To Monterey

On Friday, Kate and I walked the 12 miles from Marina to Monterey completing our 4-day 47 mile journey from Santa Cruz. Above is a photo looking back at my footprints. At this point, Kate and I were both walking barefoot because it was close to high tide, and waves would occasionally come right up to the coastal bank. Looking back, a wave is already starting to wash away my track.

Today’s walk was supposed to be along the bike trail rather than the beach. However, construction removing the railroad tracks closed a long stretch of the bike trail, so we headed through the dunes to the beach. Kate and I arrived just after high tide. We chose to wait for about an hour past high tide before we felt completely comfortable walking along the beach since the full moon tides were larger than normal and the waves were big. Having our toes get wet was fine, but we did not want to find ourselves knee deep anywhere.

As the tide receded, more and more beach was available for us.

In places, the beach was very flat, so one set of waves might be 30 feet away from us but a slightly bigger set could have us scampering to the side or letting it wash over our toes during the periods when we were barefoot. A larger wave could easily move this wood and roll it up or bring it back down the beach.

This is looking back north, the direction from which we came.

Along the way, we occasionally came across jellyfish on the beach.

I continue to enjoy the patterns in the sand from the waves retreating.

As we got closer to Monterey, some fog started to drift in.

Inside the Monterey harbor, we saw a Sea Otter which made Kate very happy. She had spotted what we thought were a couple of Sea Otters on Thursday morning in the harbor at Moss Landing from our room in the inn. However, we were not sure because they were a long distance away, and I could not get a good photograph through the screen in the window.

At the marina, we finally left the beach and rejoined the bike path we had left 8 miles earlier.

Along the bike path, we came across the Dust Bowl Brewing Company which also had Wedo’s Taco truck. The combination seemed perfect, so we stopped for a celebratory beer and taco.