Today we drove down to Monterey and Pacific Grove for the day. Originally we were going to spend the night and then Debbi was going to walk the Big Sur Half Marathon tomorrow morning, but she’s been having problems with blisters on her feet and was concerned she might not be able to finish in the time alotted, so she decided to punt this time. But she still wanted to pick up her registration packet – including the nifty shirt – so we drove down anyway.
I don’t quite go to Monterey often enough to be able to find my way around without a map, but at least I have a better idea of how long it takes to get there than I once did. Actually, we got there in pretty good time, and found the registration site without any trouble. Then we walked through downtown Monterey (which is smaller than I’d remembered, which probably means we didn’t walk the whole thing) and had lunch there.
We then drove over near Cannery Row and visited some book stores over there. It turns out there’s a branch of Bookbuyers on Lighthouse Ave.
After that we did a drive along the coast in Pacific Grove, which is truly one of the most beautiful coasts I’ve ever driven along. We stopped for a walk at one point, and I took a few pictures:
On the way back into town we stopped at the Monarch Grove Sanctuary, and it’s early in the season where monarch butterflies overwinter in Monterey. Just when we arrived we were fortunate to see a swarm of hundreds of butterflies near the observation area – apparently not a common occurrence! Sadly I didn’t have my camera ready, but I did later snap one decent photo of a lone flier:
We may need to go back closer to the height of the season.
We did some window-shopping on Cannery Row and even got ice cream at a Ghirardelli shop there (which I hadn’t known existed). We decided not to go to the aquarium this time around, instead just seeing the rest of Monterey. (Besides which, the aquarium seems to have gotten awfully expensive – over $20 per person!)
It was surprisingly warm and sunny down there, which made for a nice day of walking. A fun time!
