The Pacific Ocean forms the west coast. Highway 1 runs along that coast offering amazing vistas. There’s mountains immediately east. The Hearst Hacienda is on the east of the mountains. Highway 101, a near-interstate high speed highway, runs north to south east of the Hacienda. The original plan was to take the windy road back to Highway 1, then slowly drive north along the coast. With fog likely still around, we didn’t want to see if we would be twice lucky with that windy mountain road. So we went east to 101, then north to Monterey. That added about 2 hours of driving, but it was much easier driving. We wanted to visit the fabulous Monterey Aquarium, but it was closed. Our hotel for the night is in Monterey. We had plenty of time and not a lot to do. We decided to slowly drive south on Highway 1, backtracking and catching the views we missed by going up to the east of the mountains. It’s a magnificent stretch of road. It was hard to select just a few pictures for the blog.

Our first stop was Point Lobos State Park. We arrived around 10 and walked the trails. By the time we left, the park was full. They were turning away cars. People were parking on the street and walking in.The line of parked cars was over a mile long. We continued south, driving and stopping until we got to the Point Sur Lighthouse. Unfortunately, the lighthouse was closed and there were no tours yesterday. So we snapped a few pics and turned around, taking the opportunity to stop at a couple of vistas we missed going down. Our last stop was at Bixby Creek Bridge. By this time it was mid-afternoon. The crowds were so large that people were parking anywhere they could, including one hapless car parked immediately in front of a “no stopping any time” sign.

We were at our hotel around 3, with plenty of time to do some laundry. The rain kindly waited until we returned from our trip for take-out pizza.

We’re about 150 miles south of San Francisco. The original plan was to spend a day driving up and visiting a few parks, then spend a couple of days in San Fran. Unfortunately, most of the things we would do are closed. We decided to cut our vacation short. We’ll be flying home Monday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.