Driving Down the Coast

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.


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.

Dusty car after completing coast road

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.

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.

17 Mile Drive

We intentionally slept in today.  The hotel provides in room breakfast so we purposely did not request ours until sometime between 9 and 9:15.  It was a little bit late, not arriving until almost 9:30.  We showered and got ready to go before breakfast arrived so once we finished eating we were quickly on our way.  Since we were staying a second night at the Spindrift, today’s itinerary only really involved things in the immediate area.  The main destination today was the 17 Mile Drive, a coastal road which travels around the Monterey Peninsula through Pebble Beach and Pacific Grove, CA.  The plan was also to hit some wineries in the area.

We were less than a mile from our hotel when we made our first stop at Lovers Point Park, a small park that sits out into the bay in Pacific Grove.  We stopped here for a couple of geocaches but ended up staying for the scenery.  We watched a seagull pull a starfish off of the rocks along the rocky shore and we were mesmerized for a few minutes watching this bird trying to eat the starfish.  We then watched a father, young son, and dog play in the water.  The kid had a wet suit on (the water is pretty cold) and they had a surfboard.  The dog seemed more excited than the people to be in the water.  We also noticed that there were dozens of squirrels at this park which was unusual being so close to the water.  The squirrels actually went right down to the waters’ edge to get whatever it is they were eating and these squirrels were not only pretty tame but they were pretty fat.  You don’t usually see fat squirrels, these must be very used to people and our food.

After about 45 minutes in the small park looking at the water and taking pictures we were back in the car.  We stopped about 2 minutes later for another awesome view and then we stopped every 1-3 minutes for the next couple of hours.  There were tons of pullouts and little parking areas near beaches where you could get out and walk around and despite being so close to each other, each one seemed to have a different view than the one before.  For much of the drive golf courses came right out to the waters’ edge and in places the greens were in between the road and water.

While the road does pass through the gated community of Pebble Beach, there is a fee to enter for non-residents.  The $9.75 toll was a small price to pay to drive this route, which is privately owned by the Pebble Beach Corporation.  The road twists and turns mostly along the coast but does occasionally go inland a mile or so away from the water.  Since the road does pass through residential areas (rich ones), the route is marked by a red line down the middle of the road.  As long as you follow the red line you’ll stay on track.  Early on in the drive we pretty much had every stop to ourselves.  There were very few people but as the day went on the pull offs became more and more crowded.  We were surprised to see just how many Japanese tourists were out here.  We think there were more Japanese than anyone else.  We wondered if the Japanese have as much trouble driving on the “wrong side” of the road as we had while we were in Japan.  (In Japan the drivers drive on the left side of the road but the cars are set up like ours, drivers on the left side.  So you are half backwards over there, much like the Japanese driving over here must have felt). Along the road there are 21 major stops, each marked with a sign which corresponds to a paragraph or two that is in the brochure they give you when you pay your toll.  One of the stops was at Bird Rock, which we found interesting yet smelly and a little bit disgusting.  You look out over a huge rock out in the bay where harbor seals, probably hundreds of them sit out in the sun.  Even though these seals are probably 100 yards out to sea, the stink they put off is pretty bad and you can smell them from the parking lot.  The rock is also home to hundreds of birds which pretty much use the rock for a giant bathroom all day long.  The rock is stained white from the birds and the bottom part is covered in seals. 

Another busy yet interesting stop was called the Lone Cypress.  This is one of California’s most enduring landmarks where a lone cypress tree sits on a rocky perch, where it has sat for more than 250 years.  Along the way we got some bad news, not really bad news for us, but bad news because Chris got a call from work, a place we had completely forgotten about until today.  We handled that as best we could and made a couple of other calls to hopefully get that issue taken care of, but we will probably have to deal with it a little more tomorrow.

After finishing up with the 17 Mile Drive, we noticed that we were running out of time in the day.  So we decided to skip the wineries which is a good thing because we always end up buying more wine than we should at those places, and we headed back towards the hotel.  We stopped at a post office for some post card stamps and we ended up staying there for nearly 15 minutes.  The line inside was super long and one customer in front of us wanted to put a tracking number on his letter. This should not normally be a problem, the problem with this particular transaction was that he had mailed his letter several hours before and realized now that he needed a tracking number.  One of the two clerks spent about 5 minutes sorting through the pile of letters looking for his so that she could put a tracking number on it.  She found it and this made for some interesting entertainment for Chris, while Jackie sat in the car wondering what was taking so long.  As we were getting ready to head back to the hotel we saw a sign for a farmers’ market, so we went to check it out.  We hit up an ATM as we were getting short on cash (we never carry cash anymore) and we went to check out the farmers’ market.  We ended up buying lots of stuff and had we been closer to home we would have bought much more.  We got a gyro, a falafel sandwich, a couple of cupcakes for later, a pint of huge raspberries, some trailmix, hummus, and pistachios.  Much of this would be our dinner. 

We then made a beeline for the hotel because from 4:30 to 6 they have free wine and cheese.  We made it back easily and enjoyed a few glasses of wine with some other travelers.  We met a couple from Sonoma County, CA who were getting away from their kids for a few days as well as an older couple who now live in Florida but are originally from the NYC area.  We talked for a while with each couple and when 6:00 came around and the free wine was done, we went upstairs to the rooftop of the hotel where there is a nice terrace overlooking downtown and the harbor.  We fed the seagulls for a little while with crackers then walked across the street for another bottle of wine.  We ended up talking to the clerk in the liquor store for awhile and he explained to us why the 17 mile drive is called 17 mile drive even though the tolled portion is less than 17 miles.  As it turns out the drive originally began at the Naval Postgraduate School in nearby Monterey.  The tolled portion is less than 17 miles but still bears the name.  We headed back to our room where we lit a fire and drank our wine while writing up our story for the day.

Day 1 of the coastal drive

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.

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.



Mama chicken and babies...almost ran them over



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.

Wedding Day

In terms of driving we had a fairly uneventful day compared to others.  There were still some highlights but the main purpose of today was to get to our hotel, get dressed, and head for the wedding.  We hit the road at 9:15.  Google said it was a 3 hour drive to the hotel then a 45 minute trip to the wedding from there.  We had to first stop and find some shoes for Chris since we had forgotten ours at home.  We first went to Kohl’s to see if there was something that would match the outfit we brought with us.  There wasn’t but there were some nice looking shoes which unfortunately did not match the clothes we brought for the wedding.  Jackie had an idea which Chris immediately shot down.  She thought we should buy a new outfit to match the shoes that she liked which she wanted to buy.  Chris’s response: “No, I’m not a girl, we don’t buy an outfit to match shoes we haven’t bought yet”.  So we went to Payless which was next door.  We found a pair of shoes to match Chris’s clothes right away.  We used a AAA discount to save 10% on our purchase and we then made a quick stop at Target to buy a card and wrapping paper.  We hit the road for good by 9:45.  We drove through Sacramento and we were impressed at one of the forks in the road where it said “I-80 West, left 5 lanes”.  There were also 3 lanes splitting off to the right at this point.  How much traffic does this place get where an 8 lane highway is needed?  Luckily on a Saturday traffic was relatively light.  We stopped two more times on the way down, both for virtual geocaches.  The first stop was a gas station with something unusual sticking out of the roof.  It appeared that an alien ship had crashed into the roof.  If that seemed weird enough when you went inside there were green aliens everywhere inside of the store.  You have to see the picture to believe it.  Some people have just too much time on their hands.

The next stop was in Livermore, CA at the firehouse of all places.  We stopped to see the Centennial Light, which is the world’s longest lasting light bulb.  The light has been burning nearly continuously since 1901!  The last time the light was turned off was in 1976 when they relocated it to its current home.  It is now hooked to a backup generator in case the power goes out, and there is a 24/7 webcam pointing right at the light bulb so all of you at home can see it too!  We felt kind of weird approaching the firehouse and asking if we can see the light bulb. Jackie felt so weird doing this that she stayed in the car.  Chris walked up to the open doors of the firehouse and found no one inside.  We probably could have walked off with all kinds of firefighting equipment if we wanted to but instead we found a doorbell and rang it.  After a minute or two a fireman came downstairs and asked if he could help.  Chris explained that he wanted to see the light bulb and the fireman got pretty excited.  He walked him over to the bulb, explained much of what we just explained and had Chris sign a guestbook.  He said that people come from all over the world to see this thing.  Looking at the guestbook he was right, the other day someone was there from Spain and before that Brazil.  We talked for a bit and we were on our way.  Driving away we couldn’t help but wonder what they built light bulbs out of 100 years ago that made them last.  Why can’t they make them out of the same materials now?  It is probably some kind of scheme by the light bulb companies.  Make them inexpensively, they break and they make more money when people need to buy new ones.

Driving down the highway we didn’t make any more stops but we did see something interesting.  In a pickup truck in front of us there appeared to be a dog in the back.  That isn’t so interesting in itself, but upon closer look it was not a dog at all, it was a goat.  The goat was sitting in the back of the truck, we assumed tied up, just enjoying the ride at 75 MPH going down the road.  We got a couple of pictures.

We arrived at our hotel pretty early, just before 1.  With the stops at the gas station and  the firehouse the trip was just over 3 hours so google must overestimate a little bit, or we just drive faster that google says we should.  We took the opportunity of arriving early to do a laundry and relax a bit before heading out to the wedding.  While this in only our third day out here you would think we had no reason to do a wash yet but that 110 degree heat back in Vegas sure makes you sweat and a single change of clothes doesn’t even get you through a single day.  While we were hanging around we went next door to a good Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant for some yummy pupusas.  This was really a Salvadoran restaurant but they probably advertise themselves as a Mexican restaurant to draw the “white crowd” who would probably never think of going to a Salvadoran restaurant.  The place was filled with mostly Hispanic families, which is always a great sign of good food.  This place did not disappoint.  Jackie got some frijoles con queso pupusas (beans and cheese), which is pretty standard but still good, while Chris got a few we hadn’t seen before: papas con chorizo (potato and sausage), camaron (shrimp), calabaza (zucchini), and queso con loroco (cheese with loroco).  We also got an order of platanos and yucca con chicharron.  We enjoyed our meal back at our room and headed to the wedding .  

Google said it was a 45 minute drive and it did take us 45 minutes but traffic was horrendous.  We’re sure we could have made that trip in a half hour without traffic, maybe even less.  The wedding was on the beach in a very nice setting.  While we were there Chris spotted a webcam and managed to get a picture of himself on the beach.  After the wedding we all headed to a local restaurant to celebrate.  It was nice to catch up with family that we haven’t seen in years.  The wedding was beautiful in a beautiful place and we hope the newlyweds are as happy as we have been!

Who is the guy in the dark pants?

View from the restaurant