Central California

After LA, we decided to spend some time near Monterey Bay along the coast. We spent a charming day in Carmel by the Sea - a town known for its quaint, adorable buildings, then spent another day driving down the most scenic part of Route 1. The coast line vistas were glorious and we particularly enjoyed walking the trails at Point Lobos State Park.

Pinnacles National Park was our next stop. The park has beautiful tall pinnacles of rock jutting up into the sky. It also has caves that are created from fallen rocks. We enjoyed exploring both. Jerusha’s health is so much better now that we were able to climb high to the top of several pinnacles and there we were greeted by California Condors! The Condors were nearly extinct in the 1980’s and all remaining 28 wild birds were captured and put in zoos to breed. The zoos then taught the chicks how to survive, and eventually released them back into protected areas like Pinnacles. Even though there are only a couple dozen of these huge birds at the park, we saw 7 of them. A young one even flew right above us and landed on a rock very near us. It was very cool!!

San Francisco has always been a city we like visiting. We enjoyed looking at all the charming row houses and spent time with Ken’s former colleagues (Nick and Chris) who have started a business out in SF. We got to see their new office which was a treat. Dinner with church friends we knew in MA (Karen and Gerhardt) was also really special as it has been too many years since we have seen them. We also saw Jerusha’s former student Mike G. from Lexington! Sadly, our time in SF was marred by a break-in while parked at the Golden Gate Park. We had laptops stolen and driving without a window was a drag.

South of SF we visited another one of Jerusha’s former students, David, and his family. We also went to a marine preserve and saw hundreds of baby elephant seals. These creatures were also nearly extinct and this is one of the largest mainland breeding colonies. Sadly, the parents had already left as we would have loved to see the massive males.

North of SF we had several wonderful visits with Jerusha’s cousins - Gillian and David. We hiked mountains overlooking the bay and stood in awe at the majestic, tall redwood trees in Redwood National Park.

We ended our California stay with time in Napa valley where we did a wine tour in a castle and enjoyed the vistas of vineyards everywhere we drove.