Monterey Trip Day 1

As promised, I'm writing from beautiful Monterey, CA tonight. It took us about 6 1/2 hours door-to-door to make the 370 mile drive (with a couple of stops for bathrooms and lunch), and thankfully the trip was uneventful with the exception that my son is currently learning to drive and needed some hours behind the wheel. I gave him a couple of shifts - about 60 miles from Wheeler Ridge to Lost Hills (on I-5) and another 80 or so miles from Paso Robles to Salinas. He did fine and is gaining confidence with each shift.

We're staying in the Holiday Inn Express in Monterey which is just a 10 minute or so walk from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you look between the trees, we even have a view of Monterey Bay:

We dropped the boy off at the hotel where the Monterey Jazz Festival is being held and headed over to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. The wharf is basically a collection of restaurants and small shops, with each restaurant handing out free samples of clam chowder to draw you in.
We ate at the Old Fisherman's Grotto which claims to have the world's best clam chowder. It's the best I've ever had and I highly recommend it. Along with dinner we had a show. Our table was located right by the window overlooking the bay, and while we ate we had three harbor seals swimming around near the wharf, an inquisitive seagull that walked along outside the window and watched us eat, and for the grand finale, a good-sized bat ray swam by just below the surface. Pretty cool.

After dinner we decided to go for a long walk to work off the seafood. Our hotel is located just a few yards from a bike path/recreation trail that runs all the way from Marina through Monterey and out to Lover's Point in Pacific Grove. The section of trail near out hotel used to be a railroad spur that ran along Cannery Row to service the canneries and factories that used to be there. They've since paved it over to make a wonderful trail.

Along the way we saw a reminder of the trail's past, and since I had just had a big dinner, I thought it was appropriate to get a picture of me and my big caboose:We headed west and ended up walking over 2 miles altogether nearly to the end of the trail. Along the way we saw a little beach covered with multi-colored rocks...or so we thought. They were actually several hundred harbor seals who were bedded down for the night.

A closer look reveals the "rocks" for what they actually are:
As the sun was setting I took a picture of a very typical coastal sight in this part of the country - waves and rocks:
Tomorrow we'll head over to the Jazz Festival to see the boy perform, and then will take the 17-mile drive through the Del Monte Forest and over to Pebble Beach. I'm sure I'll have more great pictures tomorrow.