We left Santa Cruz this morning to travel down to Monterey. Along the way, we stopped in the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.

The redwoods were immense, as expected. One goes there, expecting them to be huge, but still, the visceral impact of these huge trees is unexpected.

We first did a short loop through the state park, the various landmarks marked out by numbers corresponding to notes in a printed guide. Then we took a longer hike through a nearby forest, ending up by an abandoned limestone quarry.

Once we were through, we headed down to Monterey. The land got flatter, and much more agricultural. We passed fields and fields of crops. We stopped in the city of Montery; while the others had lunch, I wandered around a bit, and walked down to the wharf, where again, I saw several sea lions.

After doing a brief errand, we headed to the Air BnB. It’s quite nice; it’s faux rustic. From the outside it looks like a small shack, but it’s actually a couple of stories tall with several bedrooms and bathrooms and complete facilities. We’ll be based here for the rest of the trip. After a couple of hours of downtime, we headed back out for the sunset. We’ve all noticed that sunsets here are not as reddish as back east. My theory is that the Northeast is sort of the tailpipe of North America and we’re more apt to have dust and small particulates in the air, scattering the red light, while here, the air is coming off the Pacific. Nonetheless, it was still pretty.