Rainy day drive & historic walking tour

Capitola

Tue, 1/3:  Today was a drizzly day, so we decided to do a driving excursion.  Headed north to Seaside so Dave could check out the two golf courses located at the site of the old military installation of Fort Ord.  I must say, both courses do look really nice...beautiful views from fairways lined with gorgeous wind-swept Monterey Pines and Cypresses.  Guess we’ll golf there next time through (when Dave’s shoulder is in better condition).  We continued north to Moss Landing to check out the KOA RV Park.  We’d considered staying there but now we’ve seen it, we’re glad we stayed closer in.  It’s a nice park, but it would be more suited to a quick overnight if we were passing through.  Moss Landing is just a wide spot in the road…not really a town.  For some reason, Dave wanted to go to Santa Cruz.  Along the way we stopped at SeaCliff State Beach to check out the camping options.  This park has beachside camping (a few with full hookups).  We thought we’d check it out for future.  We continued north toward Santa Cruz and got off Hwy 1 early.  We came upon an unexpected surprise...Capitola Village.  It was quite charming and reminded us of something you'd see in Europe.

We finally wound our way into Santa Cruz where we’d planned to have lunch. 

Santa Cruz Beach

Everything in Santa Cruz is a one way street!!!!  We tried to get to Beach Street that runs by the shoreline and amusement park, but no matter how hard we tried, we’d get on a one way street with no turns or a dead end.  We went around and around and around and was so frustrating, we just wanted to get back on Hwy 1 and head south.  Even that wasn’t easy to do.  When we finally did get to Hwy 1, we found a McDonalds had lunch and drove south.  We stopped to check out Marina Dunes RV Park in Marina because that’s the closest RV Park to Monterey (10 miles) without staying at the Fairgrounds.  It’s a nice park, but backs up to Hwy 1, so it’s really noisy.  We did get out and take a hike over the dunes to the beach.  We had the whole beach to ourselves and the rain just started as we got back to the car.  

It was still early, so we continued into Monterey to check out Fisherman’s Wharf.  It was raining and windy, but hey, we’re from Washington!  We have raincoats and umbrellas so we decided to stroll out on the wharf to see what there was to see.  The whole wharf was lined with seafood restaurants.  Even though the weather was ucky, the restaurants all had people out front giving samples of their clam chowder.  It was like going to Costco on a Saturday.  We stopped at the restaurant at the end of the pier for a beer and enjoy the view (there really wasn’t much of a view with all the rain).  Home for dinner and a movie.

Wed, 1/4:  We had heavy winds and pouring rain during the night.  No branches down or power outages, but lots of noise.  It was still raining in the morning, so we had a leisurely morning and when the rain let up, headed out to do a walking tour of historic Monterey.  The self-guided “Path of History” walking tour consists of 55 historic sites that describe California’s heritage.  We did find out that during off-season, the museums and historic houses on the walking tour aren’t open on Wednesdays.

  Whaling Station

  California's First Theater

 

My maiden name is Stevenson (Robert Louis Stevenson wrote many books here)

 

Even though the buildings weren’t open, we could walk around the buildings and most had information plaques out front.  Each site had a dialogue you could listen to if you called a phone number at each stop.  We must have been gone 2-3 hours (I know I got my 10,000 steps in) and we dodged the rain until near the end.  We stopped at Alvarado Brewery for lunch and tried 2 of their brews.  Home to dry out.