We went to Monterey last month as Mike was in need of some vitamin "SEA". He loves the ocean and if we don't go visit every few months, he becomes a very sad fellow.
With all our favorite trails in Big Sur inaccessible due to the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge collapse, we opted for some hiking in the redwoods near Santa Cruz. Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park was our destination and an easy 45 minute drive from Monterey.
The main park has a grove of impressive old growth Redwoods. There is also a gift store and nature center with helpful volunteers. We decided to do the Redwood Grove Loop Trail and River Trail first. Well, not really first but we missed the turnoff for the trail to the observation deck so we ended up right back at the nature center! Yeesh! I couldn't believe it when we found ourselves right back at the beginning again. We re-oriented ourselves and headed out for the observation deck on the Ridge Fire Road. The fire road was paved and easily walkable until it started its uphill climb. This road went up at a pretty steep incline for about a mile before we made it to the fork where you can go on about 100 yards to the observation bench or turn off and take a trail for another half mile uphill to the observation deck. Well it was about 80-85 degrees that day and frankly we were so hot we decided to just see what the view was like from the observation bench. Silly me- I thought the bench might be in some nice shade but that was not the case. We could see the ocean in the distance from the bench so we decided that was good enough for us. Back down the trail and straight to the car for a cool drink.
Next stop was the Fall Creek area. This is a separate unit of the same Henry Cowell State Park but this area has no services whatsoever. It does have some old remnants of lime kilns that we thought would be interesting. There is a short hike to the kilns from the road, about half a mile, but the only parking is on the road. We only found a couple of places that we might even consider parking, but ultimately we felt they were just too small and didn't get our car far enough off the narrow road. Back down the road to the main entrance and a 2.4 mile in and out hike instead. This hike was really pleasant as there were no really steep parts and the trail follows the Fall Creek the entire way. With all our recent rain, the creek was flowing nicely with several small rapids and waterfalls. There was a lot of evidence of the toll our winter had in this area as we passed many downed trees and there was a nice waterfall created by several downed trees that had fallen on top of each other across the creek. We made it to the lime kiln remains and poked around a bit then headed back down again. There weren't many other hikers there, especially compared with the area we had hiked earlier. I have to say that if you want to see more impressive lime kilns, try Lime Kiln State Park instead. It's south of Big Sur, and has more intact kilns and also a nice beach on the ocean.
The next morning we went out whale watching with our favorite company Monterey Bay Whale Watch. There were a number of humpback whales being seen across the bay by Moss Landing. We made it across the bay and could see a couple of other whale watching boats that were just sitting in one place and knew that meant there were whales around. As we got closer, a whale suddenly surfaced right in front of our boat, blew his stinky breath on us and dived down under the water! It was so close that the captain actually had to reverse the boat engines. We spent about an hour or more watching various whales surface and dive. We didn't see any of the killer whales that have been hanging around the area the past month though. We had a chilly ride back to the other side of the bay as the marine layer was starting to come in and we always stay outside the cabin to avoid seasickness.
Dinner was a nice hot bowl of clam chowder and Chicken Caesar salad then a drive along beautiful Oceanview Drive before heading back to our hotel.
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