Carmel Hill Lodge Monterey

... there we'd find out. I'm not entirely sure it was a town so much as a point or small region. We found the Big Sur State Park and decided that it was the best option and turned on in. Although the woman at the front stand was a bit concerned for us, we knew Lola would do fine...she's seen it all. We decided to do a hike up to see some Redwoods and Pfieffer? Waterfall. Christa learned at the Grand Canyon and on that hike I learned...flip ...

... rundown, so instead we picked a little town just outside Santa Cruz called Capitola.<br><br>Although not quite the Big Sur that we would be travelling down later on in the week,the drive along the coast was fantastic and we stopped off a number of times at beautiful deserted beaches with rough, Pacific waves. <br><br>When we arrived at our b&amp;b, The Jewel Box, we were so pleased, it was really sweet and had a ...

... br><br>Into Santa Cruz we arrive, parking Lola somewhere up a hill...somewhere that I wasn't paying full attention to...yikes (you'll read soon). We locked her up and headed into town for food and drinks. Along the walk we found a colorful, post 60's era, Grateful Dead loving, gray bearded, slightly drunk fellow, who was friendly to the max. "Latest member of the group"-Matt. We stood there with him for a bit while he meandered along in conversation about Jerry Garcia (Jerry told me to do ...

... car park on the front, and immediately found a great café with loads of tables on the boardwalk, overlooking the beach. It was one of those places where the slight lack of quality is made up for by quantity! Liz, Juliette and I ordered the "Breakfast Special" - eggs, bacon and hash-browns - whilst the younger members of the crew had the pancakes (these were so voluminous that I think only Olivia managed a whole pancake - and there ...

... to be exact! We'd found a nice restaurant the night before which we'd decided we would go to. It was right on the waterfront of Monterey Bay, called the Fish Hopper. We had a nice 'booth' style table overlooking the water which we enjoyed a starter of Muscles, with Salmon and Swordfish as mains. The fish was very fresh and thoroughly enjoyable with a nice glass of Reisling.<br><br>That finished us off nicely for the day so we retired back to the hotel for the night.<br><br><br>

... moment, I'd say there are about 10 occupied sites. It&#8217;s great because there are less people to share the facilities (which are very clean and very good, I must say). I&#8217;d say there is a perfect number of campers here right now. I wouldn&#8217;t like it too empty coz then it would be quite creepy as it is totally pitch black here, save for the moon... which is shining with all its might today.<br><br>Getting back into primitive camping, we needed to stock up ...

<br>The journey up US1 takes you past some stunning views. The road from Pismo to Monterey was very different from the previous journey from Santa Barbara. The weather was cooler and the vegetation greener not brown. More woods on the side of the road and jagged headland cliffs with small beaches. Also the cooler air causes small fogs/mists and when driving over a headland about 200m above ...

... so many UFO style jellys, it was -- pardon the pun -- out of this world. After that, our favorite exhibit was the seahorses, which is their current special exhibit. And the main attraction there for us... the leafy sea dragon. We haven't ever seen them before, but basically they look like very elaborate kelp. They're -gorgeous- and fascinating. Again, out of this world. Other than that.... well, we really enjoyed pretty much every exhibit ...