Big Sur and Big Trees

We say a fond farewell to our friends and head south to San Juan Bautista. There is a Spanish mission here which was founded on June 24, 1797 by Fermín Lasuén of the Franciscan order. The mission was the fifteenth of the Spanish missions established in present-day California.

The town is quiet with lovely historic buildings. I also spot a beautiful old Cadillac. We sit and people watch, whilst sharing an exceptional chocolate brownie and very good coffee, at Bliss Blendz.

We then head south to Monterey. We walk around briefly, but it is very commercial and busy, and not to our taste. We do however visit the aquarium, which was worthwhile but very echoey and noisy with kids. The kelp forest tank and the one with hammerheads, tuna and dorado were incredible, as were the beautiful jellyfish tanks.

Next there is a short drive to Carmel. We have selected a hotel in the town centre. It is a good choice and conveniently placed for a very short walk to the numerous bars and restaurants. We have been recommended to visit ‘AW Shucks’ for oysters and cocktails. It does not disappoint. We move on to ‘Giovanni’ for dinner and end with a final cocktail at ‘Hogs Breath’. Dirty Harry tries to keep me in control but does a poor job.

Unsurprisingly we sleep very well indeed.

We make an early start as there is a long journey today. We drive through the town to the beach and then along the seafront. It is cool and cloudy along the coast. The cold Pacific effect.

There are Hansel & Gretel houses and lots of other quirky properties.

We then head off to the Big Sur. The drive does not disappoint. There is magnificent coastal scenery.

We peel off State Route 1 for the two mile narrow road drive to Pfeiffer Beach. Unfortunately it is cloudy, however the tide is out, enabling a walk around to the adjacent bays. It is a pretty special place and worth coming early to avoid the crowds.

Annoyingly, we discover that the road is closed south of Big Sur. We add over an an hour and a half to our already long day and have to retrace our journey all the way back to Monterey and then drive across the Central Valley, which is surprisingly large and completely flat. There is industrial scale irrigation and agriculture. We drive through Castroville – apparently artichoke capital of the world. Who knew? We pass the massive San Luis Reservoir – clearly needed for the intensive crop irrigation.

We head on to Three Rivers and arrive at our hotel at 3ish. The grounds are great, the room rather drab and decorated in shades of dark brown. However, it was a reasonable size and clean with a patio leading out to a nice little pool, where we lazed before heading 10 miles uproad to Exeter for dinner. We ate at Monets where there was a clarinet player and nice ambience. Slightly bizarrely this was bring your cute dog evening and 50% of all wine sales were going to the local dog charity. Fortunately the dogs (and owners) were well behaved. We woke to a beautiful sunny morning and breakfast was quite outstanding; a massive plate of fruit, a choice of pastries – I had the lemon blueberry slice with lemon curd (yummy) and eggs coddled in ham with cherry tomatoes and a pesto dressing. The latter could become an all time breakfast favourite.

After our exceptional breakfast we head up to Kings Canyon to see the giant sequoias. We are advised to take a different route from our chosen one as the road we were going to take is closed due to a landslide. Again we add an hour to the journey time. Kings Canyon is worth the detour. The sequoias are very impressive, you can even walk through the fallen trunk of one…

…and so are the views.

We are unable to drive along the ridge road as it is closed due to snow. This is becoming a common theme! We still enjoy the alternative route.

We wind our way through the mountains and along the Merced River to access Yosemite Park early tomorrow.

It has been a very long drive today, but we understand it will be very busy in the park, so we need to be close by to enter as early as possible. Eventually we make it to Yosemite River View lodge and sit on the balcony with a well deserved bottle of rosé.