Cannery Row -17 mile drive- Pebble Beach-Salinas
Trip Start
Jul 06, 2003
1
290
348
Trip End
Ongoing
Salinas, California
Friday, May 28, 2010
Did the17 mile drive around to Pebble Beach - very clever - its an exclusive housing area on a wonderful scenic peninsula and they have a 'gate' at each entry and you have to pay $9.50 to drive thru there. They had a real estate agent at Pebble Beach and most of the houses were around $6mill - one I glanced at was $18mill!!!!!!!!!
At Pebble Beach they were setting up for the US Open in a couple of weeks, what a load of codswallop, and thats being unkind to the cod! watching some clown and paying him a fortune to hit a ball with a stick the ball vanishes in a second down a strip of grass with sand holes in it where you cant see it, then if you are really energetic you can get up and follow him around like a little dog and watch him do it again and again and again. Sometimes you got to wonder!!!
Walked around Fishermans Wharf where everyone was offering a taste of their Clam Chowder and then down to Cannery Row. Just lots of shops with nothing much to sell!! (getting sick of shops!!) Its a bit like if you have seen one wharf you have seen them all, but they are a good place to go for a feed, we had a lovely dish of calamari, cant warm to the clam chowder!
We hadn't booked for tonight, even though we knew it was a holiday weekend, so we started to drop into motels as we passed them and they were tripling their prices because of the weekend. Tonight we could get at $79 plus tax but tomorrow they wanted $149 and if we stayed on till Monday it would be $49!!!! we tried about 5 of them and they were all on the internet seeing what everyone else was charging and wouldn't change their prices even though they were not full, so we drove 17 miles inland to Salinas. The Salinas Valley produces 90% of the nations lettuce supply but they also have a 3.8 billion dollar industry producing artichokes, broccoli, cauli, spinach, strawberries squash and on and on. We found a Super 8 @ $70 per night and booked for 2 nights. It is a bit noisy traffic wise but we are used to the noise now and will find it hard in the peace and quiet when we get home.
Went to Safeway and got supplies for tea in our room and did the weekly clothes washing and actually watched a bit of TV where there is channel after channel continuously monitoring the oil spill in the gulf. They have a live cam watching the gushing oil all the time. It really does look like the end of the Gulf of Mexico as a fishing and tourist destination, already the worst oil spill in history!
