my travels soon!