Today we had a pretty short drive once again. We only had to drive 70 or so miles from our hotel last night to tonight’s hotel in Monterey, CA. Before we left we solved our leaking cooler problem. We simply put a garbage bag inside of the cooler and put the ice and water inside of the garbage bag. It didn’t leak once. Once we left, as expected, we took the long and scenic route. We filled up on gas first thing this morning thinking that gas in the city would be cheaper than on the coast. We paid $4.07, which while expensive compared to what we are used to, was actually pretty cheap compared to other places. We then proceeded down the freeway back to the road over the mountain to Santa Cruz. Instead of sitting in traffic the whole 20 or so miles we took one of the first exits and took long, windy roads over the mountain instead of the main road. The roads were very narrow and windy. There was probably never more than about 100 yards of straightaway, it was that twisty. After about an hour and a half of twisting and turning we made our way to the ocean. Along the way, we stopped one time to take in a view of the mountains and of the ocean covered in mist, in the distance. We also found a geocache at the viewpoint. This one was tiny but since we had the place to ourselves we found it easily. It is always much easier to search for a geocache when no one is looking at you.
When we were up on top of the ridge, the outside temperature, according to the car, was 94 degrees. Only 10 minutes later, when we got to the ocean the temperature was a cool 65 degrees. We welcomed that nice temperature change. Almost immediately when we got to the ocean we got out of the car for a walk to Shark Fin Beach. The beach is named this because of an interesting rock out in the water that looks like a shark’s fin. The beach is actually situated at the bottom of cliffs. You need to take a steep, slippery, rocky trail down to the bottom of the cliffs and the sandy beach below. Down on the bottom there are great views of the cliffs up above as well as some sea caves. Up on top of the cliffs are artichoke fields. The artichokes here were all withered and mostly dead, unlike some others we saw later in the day. We ended up spending about an hour at Shark Fin Beach before heading south along the coast.
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| steep trail down |
We drove again through Santa Cruz and its wonderful traffic. We exited route 1 somewhere south of Santa Cruz where we found ourselves in the middle of billions of strawberries, artichokes, lettuce and cabbage. We wish we were here during harvesting season because we were wondering if they pick all of those by hand or with some kind of machine. If they are hand picked then that is pure craziness. When we say billions of strawberries we mean it. There were strawberry plants as far as the eye could see and on the other side of the road artichoke plants as far as you could see. We later learned that we were in the artichoke capital of the world.
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| Mama chicken and babies...almost ran them over |
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| Cool cactus/tree we saw on the way |
Our next stop was at a large farm stand. With all of the produce being grown all over the place a farm stand seemed appropriate. They had avocados 7 for $1. When they are on sale at home we can get them for $1 each. They also had artichokes for 10 for $1. We don’t usually buy artichokes at home but this seemed really good. They were also selling deep fried artichoke hearts. One of Chris’s mottos is “anything deep fried is good”. Deep fried artichoke hearts were pretty good so the motto continues to hold true. (Note: we have yet to see deep fried strawberries but they would probably be delicious).
While we didn’t buy much produce because we are flying home, we did buy some strawberries and clementines. After leaving the market we arrived at our hotel for the night in Monterey, CA. We are staying at the Spindrift Hotel right on the water in Monterey. We chose this hotel because it was rated TripAdvisor’s 2012 traveller’s choice award as one of the top 10 most romantic hotels in the US. Our anniversary is this week so we wanted to stay someplace nice. We were lucky enough to arrive during their happy hour where they serve local wine and cheese from 4:30 to 6. Tomorrow will probably be wineries and whatever else sounds good in the area.
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