We spent most of the day seeing things that we had seen before. Of course, since the last time we had been to some of these places was twenty or thirty years ago, there were certainly some changes. Some seemed like changes for the better, others saddened me a bit. But our first trip to was to some place I had never seen before, Lighthouse Avenue, the “high street” of Pacific Grove. It’s a relatively attractive commercial stretch. You can tell from how wide the street is that an electric trolley once ran down the middle of it. I’m sure they regret tearing that out now!
We continued on to Monterey to see some of the historic sights. John and I went to many of these places on our first trip down the coast in 1983 and I’ve returned to a couple of them later. But all of those visits were before digital pictures that can be inserted into PowerPoint for the instruction and amusement of fourth grade children. We parked by the Larkin House, the residence of the first - and only - American consul to California. Unfortunately, we could not really get any good pictures of that historic site. Here is a less significant one, the home of the first alcalde or mayor of the city.
The real attraction, at least for fourth grade teachers, is Colton Hall, where the first constitution was written and signed in 1849.
Rooms are set up there to look like the Californio and American drafters had just stepped out for lunch, and would be returning shortly.
We continued on to another important site, the Presidio of Monterey. This is still an active army base and most of it is quite off limits to the public. It is particularly sensitive because it is where not only the army much most of the military trains its personnel in foreign languages. During the cold war, they studied Russian there. Now Arabic and Farsi and Chinese are the dominant tongues. However, little bits of the base have been turned over to the public. There is a small museum there. I had a chance to walk around it a bit. A well-meaning docent engaged John in a long conversation and he never had the chance to see anything!
Behind the museum is a monument to Commodore John Sloat. At the time of the Mexican War, Sloat was the commander of the American Pacific fleet. It was not a large force, but he was in the right place at the right time, and Sloat sailed into both Monterey and San Francisco and claimed them for the United States. The sculptor, we learned from the cell phone tour, had created a properly heroic statue of the naval hero, but it was destroyed in the 1906 quake. Too cheap to commission a second, the committee just settled on an eagle that the artist has been making for a different project.
There is also a monument to Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who helped establish the first missions on the coast.
At this point, we had decided that we had enough pictures for children. We decided to take a second look at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So we found a shady, quiet spot for the dogs in a parking garage and headed over to the old cannery. We hoped that by three in the afternoon the crowds would have thinned out of a bit.
We both had an initially quite negative reaction to the aquarium. Quite a few things had changed. The aquarium had always distinguished itself from other institutions by focusing only on the marine life of Monterey Bay, and it had been set up to showcase the different environments. Now there were fish from around the world - and penguins, too! The longer, more intelligent signage I remembered was gone. In its place were colorful, and relentlessly bilingual, signs, obviously designed for children. And there were now Disneyland style shows, too.
Why, it just makes you want to buy
Finding Nemo in the gift shop, doesn’t it? At least the sea otter feedings, even though they’re a little silly, actually impart some meaningful information.
But after a bit we learned to avoid some of the most awful spots in the aquarium and just find quieter places where we could look at the fish.
And by the end, we decided that we still sort of like the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But after three hours, it was time to give the dogs a treat. So we went went Carmel town beach, hands down the best dog-friendly beach on the Pacific. Eli likes to walk along the water’s edge with his ball. I like to walk along the water’s edge watching the surfers.
Edie found a friend to play with.
The fog was close to the shore, so it didn’t seem worthwhile to wait for sunset. We drove around Carmel a bit. We stopped by mission briefly. It was closed for day. But that’s fine - I have a lot of mission pictures to stick in PowerPoints.
Across the street from the mission was this little bit of Snow White land. However cute, it is located on a pretty busy street and had not much of a setback.
We continued on to Carmel River State Beach. This is not particularly dog-friendly as it is prime nesting territory for birds. So we contented ourselves with just looking around a bit.
And, after stopping at Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things to eat, we went home to the Bide-a-Wee.
