From just after Christmas through New Years, my wife and I were down around Paso Robles, in the Central Coast area of California (Paso’s not really on the coast, but that whole area is called that). This area includes Paso, San Miguel, Templeton, Atascadero, and San Luis Obispo. It also extends southward towards Pismo Beach, and north towards Cambria (by Hearst Castle). I think that covers it for the most part.
My wife works down in Templeton as a nurse. It’s about 2.5 hours south of our home in Santa Clara. It’s tough having her away 3-4 days a week but the job market is how it is for new nursing graduates and this is a good, growing hospital that will get her the experience she needs.
So, technically she was down there for work and I was visiting, but there was a gap during which we were able to drive around and explore that area a bit. We went to SLO, Pismo, Cambria, Morro Bay and up to Hearst Castle as well.
This particular photo is of the pier at Pismo Beach at sunset. It’s geo-tagged so you can see where it is if you go to flickr and look at the map. My wife and I actually stayed just up the beach a few years ago so it was nice to see it again.
Also of note is that this photo was taken with a Panasonic TZ3, a super-zoom compact camera. So I carry around all these big DSLR cameras and expensive lenses and my wife was using this tiny compact camera. The camera does a great job with metering and has great color rendition. It did a great job with the sunset.