After our Food Tour of Old Monterey, we headed down the road a bit to Pacific Grove. Our first stop was Asilomar State Beach, which is absolutely one of my favorite beaches anywhere. I love the ease of access: free, on-street parking just outside the perimeter fence, on the beach-side of the street so that dodging traffic is not necessary. And the walk to the beach is a short one. I love that there is a long stretch of wide, soft, sandy beach and also an area of dunes and rocks with little mini-beaches tucked in between them. And I love sitting on the beach watching the waves splash up on the rocks with increasing enthusiasm as the tide rolls in, and then exploring the tidal pools left behind when the tide recedes.

When we left Asilomar, we headed into Pacific Grove to grab some dinner. It was rather cool and misty, so we decided to do just a brief drive through tour of Pacific Grove. Its a lovely little beach town, with lots of historic properties built roughly between 1880 and 1930. These include well preserved multi-story Victorian mansions, slightly run down 3 or 4 room cottages, and just about everything in between. I have no photos to share, but there are a few in my post from last year. We had a quick dinner at a local pub, then hung around a bit in the RV, enjoying some wine and our last evening together.

We said goodbye to Kira and Blake Monday morning, then spent the next few days getting caught up on laundry and various items of business.

On Wednesday, the weather forecast for the coast called for partly sunny skies and very little fog, so we decided to head to Big Sur at long last. As you can see in the photos below, there were some clouds and fog which never completely burned off in many of the places we stopped, but we could at least see the water and the beautiful flowers, rock formations and bridges.

Big Sur refers to an incredibly scenic coastal area along Hwy 1 beginning just south of Carmel and extending to just north of San Simeon. Here, the two lane road winds along the edge of the mountains, often following a very narrow sliver of flat land. Fortunately there are many pull offs and parking areas along the route in some of the wider areas, where visitors can stop to enjoy the view. In some sections, particularly further south, there are also parks, campgrounds and even a few residential and commercial areas. In the northern section through which we drove, there were two locations where parking and beach access were provided by California State Parks.

We stopped at Garrapata State Park, which provides a parking lot and paths through fields of beautiful wild flowers which lead to stairways down to the beach.

After visiting Big Sur, we didin’t do much in Monterey before moving on to Santa Cruz. A dear friend stopped by to visit for a few days; she and I painted the town one night and chilled on the beach watching the sun set the next. Then she headed on up the road and we did the same.