The brief was complicated: find a relaxed holiday location on the west coast of the US that had decent accommodation and entertainment for granny, granddad, mother (me) and two kids under five, within driving distance of our gateway airport, Los Angeles.

I felt exhausted just thinking about it.

I toyed with campsites and cabins from San Francisco to the Mexican border, but they were either booked up, charged the same as a four-star hotel or limited the amount of time you could stay and required a carload of sleeping bags and crockery.

Hotels meant we were consigned to separate rooms with no kitchen and all the expense of eating out.

Finally, trawling aimlessly through www.airbnb.com, I found a deal that looked so good, it decided the location for us too.

Mike and Leanne Chaney were offering their three-bedroom pool house, plushly furnished in granite and slate with a gym and games room, for just €160 a night.

It was a steal; who cared if we’d never heard of Arroyo Grande or the nearby San Luis Obispo, which titles itself the ‘happiest place in America’?

After five hours of tense freeway driving from LA (thank God for the hire car DVD player), we rolled into town with food on our minds.

AJ Spurs was the kind of place I thought only existed on television. It had a stuffed bison in the hallway, chandeliers made of antlers and instead of complimentary bread, the waitress brought a cauldron of a cowboy soup so thick you could stand a hunting rifle up in it.

Then a large salad arrived. This was alarming because for the main course, we’d ordered “bacon-wrapped filet mignon with a large skillet of spuds” and a sirloin steak so massive that you got a T-shirt for eating it all.

Fortuitously, we hadn’t ordered extra dishes for the kids and they did doggy bags.

And so began 10 lazy, wonderful days in which we alternated between sitting by the beautiful pool (my five-year-old taught himself to swim) and seeing the family-friendly sights that the area had to offer.

Our favourite excursion, hands down, was Piedras Blancas, where a couple of hundred northern elephant seals were lazing on the beach.

The seals only started colonising this beach in the 1990s after a recovery programme targeted the 50 animals that remained.

They’d been hunted to the verge of extinction for their blubber. Now there are around 20,000 but numbers on the beach vary depending on the time of year.

We trekked along the boardwalk overlooking the rookery to reach helpful museum workers, called docents, who were brilliant at connecting with the kids, showing them pictures of seals with cookie-cutter shark bites.

Behind the fence, we were just a few metres away from several huge seals busy flicking sand over themselves to keep cool.

Seals sneezed when the grains went up their pendulous, trunk-like noses: if you’re five, this is the last word in comedy

They sneezed when the grains went up their pendulous, trunk-like noses: if you’re five, this is the last word in comedy.

There were also ground squirrels to watch, hunting fearlessly for tourist scraps.

After a morning in the wilds, we detoured via San Luis Obispo on our return.

It boasted a Children’s Museum, which, on a midweek afternoon, was almost empty of people but crammed with fun things to do.

The first exhibit let us experiment with different designs to build a miniature skyscraper before turning a handle to simulate an earthquake. On the fourth try, our block building actually survived.

On the second floor we became the pendulum to a giant clock, which intoned the time as we swung.

After unearthing a fossil and adding to the time-lapse tape wall, we were waylaid by the craft table at the exit and only managed to disentangle the kids from their projects a good half-hour later so that we could wander round the friendly town.

The grid streets were lined with locally- owned shops or cafes and there was a laidback vibe that can be hard to find in the retail parks and freeways that crisscross the coastal strip.

There’s a ‘June gloom’ that descends on the Californian central coast, bringing foggy, windy weather that does not lend itself to sitting on the beach.

Instead, we spent a day exploring the dinosaur park at Pismo Beach (there were giant concrete eggs and a variety of static dinosaurs to jump, slide, fall off and lose your shoes under – permanently).

There’s a ‘June gloom’ that descends on the coast, bringing foggy, windy weather that does not lend itself to sitting on the beach

Beneath the cliffs, kelp rippled on the surface of the water, parting only reluctantly to let kayakers through.

Further north was Avila Beach, a seaside resort with a promenade, pier and a little aquarium. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in innovative exhibits.

Delving our hands into the tanks, we explored the texture of sea urchin spikes and stroked the scaly skin of sharks.

Jellyfish were illuminated behind thick glass, glowing an alien blue as they levitated slowly to the surface and down again.

Outside, dozens of kids played on a huge pirate ship and locals held birthday parties under pop-up tents festooned with balloons.

We also toured the Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural History. The view from its floor-to-ceiling windows took us skimming over the water to Morro Rock.

It was a classic American Pacific panorama, wreathed in mist. Inside, the kids were off; talking to “Rockie” (a little rock-shaped speaker that told them about each exhibit), spinning wheels to recreate the water cycle, doing a puppet show of endangered species and poking at whalebones.

Earlier, I’d been told that there was a seal rehabilitation centre near the harbour. Having lost my father somewhere on the main street, we drifted in and out of cute little shops and, hearing a seal bark, ended up in a grubby store that fronted the Morro Bay ‘aquarium’.

We bought our tickets and the lady offered us two limp paper bags of chopped sardines.

Clutching our slightly wiffy bounty, we pushed through a swing door and emerged on to a walkway that looked down into three depressing, concrete tanks.

Inside, a trio of deranged-looking seals, supposedly being rehabilitated, were thrashing back and forth for the fish that visitors were throwing in.

My daughter was upset at finding a sardine head in the bottom of the bag. The turn off for me was the poor conditions the seals were kept in. My father was lucky to miss it.

It had all been a little child-heavy by this point, so on the way home we swung by the Laeticia Winery.

The central coast is dotted with neat rows of vines and is famous for its wine. Leaving the kids with grandma at the bocce ball court, granddad and I ventured in.

The staff behind the bar were busy, but once we were served, things moved fast. Instead of being offered a fixed selection of wines, we could pick anything we wanted from the menu.

Tasting five wines cost $10 but was free if we bought a bottle (prices started in the low 20s). After the first glass of champagne, I got stuck on the bubblies and tasted all five from this section.

We left, slightly light-headed, with three bottles tucked under our arm.

Arroyo Grande itself was our last stop. The pool house was in a suburban area, but in a nod to its cowboy days, the pavement was bordered by an equestrian track for those on horseback.

The town was perfect for a half-day stroll; vintage shops with beautiful dresses and lacey accessories jostled with antique garden furniture that I longed to try to get on the plane before common sense prevailed.

There were also some culinary gems here. Doc Burnstein’s Ice-Cream Lab served birthday cake, root beer marble and sea-salt caramel flavours. We shovelled it down in red vinyl booths while a toy train chugged around at head height.

The Jaffa Cafe was also a joy; for an unbeatable price, they dished up pittas stuffed with perfect falafel, tabbouleh and hummus. The baklava oozed honey and a love of cooking.

Central coast California isn’t particularly prominent on the tourist map. Visitors tend to shoot through on their way to the bigger draws of San Francisco and beyond. There are no theme parks, and the malls are petite by US standards.

Yet the locals are open and friendly and there’s none of the LA craziness, just a hint of American buzz.

If you’re looking for a relaxed and low-key family holiday, safe from the trials of Mickey Mouse and friends, this is the place to be.