We got a late start today, again, intentionally. We wanted to sleep in and enjoy our nice hotel before hitting the road, plus we had no real plans for the day so why not sleep late? We woke up around 8:30 and like yesterday we had breakfast delivered to the room between 9 and 9:15. Today it was on time, arriving around 10 after 9. After breakfast, showers and packing, we ended up leaving a little after 11. The valet grabbed our car and we were on the road by 11:30. We didn’t get very far before we made a stop. We stopped at the Barnyard Farmers Market in Carmel, CA. Carmel is a little town next to Monterey. Carmel is famous for a few things. First it is a very dog friendly city. Nearly all hotels allow dogs to stay with the guests and most restaurants are also dog friendly, offering outside dining that allows dogs. Most of the restaurants also offer water for the dogs and some have special "doggie menus." Many retailers allow dogs to accompany their owners in their stores and many have treats available. Water bowls and dog biscuits can also be found in front of many stores. With a small population of only 3700 people, Carmel is also home to many famous people, including Clint Eastwood, who was the former mayor, Betty White, Doris Day, and John Madden among others. Carmel also has an unusual law that forbids the wearing of heels over 2 inches high without a permit (which is free at city hall). While the law is not enforced it does seem to prevent people from bringing lawsuits against the town when folks trip on tree roots in the sidewalks while wearing heels. Anyhow, we stopped at the Barnyard Farmers Market where we again bought some hummus and chips which we would eat throughout the day. We also got two good tips from the guy who sold us the hummus. He told us a couple of good places to eat further down the coast and he assured us that the fog would clear by the time we got down that way. He turned out to be right about the restaurant, we tried one of them, but he was wrong about the fog. It never really cleared.
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| Outside our Sunday & Monday night hotel |
As we started down Rte. 1, things were pretty foggy. It was not completely fogged in but we did not have the views that you would see in the travel brochures. The views were really nice but they could have been much better had it not been so foggy. We stopped several times at various viewpoints looking at the views and taking pictures. At one viewpoint Chris went after a geocache which was only 300 feet away. After walking nearly a half mile down a twisty trail he was still about 300 feet away but it was all uphill to the cache. Since we were parked illegally and we had already had our fair share of run-ins with the law on this trip, he returned to the car empty handed. He did get some good pictures along the trail though.
We did take a side trip up the Old Coast Road. Apparently, before they built route 1 this was the road along the coast. We had read about it in a guidebook and online and it sounded like fun. The beginning of the road had a sign warning that the road was impassable after it rains which was an interesting sign. The road was dirt, mostly one lane wide and in some places narrower than that. It must become mud after it rains but today that was not a problem. Going was slow but the road did pass through some nice scenery, climbing quickly away from the ocean and going up over the ridge before dropping back down into some redwood forests. We had intended on making a loop but the road we were supposed to turn onto was gated and locked so instead of turning off of the road we had to turn around. On the 20 mile trip (10 miles each way) we did not see a single other car. There was private property, mostly ranchland on both sides of the road and we did pass what looked like one house but otherwise there was just us and the road. These are the kind of out of the way places we love to discover and this road in particular was well worth the detour.
Once we got back on the main road we stopped at one of the visitor’s centers where we bought a map which also listed interesting points of interest and we used the bathroom. We also finished up one of our small containers of hummus. The next stop was a beach which was about a two mile drive down a steep windy road which as advertised was not suitable for trailers or RVs. The road like the last one, was pretty much one lane, but this was at least paved. Unlike the other one, this was pretty busy. Those two miles probably took us 10 minutes to travel as we had to stop every time the road widened to let traffic travelling in the other direction pass by. At the bottom was Pfeiffer Beach. We initially turned down here because we thought it was another beach which we ended up going to later on. The beach was crowded, so crowded that they were only letting a car in once another car came out. Our wait was only about 5 minutes. There was a $5 admission fee for the beach but since it was on Federal Land we were able to use our National Parks pass which we had purchased last October to get in for free. Everyone who does any travelling to National Parks should have a pass, they cost $80 and are good for a year. Since October when we bought it we have definitely gotten our money’s worth. We use it several times a year at a National Wildlife Refuge back home, each time saving the $5 admission fee. If there is anyone over 62 reading this you can get a lifetime pass for only $10! That is probably the best bargain out there. Once we parked, we walked down to the beach. The sand and water were very cold. It reminded us of the water back home. The rocks at this beach have caves carved out of them from years of water pounding on the rocks. This made for some interesting pictures of the waves crashing through the sea caves.
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| Dusty car after completing coast road |
After leaving the beach we headed back up to the main road but only drove another few miles before we stopped at Nepenthe Restaurant. This was not only a place that we had previously planned on stopping at but it was also recommended by the guy at the farmers market this morning. He had promised us that fog would not be a problem. He was right as long as you didn’t mind only seeing about 100 feet in front of you. Anything beyond 100 feet, you guessed it, fog. The view would have been very impressive from this restaurant, in fact most of the seating is outside along the railing overlooking what we could only guess was the ocean down below. Every so often the fog would clear for a minute or two, but it was never enough to get pictures or really to see very far. Nevertheless we still enjoyed our meal, we got a burger and a chicken sandwich which we split plus we each got a really yummy bloody mary. This was also the first time we had cell phone service all day long. We took this opportunity to see if there were any geocaches nearby and Chris was excited to see that there was and even better, no one had found it yet. When geocaching, while it is exciting to find a cache it is quite unusual to be the first person to find the cache. Often, especially back home, the first to find a cache is often only hours after a cache is published on-line. We were very surprised to see that this one had been published five days ago and no one had found it yet. That is quite unusual.
Next, we drove down the road about 10 miles to the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. At this park there is a 50 foot waterfall which drains directly into the ocean. The views are spectacular and it gave us a chance to get out and walk a little bit and stretch our legs. There were also some interpretive signs explaining that a family lived in this amazing place back in the 1950’s. They eventually moved away but gave their property to the state which made it into a state park. We also learned that back in the early 80’s there was a huge landslide just north of here which resulted in Route 1 being closed for about 9 months! You could still see some signs of the landslide even 30 years later. Driving down the highway you could see many places where landslides seem to happen. There are so many scars in the road that the landslides seem like a real problem out here. There was even one place further down the road where they appear to be building a tunnel or some kind of slide shed because as we could only guess, landslides are especially common.
Our next and final stop before going to our hotel was at Willow Creek picnic area and beach, about 20 miles down the road. The map that we bough earlier at the visitor’s center claimed that you could comb the shore for jade. We did just that and we think we found several rocks with jade in them. They are green so that’s good enough for us. We spent some time on this beach, Chris got his sneaker wet when he stepped into what he thought was dry sand but was really very wet sand, and Jackie got her pants wet when she was too slow in running away from the incoming waves. We collected our rocks and got back in the car for the remaining 20 or so mile drive to our hotel in San Simeon. We had a lot of choices for a hotel but we were easy and we took the first one we walked into, a Best Western. After checking in, Chris ran across the street to a liquor store where he bought a $6 bottle of Moscato and a $9 bottle of Port. The hotel had several outdoor fireplaces spread about their property which overlooks the ocean. We took our bottle down to a fire pit where we enjoyed our wine by the fire with a cigar which we had bought yesterday. We then went back to our room and build another fire in our in room fireplace while we wrote up our story for the day.
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