Pacific Coast Trip: Monterey

We continue to see amazing coastal scenery on this trip. The tour guide at Point Lobos was very knowledgeable about the area. His focus was on the adults, however, he did a great job including the kids as helpers along the trail. I loved watching the kids be super involved in the hike and ask questions about what the guide was explaining. Cannery Row and Fisherman’s Wharf have changed so much since I was here in the 90s. I prefer the historical aspect of the area, rather than the fancy restaurants and shops that is has become. We decided it wasn’t even worth getting out of the car at Cannery Row, which definitely wasn’t true when I was here last!

Ainsley:

I went to the Point Lobos Nature Preserve. I went on a guided hike in the park. We saw Cypress Trees. In one of these trees was a big rock. It connected to the roots and the tree literally grew over the rock. I got to climb boulders. When I got to the top, I saw the beautiful ocean. There were lots of waves because it was windy that day, so I huddled with mom. There was also granite. The tour guide said the granite moved around the earth. This granite was slowly moving north. The granite was a jagged cliff with the ocean waves smashing against its side.

The tour guide showed us many different kinds of plants, like sticky monkey flower, yellow lizard tail, sagebrush, and poison oak. There was an orange algae covering many trees only where the ocean was near. There were woodrat houses along the trail. They were piles of sticks with grass on them. Beavers also make houses out of piles of sticks!

Next, I went to Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, California. I ate clam chowder. It was great! Restaurant workers were handing out free samples of clam chowder. We also saw the same ships we saw when we were at another campsite in Ventura, California. They’ve been following us! We were going to see a frog preserve, but we couldn’t find parking. We did see the Point Pinos Lighthouse and Cannery Row. This day was fantastic!

Travis:

Today I went to Point Lobos. It means Wolf point. The Spaniards named it that because the sea lions sounded like wolves. We did a small guided hike around the point. We saw a ton of Poison Oak! Another plant that we saw a lot of was sagebrush. It smelled very good. I kept stopping to smell it!

The man was talking to us about the geology of Point Lobos. I had to climb over some rocks to continue! Point Lobos is really awesome!

Another thing I went to today was Cannery Row. It used to be a bunch of canneries.It started out as a Chinese town called Point Ohlones . The first cannery was called the American Tin Cannery. We drove around it and found that it is pretty cool. We also went to Fisherman’s Wharf. There were lots of samples of clam chowder available! When we were walking around we saw the exact same ships we saw in Ventura! We also saw some sea lions! Today was an tiring but awesome day!