Day 5/6 Pacific Coast Highway/Monterey

Rob and I woke up and started our day off at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Hollywood. It seemed such a tourist-y thing to do but hey, we're tourists so who cares because it was SO WORTH IT. Seriously, it was amazing chicken and waffles - who knew the combination would be so satisfying?



Apparently we were in LA the weekend of the Rose Bowl since we saw Longhorn everything everywhere. We did not go to Pasadena but little did I know I would have an assignment near there in the next couple of weeks.

After Roscoe's we started on our trip up the Pacific Coast Highway. Rob and I saw a lot of ocean front homes that we deemed "our future house" or "our retirement house" :).





We passed Lompoc, a city that boasts a culture rich in flowers, color, and fine arts. Rob's grandparents were telling us that this is where a lot of flowers are grown and flown out to florists arcross the country. I think we were there in an off season because we saw only green. Lompoc's website shows what the fields look like when the flowers are blooming.



The drive was so beautiful. We lost sunlight about 3/4 on our first leg but we figured the moonlight on the ocean would be just as beautiful. When we weren't strictly seaside we were driving through rolling hills while the sky was painted with purples, oranges, and pink.







We saw a sign on stating that part of CA-1 was closed with no detours to the interior and Hwy 46 was the last road to the interior of California to CA-101. We drove a little while up the road and came to Cambria and decided to stop. We stopped in a restaurant and asked why the road was closed (the only reason I could think of was because there had been some landslides a couple weeks earlier somewhere in California) and no one knew. Anyway we found out that the road was indeed closed so we needed to find another route, if we hadn't of stopped we would have had to drive 90 miles to Hwy 46. We were a little bummed but since it was dark it wasn't such a huge deal.

Actually, cutting through on 46 we were able to see some of wine country and drive along the rolling hills. Of course, since we were away from city lights, the stars were incredible. The backdrop was amazing, wineries with backgrounds of rolling hills covered by the moon and the stars. Amazing.

We arrive at our hotel in Monterrey (the Super 8, super cheap, super clean AND had a fridge) and drive around town a bit. We found a few little bars/clubs but were exhausted from our drive and our day so we decided to go to bed to get an early start to our second leg of the PCH on to San Francisco.

We woke up, grabbed a quick breakfast and headed on the second half of our PCH journey. We had to backtrack down to Carmel and Big Sur due to us having to take the previously mentioned 101 detour because of the road closure on CA-1 - this was worth it because Carmel and Big Sur was the whole reason we wanted to take the PCH in the first place.

Carmel/Big Sur will always has a place in my heart - this is where I am going to wind up living some day.








I was having a Zen moment upon that rock.


...And this is when we found the wide angle feature on our camera.



We stopped at Rocky Point Restaurant off the road and on a cliff with an incredible view. I drank a glass of California white and Rob had a bloody mary.

Isn't it beautiful??

We had to take in this incredible view.





We still haven't figured out how those people got on that rock with all of their fishing gear.

After taking in all that we could we started driving back north and headed into downtown Monterey. We saw signs everywhere for an aquarium and we wanted to check it out. We got there and of course the price was $30. We opted out of the aquarium and just walked around downtown Monterey - very cool, very walkable city.

We then went on our way to San Francisco - to be continued on Day 6/7/8 San Francisco to Seattle.

Love
L