Down The Coast of Carmel and Monterey California

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Coming here has been a dream of mine for a REALLY long time. Just coasting down HWY 1 and stopping along the way - and of course, I got a raging cough and upper respiratory infection after day one this trip (in hindsight CA had their first COVID cases right after this trip so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that.) However, we made the best of it throughout this day’s itinerary!

The main thing to do here is 17 Mile Drive. So we did that after stopping in at some cutesy French pastry shop run entirely by Mexican women. You do have to pay at the entry, but if you buy anything within the drive you can get a discount with your ticket. Since it’s only 17 miles you should really do the whole thing! You’ll be given a little brochure at the beginning so you can read about each spot. Each time we parked we read the paragraph about that spot and then explored. We did this over and over again until we got to the end.

After this, we headed down the road a bit to Point Lobos State Park. Now, this was a weekend day and the park was REALLY full so we did have to wait about ten minutes for a parking spot to be available within the park. It was not worth parking out along the road and walking the mile and a half into the park without parking inside. We wanted to save our legs to walk within the park. So we parked down by the cove and walked up the cliff. There were incredible views and then we spotted WHALES blowing their little water spouts up. This was definitely worth the stop!