Checked out of the motel and headed towards Grove Gate for the start of the '17 mile drive' stopping off at Safeway and a couple of independent bakeries on the way for supplies for the day.
The 17 mile drive is a scenic road through Pebble Beach and Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula in Northern California, much of which follows the Pacific coastline and passes famous golf courses, mansions and scenic attractions, including the Lone Cypress, Bird Rock and the 5,300-acre Del Monte Forest of Monterey Cypress trees.
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| The Lone Cypress |
There are numbered points of interest along the road and the accompanying leaflet or phone app gives information on each one. I got talking to someone who very kindly let me view the sea otters through her telescope, it was an amazing thing to see.
The route to San Luis Obispo is mainly along Highway 101 but we took a detour to do a webcam cache at Cayucos. The webcam is right on the beach so after getting the necessary pictures we whisked off our trainers and socks for a paddle. Yup! We have now paddled in the Pacific Ocean! 😎
Looking a few miles along the coast from the beach, there is a huge lump of rock just out at sea. Mark had some vague recollection that it was called Morro. A quick check on the phone and noticed that there was an EarthCache there so we headed there next. The co-ordinates led us to a carpark at the base of Morro. A group of VW enthusiasts had gathered there. There was a splitscreen camper and a couple of old beetles but mainly they were VW Type 3 and Type 4 (don't worry, I haven't gone all car-nerdy: I had to google what they were) basically they are the strange v-dubs which look like stretched Beetles. You don't see many in the UK although Mark says his next door neighbour had one when he was little. Not long after we got there, they all drove off in a cloud of dust...
When planning where to stop on our road trip, we noticed that San Luis Obispo had a drive-in cinema so we thought that would be a good place to stop overnight to break the journey. We checked into our motel and headed to the Sunset Drive-in. As luck would have it, it was showing the second 'Kingsman' film - we had only watched the first on the flight from Heathrow. The cars park facing the screen and the ground undulates so you can park at a slight slope. You tune the car radio to 100.7 and sit back to enjoy the film... OK.... the windscreen was smudged and no amount of water and rubbing with a tissue would shift the bugs so the friendly people in the car next to us gave us some of their bug shifter spray to use.
Everyone there was so friendly and the whole place had a really great feel to it. They charge $9 per car and for that you get 2 movies. We were really surprised at the end of the film when it said that the next film coming up was The Hitman's Bodyguard, we ummed and ahhed about staying to watch but as it was already 10.30 and we had an early start the next morning we decided against it. If we had these back home I would definitely go to the cinema more often it was brilliant.
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