MONDAY, JULY 20

MONDAY, JULY 20:

       Ah, a day of fun and pleasure – we're due! After a good breakfast (and Bill making some phone calls to salvage yards, etc.), we headed out late morning for Monterey. Wanted to kind of get oriented, and thought that a good, fun way to do that would be to ride our bikes along the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail. This is a biking and walking trail which begins just north of Monterey in Pacific Grove and stretches for 29 miles south down past Monterey to some neighboring towns, ending at Castroville. It's an easy, mostly flat, ride that hugs the Bay, giving great views of the water and surroundings. The most popular stretch isbetween Lovers' Point, the northern end of the trail, and Fishermen's Wharf, which is the section we did, plus a few more miles south.

      We picked a beautiful day to do it – warm, sunny, mostly clear. It can so often be overcast and foggy here on the peninsula – so we felt fortunate. (Even more so when I got an e-mail from Loretta saying that they were having rain and high humidity down south!) Lovers Point affords fabulous views of the craggy, rocky coastline along the Bay, as well as lots of sightings of sea otters and sea lions if you're lucky. Which we were. So we lingered here for some time. 

 

                                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                     

Then biked past more beautiful shoreline before we came to historical Cannery Row

                                                                   

and shortly thereafter the Monterey Aquariuim. Another couple of miles to Fishermen's Wharf.

And then simply because the weather was so pleasant, we continued on for another couple of miles through a nice, shady eucalpytus forest.

       Turned around and came back, stopping at Fishermen's Wharf to cool off with a couple of freshly made fruit smoothies. Spotted some more sea life sunning themselves on the rocks and generally taking it easy and enjoying life.

 

                                                                  

 

 

      Got back to the truck (Mike's) around 5 or 5:30 for an easy ride home. Oh yes, we even took care of a needed task: getting Bill's stitches from his fall back in Oceanside taken out . . . the trail passed right n front of an Urgent Care center, and he was in and done within 30 minutes.

       Had our leftover burgers for dinner, outside again. Seemed cooler tonight.

        Thankful for a nice, relaxing day. Got the news this morning that it's going to cost substantially for the kind of transmission the mechanic feels is the better deal in the long run – Dodge factory built, guaranteed for x number of miles, and will be honored by any Dodge dealer. So that's kind of depressing. Most likely means that we won't be able to spend a few winter weeks in Florida this Feb or March as we had hoped. But we're here now in this wonderfully scenic part of the country, with gorgeous weather, and wonderfully generous people making sure that we can enjoy it all . . . so we're taking joy and pleasure in each day now, and are just grateful that we have $$ in the bank to pay for this needed repair.