Where in the World are Jeff and Sue?: Day 13: What the flip?

Today was actually mostly a really, really good day. We left Salinas this morning and headed for Big Sur. On the way we drove around the peninsula of Monterey and then “Carmel by the sea,” previously known as the town of Clint Eastwood’s mayoral stint. Monterey is a highly touristed site with gorgeous beaches (CA is loaded with awesome beaches), and a fisherman’s wharf. This wharf is much smaller that San Francisco’s but… very nice and with more beautiful boats, yachts, and sailboats than you can count. Plus, lots of people were in the water all over taking sailing, kayaking, and scuba lessons (these are the ones we saw). It’s also a historic town and has amazing, old architecture so it was just fun to drive through.

Carmel was absolutely stunning! Also very touristed with amazing architecture and it seems that everyone has meticulously landscaped yards with flowers and shrubs. The coast, as usual, was beautiful and yet again different and unique with a sweet combination of more rounded and rolling rocks, beautiful sugar sand, and wildflowers everywhere… beautiful. We got out here and walked the beach and I took tons of pix.

As usual, we stopped in the afternoon to make our reservation (that was difficult here because of tourists). We found a place in Morro Bay. We are on HWY 1 now and the drive through Big Sur and down was indescribable! We were up so high on the coastline and the drive was winding and hilly. We stopped in Big Sur for lunch at a little place called the Redwood Grill (Fernwood motel). The service was great and the food was awesome. There, the waitress told us about a place down the road a bit where we could watch elephant seals right on shore and we did indeed see them.

So far, we have had no troubles but that was to end tonight. I’ll make it short. We got to our reserved (through Expedia) hotel at about 9 and the manager proceeded to tell us that he had no space for us (Holland Inn, don’t ever stay there). He said that he told Expedia that he was over-booked and they booked us anyway. So… we spent the next 3 hours in our van in front of McDonalds on the phone with Expedia trying to figure everything out and have a place to sleep. I was getting the back of the van organized for what we thought was to be our room for the night and finally, Jeff got through to someone that actually found us a room. It was at Marriot Courtyard! Plus, she credited our account with $25 for gas and gave us a $100 Expedia certificate. So, although it was really late, it all ended well.

Until tomorrow