Sunday, May 25, 2014

A Short Drive Along Pebble Beach in CA

Well, the weather man tricked us again!  Clear and sunny? Nope!  More fog.  But that seems to be typical along the Pacific coast.  Only, today, it stayed that way and didn’t burn off.   Sometimes in our travels, we just have to accept Mother Nature the way She is and still enjoy ourselves.  But after looking forward to the southern Pacific coast again, we really were disappointed in the weather for the two drives we had planned.  But better weather is always just up the road.

A little bit south of Monterey is an attraction called ‘The Pebble Beach 17-Mile Drive’.   For $10, you can drive through the gated community along the coast.  The community is noted for the million dollar homes,  3 golf courses, and overlooks along the coast.  The road starts off by meandering through the forest and neighborhood.  We certainly did not see any million dollar homes that impressed us!  A few were very large and well landscaped but some looked old and could use some maintenance.  

Along the drive is the Pebble Beach famous golf course that hosts one of the PGA tournaments. The course goes right down to the water.  Sure looks better on a sunny day.

Pebble Beach Golf Links, hole 7.jpg

Then we reached the shore.  The beach area was really ugly with sea grass here and there, seaweed that had washed up, rocks, and not much of a view of anything after all the hoop-la about this ‘must see’ place.  We have seen far prettier beaches all along the east coast.  Even if it had been a bright sunny day, our opinion would not have changed.   

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We continued to follow the map to the other overlooks.  Two of the overlooks were fenced off and closed because it is seal ‘pupping’ time, meaning the seals were giving birth to their pups.  At Bird Point was where things were interesting!  You could see large rocks off shore and they were covered with well over a hundred seals!  Of course, like other seal areas, they were loud!  It was fun to take the binoculars and watch them sleep or fight off others in the water to keep them from getting a share of the rock.  But they sure managed somehow to just pile themselves on each other! 

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The entertainment was furnished by all the ground squirrels begging for food!  They were all sizes, from baby to adults.  They just scampered everywhere and would come right up to you as if asking “got anything for me today?”.  Cute!  The adult sitting up in the picture certainly looks like she has been well fed, or she my be pregnant.  The certainly were not shy!  The seagulls and other sea birds had their own rock! The white stuff certainly isn’t snow!  You can take a pretty good guess of what it is from all the hundreds of birds that have been nesting on it over the years!   UCK!!

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The highlight of the drive is suppose to be the ‘Lone Cypress’ overlook.  Of course, there was so much glare from the low fog, that my pictures were not very good and neither were the views.  I am sure these views would be pretty on a sunny day.  The lone cypress tree has been on this perch for over 250 years.  It is fenced off to keep people away from it and has also been bricked at the bottom to help support it. The first picture is a copy of a prettier view.  Mine?  At least I have a shot to remind us that we saw it.  Alas, we didn’t get a very pretty view of Carmel Bay. 

The Lone Cypress, a symbol of the community, as seen from 17-Mile Drive  3 pano4 panoPE

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Had we known what the drive was really like, we would have saved our $10 and spent it on something better.  But we had to move on and couldn’t stay in the area for better days.  I do have some really pretty pictures of our first stay in Monterey 10 years ago but was still using a film camera.  Gee, I could always take a picture of my scrapbook page so I have picture on my laptop!   

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