Traveling: Northern California Part 1 {Carmel & Asilomar}

We love to travel!  In fact, I am pretty sure that we have our vacations planned out for the next 5 years or more!  I grew up going on all sorts of adventures and I met my husband on an airplane, so it's not surprise that traveling is a must.  Also, the day after my husband and I decided that our friendship was something more, he left for a solo trip to Seattle (I might have been a tad jealous!). This travel bug, or need for adventure, is contagious, or hereditary, because both my boys love our family adventures! 

This past summer, we decided to stay in-state for a little Northern California adventure.  We specifically planned the trip to do as many things we hadn't done with kids, or together before.  We wanted a lot of this trip to be new, and not a repeat of some of our smaller adventures.  I'm breaking this post into a couple of parts because we spent some time in several Northern California cities and I don't want to hurry through all we did.  It was a lot in a short amount of time write a post that will take you several days to read. . . I mean, who has time for that?

 We chose to do a in-state, no airplane required trip this year for two reasons:
1.  It is sandwiched between last year's Chicago trip (blog post coming soon) and next years Washington D.C. trip.  All requiring a lot of money.  We wanted to have this year to save, but still go on a smaller scale adventure. . . and not fly, because let's face it, airplane tickets are no joke!
2.  Ethan, our oldest, was headed into fourth grade, where he would be studying California history, as well as the Mission system.  We really wanted to incorporate some of that history into our trip because there's nothing more exciting than seeing those places that you read about in real life.  We are huge believers that traveling and experiencing historical sites is one of the best ways to learn. 

We live in Central California, so it's just a couple of hours and we can get North or South in no time.  That is probably the biggest perk of living smack dab in the middle of the state.  When we go North, one of our favorite places to stop is Casa de Fruta, located just past Pacheco Pass on the West Part of 152.  There is a restaurant, gift shop, ice cream shop, and market (fresh produce and amazing dried fruit and nuts!).  Not to mention, bathrooms and a place to let your kids run free (a playground, carousel, and train).  I probably have a dozen pictures just like this one, that show how much my kids are growing.  There are even a couple of peacocks that roam the grounds.  It is a great place to stop and stretch your legs!

Once we left Casa de Fruta, we continued to work our way West to visit our first stop: the San Juan Bautista Mission.  I had been their numerous times as a kid (it was one of our 4th grade field trips), and Jon even had memories of going there.  It was fun to walk around the grounds, see the fountain, the original dirt path that marked the original El Camino Real. 

We checked out the cemetery, the church, and ruins.  On the other side of the grounds is the State Historic Park, where there are old buildings from when the Spanish occupied California.  That costs extra and we just walked around, but didn't take the tour.  The town of San Juan Bautista is really small, but there are some other fun things to do while there.  They have a cute little fabric store (it was closed when we were there. . . Jon did a happy dance!) and we ate at a really delicious burger place, called J J's Homemade burgers just down the street from the mission.

 Once we we left there, we continued our trek West to the Carmel Mission.  This one is considered the favorite of the founder, Father Serra, and it definitely does not disappoint!  In fact, this one is so nice, it's kind of hard to believe it was a mission.  We had so much fun exploring this one, in fact, out of all the missions we saw on this trip, this was Ethan's favorite and is currently building it out of cardboard for a school project!

This one is a completely different architectural style than most of the missions, yet many things remain the same.  The beautiful church and the long covered hallways, like this one that make me swoon (this hallway portico is just gorgeous!).  We really enjoyed this mission! 

One of my favorite places to just walk around, do a little shopping is Carmel.  It is a quiet little town filled with greenery and cute shops and art galleries.  We hadn't been here since the kids were little and so we wanted to spend some time just walking around.  This statue is our favorite. . . I always jokingly tell Jon that it's the future us!  Life goals! 

There is a beautiful little park in the middle of town and we just sat there and rested.  After all we did so far on this trip, we were pooped.  The kids were tired, too, but still had time to explore and run around the grass area.  We also needed a snack!  So we continued our walk in search of deliciousness!  And found this cute little walkway between buildings perfectly named "The Secret Garden."

We found yummy treats at the Carmel Bakery.  So. Many. Yummy looking baked goods.  It's vacation so carbs don't count, right?  We also found iced coffees down the street (I can't remember which place, but it was delicious!).  Day 1 was super busy and Jon was starting to feel a little bug coming on, so we headed to Asilomar State Beach where we would be staying the next two nights. 

We picked a cute Best Western (because they have free breakfasts with waffles) just down the street from the State Beach Conference Grounds.  The hotel used to be an apartment so we had two rooms for the kids and us to spread out.  They could chill and watch their own shows in their room and we could watch ours.  It also had a fridge and since we were super tired and Jon wasn't feeling great, we hit the local Safeway and picked up premade salads and hard boiled eggs and just enjoyed a quiet evening. 

We did take a little bit of a break from chill-mode to walk to the beach.  It was filled with laughter was Jon almost walked right into a deer in the middle of the sidewalk!  We all laughed and enjoyed several more deer sightings!  Asilomar State Beach is so quiet and peaceful with boardwalks curving in and out of the dunes. 

The next day, we definitely took it a little bit slower.  Jon still wasn't feeling the greatest, but he wasn't about a little bug stop him from adventure.  We drove down 17 Mile Drive which is one of the most gorgeous drives ever.  We've done this a few times, and Jon has even golfed a few of the courses, but it had been awhile since we all did the drive.  There are so many little beaches scattered throughout the drive and each one is unique.  Plus, there are ton of cypress trees that grow off the cliffs and are so pretty! 

There are also a few beaches that have some really cool tide pools that we had fun exploring and even spotted a bunch of sea lions hanging out on nearby rocks.  It is well worth the money to take the drive!   We had lunch at the Pebble Beach Cafe looking out onto one of the practice putting greens.  It was wonderful!  The kids loved exploring and dreaming of the day that they would get to golf with Jon here.  We also checked out all the work they were doing for the upcoming US Open.  It was so overcast that we started getting really cold, so we headed back to Carmel for some warm coffee and hot cocoa.  We found some at this cool little shop called the Carmel Coffee and Cocoa Bar and it did not disappoint. . . we were really cold!  We decided another quiet evening in the hotel and some beach time would be the perfect way to end our day and our stay in the Carmel/Monterey area so we hit that same Safeway and grabbed more easy food for a picnic on our balcony.  It was perfect! 

 We ended the night with some sand between our toes and some salty sea air!  It was so peaceful and filled with so many giggles! 

There are so many things to do in this area and since we have spent a lot of time in Monterey, we decided to skip the Cannery Row area and the Aquarium (If you are not local-ish like we are, I highly recommend hitting this area up!).

I can't wait to share some of more of this adventure in the near future!