Year 2 - Day 201 - July 21

We packed so much into today, but took barely any pictures. We left the city early this morning and picked up our rental car to begin our driving journey. We are making a giant loop around central CA over the next 7 days, but if we were on the east coast this much driving would take us through several states!! We cut over the mountains to Half Moon Bay and hit the wall of sea clouds. I could drive next to water forever, but we only stopped once to snap a shot of this lighthouse.

Somewhere between the lighthouse and Santa Cruz, we started seeing signs for strawberries at a stand. Strawberries! Strawberry pie! Strawberry shortcake! Chocolate covered strawberries! After the last one, I was hooked and made Mike turn in.

This farm was a great place. You could pick berries if you wanted, but they also had some picked as well as a ton of desserts ready to go. We split a shortcake and each had a chocolate berry, but I could have kept going easily. :)

We weren't in Santa Cruz long ... just for a few hours. We drove by the boardwalk and walked around downtown. I read about The True Olive Connection store online and wanted to visit after our fun visit to the olive oil store in San Diego last year. We controlled ourselves & only purchased 1 bottle each of oil (Garlic) and balsamic vinegar (oregano.) Mike also bought a bag of "design your own organic trail mix" next door at Nut Kreations.

Our hotel (The Best Western in Aptos) was adorable. We really enjoy Best Westerns wherever we go.

Since we had time and the roads were moving faster than we thought they would, we decided to visit Monterey too. We originally thought it was too much for a day, but we made it work. The whole downtown area in Monterey is cute. Mike did a wine tasting at a place that carried many area wines and bought a bottle. Then we had dinner at Hula's. It was FANTASTIC. I had Kalua pork with rice. It was delicious. Possibly my favorite meal yet. Mike had fish topped with dungeoness crab curry which he also really liked. He tried their bottled cream soda and that was fantastic, too. There were a ton of seals on a beach nearby, but we didn't get a picture. I would have assumed it was the SF Sea Lions on vacation in Monterey if the sign hadn't said they were seals. :)