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Trip to Santa Cruz, Carmel and Big Sur

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I planned for a family weekend trip to few coastal towns in California. My dad was visiting us and before he returned back to India, I thought it was a good idea to tour some nearby places. Plus, it was a welcome relief after all the work of moving to the new home.

As my wife would say, something that I should avoid doing, it was last minute plan. On wednesday, I went about planning for my leave at office and started booking hotels. Hotels near tourist spots often get booked during weekends and I had to pay my price of getting hold of something which was a bit away from tourist spots, but in a beautiful small town called Salinas.

Using wikipedia and google maps, I noted down the following places that will be worth visiting.

We could make it most of them and I had to cancel a few because were very far from the place we stayed.

I have visited Monetery twice earlier, I was enthusiastic to travel to the peninsula again and take Siddhartha to Aquarium second time in row.

Santa Cruz beach has free concerts on Friday evenings and we got a chance to watch the live performance of of Y and T

At Bigsur, we could be on time for a 02:00 pm tour of Point Sur light house. It's trek lasting for 3 hours up to the light house led by a guide, who has a good narrative on light houses in california, living in early 1900s in the light house and current preservation efforts.

Next day, we visited Mission San Carlos at Carmel, which was one of the earliest missions established in California by Junipero Sierra. These monuments provide a window to peek at events back in time. I enjoy watching through it.

On Monday, on our way back to home, we made a trip to Hanuman Temple at Mount Madonna, Watsonville. This is actually a Yoga retreat setup by folks and is guided by an Indian guru by name Baba Ram Doss. The location of this Hindu temple was excellent and at atmosphere was serene.

That was our last spot in the journey. All throughout, we tried different local foods, and sometim food chains as it was easy choice. We planned a little, executed mostly on our plans.

Here are some of our Tour Photos.