Hello folks, Rich here. After the amazing drive up Pacific Coast Highway 1, our next stop was Monterey. The city is located at the top of a peninsula that sticks out into the Pacific Ocean. It is famous for its fishing history and by being immortalized by John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. We were staying four blocks from Fisherman's Wharf at the Sand Dollar Inn. This was the place that we had decided to save a few bucks on the rate during our planning. We were not disappointed as we were checked into a room that was already occupied. Also, the hotel [View Full Entry]

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Monterey Bay and Pigeon Point Lighthouse: We left San Simeon beach with high hopes of making it to Monterey early enough so that we might be able to spend some time at the aquarium. We were, however, waylaid not five miles north of our campsite where there was a sea lion viewing point. We weren't going to stop, but a bunch of people were there and as I had never seen sea lions before, we decided to pull over and see what we could. At first we were disappointed and couldn't see anything. I got the bright idea to pull out [View Full Entry]

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Having left Portland (which I loved), spud is all antibiotic-ed up and we have picked up our vw halepua (not eddie, he was "in the shop"). We have travelled through the plastic world of LA (including a circa 1986 travelodge hotel room near LAX), we also detoured down to San Diego and to Seal Beach, a cute little seaside town in Southern California. It has been interesting finding places to park and sleep at on the side of the road, but thankfully we have thus far had no moustached officers flashing a torch in our window at 2am and asking us [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 17th August After traveling as far as King City, and with Gra getting stopped for speeding!!, we decided to call it a night. We woke up early, not only to get out of the dodgy motel, but also to get into Monterery. As it felt like we had spend forever in the car, we hired bikes to do the scenic 17 mile drive around Monterey. This worked out really well because it was a great way to see the sights of the town, and the lovely coastline, while getting plenty of fresh air and exercise. We passed numerous coastal golf [View Full Entry]

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A whale watching tour seemed ideal for our trip. I've always wanted to see whales. In fact, I've been on several short whale tours but with no sightings. The one at Monterey that lasts five hours and guarantees a whale sighting (or they'll give you a raincheck) seemed like to place to be. So, at 8am this morning, that's where my husband, Andrew, and I were. They offered dramamine at the gift shop. My last experience with dramamine left me passed out for two and a half days, so I decided to skip it. In my mind, a few hours [View Full Entry]

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Last night, Andrew and I huddled by the bonfire and watched the sun set over the Pacific. The beaches of San Simeon are stunning, and (as we learned this morning) a popular hangout for dolphins, seagulls and pelicans. I'll post the sunset photos in yesterday's post, since they were taken yesterday at San Simeon. We hit the road early (8am) and drove the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) to Monterey. We stopped again to see the elephant seals. They were a bit more active this morning, hollaring and shuffling around. After a few minutes, we climbed back into the convertible [View Full Entry]

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So quite a lot going on since my last update. The day we spent in Yellowstone park we hiked up a mountain which was a tiring just over 4 mile round trip but we saw wolves playing a few metres away which was amazing. Then we went to see some natural geysers and then went for a swim in the Hot Springs which was an experience. The next day we went to Old Faithful, a geyser which erupts hourly (wow) before heading to Jackson Hole driving through the Grand Teton national park on the way (i think I slept the entire [View Full Entry]

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It was not hard to get ready for another fun trip even though we just got back from Hawaii. We shared with everyone our engagement news and we were both getting calls and e-mails to congratulate us. As the weekend approached, we packed up again for our next destination - Pebble Beach. I had to make an important stop first ... at my local pro shop to pick up a new Titleist driver. Brent, Martin and I prepared this trip about a year ago and it started out as the boys' golf trip. Somewhere along the line, we changed it to [View Full Entry]

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Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea The Lonely Planet guide to California intones the following about Monterey “John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row immortalised the sardine-canning business that Monterey lived on for the first half of the 20th century. He describes Cannery Row as ‘a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream’. Predictions that over fishing could decimate the business were ignored when the catch reached a peak of 250,000 tons in 1945. Just 5 years later figures plummeted to 33,000 tons and by 1951 [View Full Entry]

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Leaving San Francisco No time for breakfast today! We woke and packed in a whirlwind before hiking to Hertz en masse to claim our hire car. And what a car it was! A silver automatic Lincoln Town Car with a steering column shift. Woo! Driving on the wrong side of the road in a foreign city, without directions, in a car as long as the A team lying head to toe, with the same handling characteristics as a giant Chorizo! Good job the SatNav (that we said we didn’t want and hadn’t paid for) worked. Final thoughts on San Francisco Well, [View Full Entry]

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