Sunday, June 26, 2016
There was no planning for this trip. Although I had planned having the week off, I intentionally didn’t plan what I was going to do. I finally decided on Friday that I was going to go to Monterey Bay, in all these years living in California, I had never been. It is a five-hour drive from Los Angeles (with good traffic) but I am not one for driving long distances. I chose to split the drive on the way up stopping in Paso Robles. My parents loved taking road trips and didn’t think twice about throwing five kids into the back of Mom’s station wagon and driving five or more hours. After they retired, they drove across the country several times. Personally, I love to fly.
My first stop on this trip was Paso Robles. This is Red Wine country but Wine tasting was not on this tour. As much as I love red wine, I get a bad headache from it if I have more than a glass. Paso Robles was a stop, a place to have dinner, spend the night and then head out to Monterey Bay the following day. I drove around Paso Robles, and stopped at an Antique Mall. It was fun until I realized that I was recognizing a lot of things from my childhood. Seriously, I am not that old and that “Hey Hey with the Monkees” album might be old but an antique? I began to wonder if everything from my parents garage sale ended up in this shop. I found myself staring at a General Electric toaster knowing that was the toaster I grew up with. If you had asked me how to describe it, couldn’t, but knew it when I saw it.
After heading out to Monterey, I stopped at Mission Nuestra Senora De la Soledad. California has 21 Spanish missions. This mission dates back to 1791 and as with other missions, the purpose was to convert the native Americans living in the area to Catholicism. The thing that struck me the most about this mission was the setting with a huge valley floor and mountains off in the distance.
Unfortunately, most of what I saw was built as part of a restoration project that took place in the 1950’s.
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