Monterey and Carmel

One of the major reasons we decided to spend our summer vacation in California was to have the opportunity to visit my cousins and their families.  I hadn't seen any of them since I was about 12, or at least I didn't remember seeing any of them.  Dianna (whom we met with later in our trip) told me we had seen each other when I arrived in California to start grad school at Stanford.  I can vaguely remember visiting my Aunt Jody (her mother) then, but my memory has let me down as far as Dianna is concerned.  I think she was still in high school  and we all went to a football game together, but maybe not.  I should have kept a journal, then I would know!

So one of the first things I did after we arrived on Saturday afternoon was call my cousin Louise, whom I had spoken to several times during the past few years, to make arrangements to see her and her husband, Michael.  She suggested we all go to Monterey together which sounded fine so we arranged to meet at their house in Ceres on Tuesday.  Oops!  Bad choice of days.  Germany was playing in the World Cup until noon (California time) so I had to call her back and reschedule for Wednesday.  Therefore, on Wednesday morning Frank and I drove to their house a little over an hour south of Lodi where we were staying.  From there it was almost three hours to Monterey, but that's a short jaunt by Californian standards.  We stopped about half way there to have lunch and chat with each other.  We all got along so well it's a shame that we weren't in touch for so long.  Louise is just a year younger than I am and a really wonderful person.  She's in a wheelchair but leads a very active life and Michael is a real darling.  We had a great time every time we got together.

Monterey is famous for its aquarium so that is where we headed as soon as we got there and checked into the hotel where Frank and I would be staying for the night.  Louise and Michael couldn't stay overnight because Michael's father lives with them.  He's 86 and they don't like to leave him alone for too long.  Luckily our hotel was within easy walking distance of the aquarium and we spent almost three hours wandering from one exhibit to the next. 

Of course the jellyfish were some of the most fascinating animals on display because they are so varied and so colorful. 

But there were other fish too, from sharks to tropical species of all sorts.

After we had our fill of sealife, at least visually, we decided to go to the pier and look around.  Other than the aquarium, Monterey doesn't seem to have a lot to offer.  At least the parts we saw, including Cannery Row, were  very touristy, but the aquarium is so fantastic that it's worth a trip there just for that.  We walked around for a while and found a restaurant that Louise and Michael had eaten at some years before and it had been good then.  I think it must have changed hands because it was no longer very good and the service was appalling.  We had a good time laughing about the waiter who didn't seem to have a clue.  He wasn't even very young which might have been a valid excuse for his incompetence.

After dinner we had to say goodbye to Louise and Michael, but we had plans to do some more things together, so there was no need to be sad.  Frank and I spent the night in our hotel where the noise from the street was very loud.  Luckily we had an air conditioning unit in our room which we turned on to drown out the noise of the traffic and managed to sleep very well. 

The next morning we left Monterey and just north of town drove onto the rightfully famous 17-mile-drive that winds along the gorgeous coast between Monterey and Carmel.  (The animals in the second picture are not sea lions but birds on what is aptly named "Bird Rock".) If you look closely at these pictures you can see that although we had beautiful weather to begin with (it was in the mid 8os and it was still morning), off in the distance you can see some darkness in the sky.  When we got to about the half-way point, Frank thought there was a fire because it suddenly seemed so smoky.

This is certainly one of the most photographed trees in California, if not the whole world.  Named "The Lone Cypress" it's in almost every guide book or photo collection of the state.  The day we were there the fog was really rolling in and the temperature dropped from the 80s to the 50s.  It became very uncomfortable to be outside, especially since we weren't dressed for winter walking!  We continued on along the drive but didn't stop again until we reached Carmel.

Carmel, although just a very small place, is one of the best known towns in America, only partly because Clint Eastwood used to be the mayor.  It's very upscale with more galleries and antique shops than I've ever seen in one place.  The building on the left is a typical example of the shops in the town. They are all very tasteful and there are flowers everywhere.  We weren't interested in paintings or antiques, but we did visit this cheese shop and sampled some of their delicious varieties.   

It was still pretty early when we arrived in Carmel but this restaurant was the first one we saw and I decided at once this was where we would have lunch.  So after wandering around town for an hour or so, we returned to have a really lovely meal.  It was a good choice!

The only thing we bought in Carmel, aside from some cheese and lunch, was a sweatshirt jacket for me to wear.  Frank almost always has a sweater along to wear in case he gets cold even in the summer, but I was totally unprepared for the really cold weather.  In the early afternoon we decided to start back to our house, since it was several hours away and since there was really no room in our suitcases for any antiques.

California is made up of the coastal region  to the west and the Sierra mountains to the east and in between there is the central valley.  This is what we had to drive through to return to Lodi.  The temperature immediately began to rise as soon as we were a few miles from the coast and it went up to 107°F (42°C) by the time we arrived home.  Obviously, with heat like that not a lot can grow and there is a lot of really barren land in central California. 

I took a picture of this huge reservoir, which you can only see a tiny part of here, because Louise's father, my mother's brother, worked on putting up the wires that connect the dam and electrical plant to the rest of California.  This area, as forsaken as it seems, supplies a big part of California with water and electricity without which it couldn't exist, at least not as we know it.