Blogs from Monterey, California, United States, North America - page 18

Take me away to Monterey Bay After a fantastic week in San Francisco we hired our (budget?) car from Alamo! It's a brand new silver Crysler PT Cruiser with blacked out windows, allows, and leather seats!! Sierra Nevada, Death Valley, Vegas, Grand Canyon, Arizona....here we come!!!!!! Our first stop in the 'beast of bristol' is Monterey Bay, which is South of San Fran down the famous and scenic Route 1 - which usually is a fantastic drive though California's golden costal roads, Pacific on the right, stunning mountains and valleys on the left...thing is...California happening to be suffereing from the worst rain downfall in 20 years!!...*%#$@!!!! Nevertheless, we were excited to be out on the road with a cool itinerey in mind! We were travelling with an Ozzy bloke called Grant who we met in Green ... read more

Hello Out there. I wanted you all to find a message when you checked out our blog for the first time so here I go. Yesterday we had an awesome yard sale where we parted with the majority of our possesions. It sure does feel nice to lighten the load and fill those pockets. Oddly enough in our effort to get rid of stuff we ended up upgrading our flat screen monitor. What more could you ask for? For those who are interested in our upcoming travel itinerary here is what you need to know: *Nov. 8th Evening we are leaving Monterey for Irvine, CA *Nov. 11th - 17th we will be on the East Coast with family and friends *Nov. 18th - 22nd last few days in Irvine, CA. *Nov. 22nd Depart for Auckland, New ... read more

We'd had enough of National Parks by now so we decided to head for the coast at Monterey a few hours drive south of San Francisco. This was probably the nicest town/city we visited in the US. We camped for three nights at the town's campsite up the hill 45 mins walk from the Marina. Sara- We explored the small seaside resort and the highlight was the Monterey Aquarium. All the critters were mainly local and they had a thing for jelly fish (although we're not entirely sure that most of the 'tanks' weren't just monitors with groovy screensavers). We got down with the kids and watched feeding time at penguin central and otter island. However our favourite interactive activity was stroking the Bat Rays who seemed to like it. (Although later in the cafe my ... read more

The sun came up Thursday morning and our spirits went up with it. We got into Yosemite by 9am and hiked up into the Mariposa Grove of ancient Sequoias in knee-deep snow. The kids did really well - both were very determined to see what was billed as the oldest living tree,estimated to be between 1800 and 2700 years old, the Grizzly Giant. The hike was 3.3 miles one-way. Renee didn't complain about being tired until we were well on our way back. A short ride on her dad's shoulders seemed to cure her. Keith didn't complain at all. Total hike was over 10 km. Bodes well for the all-day hike we plan in New Zealand. It was wonderfully quiet except for the snow falling plop! off the trees, in some cases hundreds of feet. Renee ... read more

Patrice and I packed up my Pathfinder early this morning for our drive up to Monterey to check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We left really early at about 5am for the 4-5 hour drive up to Monterey. It was around 10am when we finally arrived and we headed straight for the Aquarium. It was not yet even noon and we were already sweating while standing in line waiting to be let in. We didn't really come dressed for the weather as it was quite overcast back home. Today in Monterey, the temperatures were going to climb into the upper 90's! We finally got in and spent the next 2 hours walking around the aquarium and checking out all the great exhibits and tanks. I've been here many times before but I always am fascinated ... read more