Day 2 - Fri, Mar 17, 2000 Last updated: 8/1/00 9:00pm CT
Day 2 began with an early drive up the bay along the coastal road.
Here’s a view from Point Joe. Not much different. As with most of these pictures, you had to be there to appreciate the real beauty of it all.
Next up is Bird Rock. Guess why they call it Bird Rock?
Cypress Point is a place where this lone cypress tree managed to take root and survive the rough weather along the ocean. It is fenced off. It can survive the weather, but not the humans.
Driving along “17 mile drive”, a very scenic route with tall cypress trees and really fancy houses. We drove past Pebble Beach golf course and thought that $2.10 for a gallon of gas was expensive. At the time, it was still $1.25 in Chicago.
Then it was off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They have this huge tank filled with the obvious things.
And of course, sea otters (in a separate tank – they probably don’t want to mix the otters with the sharks). This was a very nice aquarium and a must see if you are in the area.
Lunch was at Sly McFly’s, a bar and grill on Cannery Row. Again, major tourist destination, so don’t expect to get away cheap. The food was good, but a Pepsi cost $2.35!
The afternoon was spent on rented bikes, riding up the coast, covering the area nearer to the hotel that we skipped on the morning drive. One of our stops was at the Point Pinos Lighthouse. I of course don’t remember any interesting facts about the lighthouse, so I gathered a couple of facts off the ‘net. Point Pinos is the oldest, continuously operating lighthouse on the west coast of the U.S. The lighthouse was opened in 1855.
Not exactly sure where the picture of me was taken, but since I put a picture of Denise on the site, I had to be fair…
Dinner was great. We ate at The Fishwife in Pacific Grove. Get there early or make a reservation, it’s a relatively small place. We got there at 5:00 and got seated right away without a reservation. By 5:30 there was a wait for a table. Good food and good prices.
Finally, we drove down to Carmel Beach to watch a beautiful sunset over the Pacific ocean. You had to be there. It is apparently quite the event, there were a lot of people that showed up the two days we went to watch the sun go down.
After the sky show, we headed back to the hotel, dropped off the car and took a walk down for a little ice cream snack at the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop & Soda Fountain on Cannery Row. Hot fudge, YUM!