Nice day trip to Carmel and Point Lobos State Park

Today we took a little drive down South, mostly to take in some of this new scenery, but we ended up at a place called Point Lobos. If they haven't filmed movies at this location, I don't know why. It is beautiful.

We headed South in the most efficient manner possible until we got about 90 miles from home. We then ventured off the beaten path to some twisty roads that included Laureles Grade Drive, a nice little stretch with 10% grades, up and down the pass. We even got further off the trail when we took a side trip off the pass onto a 1 lane road that my GPS said would be even more interesting but ended up dead ending. Oh well, it was still interesting.

After the pass, we pretty much just found the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and headed about 5 miles south to Point Lobos. It takes $9 to get into the park but I could have spent a week there just watching the waves. It was a little cold and very windy so we didn't stay long, but take a look at my pics to see some of the amazing scenery.

When we left Point Lobos, I had noticed a road called 17 Mile Drive that looked interesting. Well, it is so interesting that the residents have decided that they can charge a $10 toll just for driving through. It's pretty worth it though, at least if you are just visiting. We paid the man and drove along the shaded road with the Pacific Ocean on our Left and amazing houses and golf courses like Pebble Beach, Cypress Point and Spyglass Hill along with some less notables as well. It was a great drive. Brenda thinks that this is where Clint Eastwood probably lives but we didn't see him jogging so we don't know.

After the 17 Mile Drive, we just returned to the PCH and headed homeward. We got pretty far along and heard that our planned route was suffering from a Semi accident earlier that day on the bridge that we planned to use to cross the San Francisco Bay. We backtracked about 10 miles and took a more direct route home having had a great drive.

If you look closely at the map you will see a little box about midway down on the right that says "Lick Observatory" on Mount Hamilton. That's where I am headed Tuesday.

oVo