We spent a couple of days in the Carmel area, hiking in Pt. Lobos State Park and taking a long geocaching drive down south on highway 1 past Lucia.
We arrived around noon on Friday and ate our lunch on the sand at a beach near San Jose Creek just south of the Carmel River.
Beach scene just south of Carmel
Then we found a parking space along the highway and walked into Point Lobos State Park and hiked along the bluffs. This tree is always fascinating, but hard to get a get a good photo in the harsh afternoon light.
A very determined tree
There were a few flowers and lots of poison oak putting out its shiny leaves. Here’s an artsy, HDR photo of cones, spanish moss, and leaves.
Watch out for the poison oak
As we walked along the bluffs, I just happened to look on my iPhone for any geocaches and noticed an earth cache nearby that highlighted some fossilized tracks in the sandstone. I found this very interesting. They were probably made by some sort of ancient bivalve mollusk.
Ichnofossils
We stayed at the Sandpiper Inn in Carmel and had dinner at Passionfish in Pacific Grove.
Saturday morning we walked along the coastline in Carmel before heading south on highway 1 to find some caches on a couple of DeLorme map pages. Our first stop was at Garapata Ranch State Park. It was impossible to find a parking spot close the trailhead I wanted, so we parked farther down the road at a less popular trailhead and hiked. This turned out to be a pretty hike and I found two caches that were on page 30 of the Southern and Central California DeLorme map.
A little further south we stopped at the Bixby Bridge. It was also a zoo and the sun was in the wrong position for photos. We looked for a cache a quarter mile up The Old Coast Road (dirt) and didn’t find it.
Heading south again, our next stop was supposed to be at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, but again, I couldn’t find a convenient parking spot. I drove on south to Lucia, not realizing that I really did need the caches to complete a page in the California DeLorme map.
Our final stop was at Mill Creek Picnic area where I found two caches that were on page 43 of the Southern and Central California DeLorme map.
Interesting boat storage and launch beach
Heading back towards Monterey there were parking spots at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, but we were tired and I didn’t think it was necessary. I realized as I was logging the caches after getting home that those were the caches I needed on page 100 of the California DeLorme map. One of the caches was an earth cache about a landslide. Since I remember seeing the landslide area as I drove by and I could find all the answers from Google Earth satellite photos and web research I logged it without actually going to the specified coordinates. Interestingly, this was a monster of a debris flow during an El Niño year and it closed highway 1 for a year.
Back in Monterey at dinner time, we ate at PF Changs. I thought it was good and it was gluten free.
Total distance for the trip was 320 miles.
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