Monterey, Carmel and Santa Cruz, California

Left Vince and Carole and drove about 2 hours to San Juan Batistia, Calif. in the San Juan Valley, where we are staying for the next six days.  Found an RV park just off Highway 101, Betabel RV Park to use as our home base to visit the three areas we wanted to see.  We are about 30 minutes from each of the cities and should make for easy access.

Got here early in the day and decided to make use of the afternoon by visiting the little town near by called San Juan Batistia.  This little town incorporated in 1869, but was inhabited with native Indians and Spaniards in the late 1700's.  In 1797 a Spanish Franciscan priest Fermin de Lasuen founded Mission San Juan Batistia to convert the natives to Catholicism.  It was the 15th of the 21 missions built along the 600 mile El Camino Real and was the largest of them all.  Today, over 200 years later,  it is the only mission to still have regular religious services.

One other odd claim to fame, this mission was the setting for the bell tower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Vertigo.   Sadly, the bell tower is no longer standing.

Cork Tree

As we were walking around the little town of San Juan Batistia, we came across a tree I had never seen before....a Cork Tree.  The bark of this tree is soft cork.  All I could do was look at this tree and wonder how many bottles of wine you could cork with one tree!











Monterey

Downtown Monterey

Monterey was the Capital of Alta California under both Spain and Mexico.  The US Flag was raised over the Customs House in 1846 and California became part of the United States after the Mexican-American War.

The City had California's first Theater, newspaper, public building, public library and publicly funded schools.  Until the 1950's, Monterey was fishing port, mainly sardines.




Monday, scheduled a whale watching tour with Chris Whale Watching tours of Monterrey Bay.  A small boat, one that is also used for fishing tours, so it is not as pretty and comfy as the other tour boats we saw that day.  But, Chris charges $35 and the others are $44 and they all go to the same place in the bay to see the whales.

Skies started out being a bit gray as we headed out into the bay, but they managed to clear to blue. Luckily, the waters were calm....so no sea sickness on my part.   Humpback whales are in the bay from May through October and our sea voyage only took about 40 minutes to arrive where they were frolicking. Trying to film humpbacks can be challenging as they do not like to breech as much as killer whales do.  Humpbacks tend to show you their backs and their tails, so all of our pictures are of them either spouting, bent to dive and their magnificent tails.  Only one, on our way back to Monterey did a breech and of course we did not have the camera ready!
















Carmel, Big Sur Highway and 17 Mile Drive

Bixby Creek Bridge

We cannot believe how beautiful the coastline of central California is,  The cliffs, the rock outcroppings and the talcum sand beaches make you want to pull off and take pictures at every curve and pull out.

Big Sur Area

Big Sur Area

Carmel is an interesting town and very upscale.  There is definitely a difference between the two towns and $$$$ seem to be it.  Carmel does have a beautiful beach with a golf course running above one part of it.  Actually, there are lots of golf courses in this area, including the famous Pebble Beach.

We had lunch, walked the beach and then visited another of the 21 missions along El Camino Real, Mission Carmel.

Mission Carmel

The 17 Mile Drive is a famous loop drive from Carmel to Monterey that follows the coast line past Pebble Beach Golf Course, which by the way is open to the public if you can afford the green fees.

Lone Cypress

 We drove into the golf course with the intention of walking around.  There were so many large trucks around it was obvious they were preparing for a televised tournament, so we did not stop.Interestingly, the 17 mile drive is not free to travel.

There is a toll booth at both ends to collect $10 for the privilege of making the drive.  In spite of the fee, the views are worth the money, and California has provided many pull outs and other
areas to stop and fill up your camera's memory card.












Wednesday was back to Monterey to visit the Aquarium.  I can say it lives up to its reputation and hype.  A large beautiful facility that once was a sardine processing plant.  If you are going, be sure to spend at a minimum a 1/2 day to enjoy as much as you can.

Sand Dollars

Boardwalk

Laughing Lady

With more daylight left in the day, we decided to head to Santa Cruz, a place that holds memories for us from high school.  The boardwalk, dances and concerts were the draw back in the day (feels like a million years ago).  Amazingly, the place looked very much like I remembered, there have been updates and things have
been updated and added, but the wooden roller coaster and the carousel is still there.

The beaches and surfers are quite famous in Santa Cruz.  We were told surfing was introduced to the West Coast back in 1885 when three teenage Hawaiian Princes took a break from their boarding school in San Mateo and came to Santa Cruz.  They surfed the San Lorenzo River on custom shaped redwood boards.

We are Headed inland to Turlock Calif. Tomorrow.  Why Turlock you say.  It is in the middle of nowhere.  Yes, that is true, but it is also the home of grandson #1, Jonathan who is attending California State University there.