Biking Monterey Bay

We have found such fun things to do to experience the beauty of Monterey Bay! Our camping friends, Dale and Carelyn, were certainly right that we needed to come to the central coast to see it for ourselves. One of the things we enjoyed was a bike ride along the coast on the Monterey Bay Recreation Trail. We parked the car in a free lot along Del Monte Avenue, and took off on our bikes towards the town of Monterey.

There were trees and flowers all along the trail, so of course Denisa thought it was lovely. But her favorite was this bush full of blooms. We had never seen anything like this Pride of Madeira plant before, but they were flowering all over Monterey.

This trail allowed us to see all of the Monterey gems without having to look for parking spots along the way. We rode right by Fisherman's Wharf with all the boats parked and ready to go out to sea.

We also stopped in at Cannery Row, where all the canning factories and warehouses have now been re-purposed into tourist shops and restaurants.

The Pulitzer prize winning author, John Steinbeck, is the favorite local son. He wrote about the hard work done here on the old cannery row when it is was a little less touristy. But today it is a lovely combination of ocean and fun with nice statues and flowers.

We also rode right by the Monterey Aquarium, which is the top-rated thing to do while visiting this area. But with ticket prices at $50 per person, it didn't fit into our frugal travel budget. The real star of the show of this bike ride is the actual coast line.

We rode our bikes for miles, and it always seemed like there was a beautiful spring-blooming coastal flower to frame the picture. This was a shot toward Lover's Point Park, a tiny peninsula that reached further out into Monterey Bay.

Denisa slipped in another picture of the Pride of Madeira, just to prove that they come in different colors. The one earlier was blue, while this one is purple. She can tell you that the bees are certainly enjoying these blooms as well.

She was also fascinated to see wild calla lilies growing on the beaches of Monterey. She tried unsuccessfully to grow these in her flower garden in Oklahoma, so it is amazing to see them flourishing untended on the beach.

It looks like there are a couple rocks on the edge of the water behind the lilies on the right. But when we zoom in, we see that those two "rocks" are actually a mother seal and her pup napping on the sand.

We saw more harbor seals napping on the beach. They were snoozing soundly, but one suddenly raised his flipper to let us know they were still alive and well.

Our biking destination was the Point Pinos Lighthouse. Denisa always likes a good lighthouse, so we biked up a big hill to get a view of this one. She was obviously disappointed to see that it was closed for the day, and the gate kept us from getting a close look.

The best view we got was from the golf course in Monterey.

The lighthouse is right on the edge of a peninsula that is pummeled by the sea winds. It was interesting to see the trees on this edge of the water, almost bent to the ground from the constant winds off the ocean.

We made a couple more stops on our bike ride back to the car. We stopped at the Sister's City garden, where unique plants from Monterey's sister cities were planted. Denisa recognized this as one of the very unique plants we saw on our vacation to South Africa. We've never seen one before or after that trip until today.

That garden also had more of those elegant calla lilies. Denisa now realizes they are more at home in the moist sea breezes of the coast, rather than the dry and hot western Oklahoma winds.

We knew we were almost back to the car when we changed from beach scenes to tall eucalyptus trees. Dale and Carelyn were certainly right when they said that Monterey Bay is a special place to visit. We've seen so many beautiful things, and we still have one more really fun day to blog about tomorrow!