After we left the Castle yesterday, we stopped in San Simeon for a wine tasting of the Hearst wines and then spotted a vista point with a lot of cars so stopped to see what was going on. This is the area of the California coast where Elephant Seals come to mate, give birth and molt. Right now the mothers have finished feeding their calves, have mated and left to head for Alaska. The babies are left on the beach to fend for themselves. They have to learn how to swim and how to find their food before they will take off to go up the coast. Some of the huge bull seals are still hanging around but they will be leaving soon as well. Certain groups of the seals will return throughout the year to molt before heading out again to hunt.
We spent the night in a state park and then drove thru dense fog into Paso Robles, another of California's wine valleys. We got set up in an RV park and after lunch tasted wines for most of the afternoon. Most of the wineries grow the Zinfandel grape but we found some other nice red wines and a few whites. John had picked out a few wineries he wanted to visit, focusing on the small boutique wineries or ones who bottle from their estate grown grapes. Three of these focused on the Rhone style of wine making.
We were not real impressed with the first winery but at the second we visited the hostess was very friendly and recommend two other home wineries up the road. We enjoyed both of them and even bought a case of wine to be shipped home. None of these wineries produce more than two or three thousand cases a year and one of them only 700 cases.
We walked around down town for a bit, stopped for a cocktail and appetizer before heading back to the RV for the evening.
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