Sept 20th
WOW! Did we sleep in or what? I got up and took a shower,
did all my morning stuff, got dressed and came out to turn on the coffee. That’s
when I looked at the clock – 8:25 AM. What happened to my alarm dogs? We never
get to sleep in past 7:30, they want to get out, do their business and get back
for their breakfast. In fact Wicket can be pretty insistent when it’s breakfast
time.
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| Downtown Carmel |
At 9:00 AM (while I had my breakfast in front of me) I made
a call to our broker and discussed some investing options as Tina wanted to get
into downtown Carmel by 10:30 to do a walkabout. Carmel is a really small
community with the business district concentrated in an area five blocks by
five blocks, surrounded on all sides by residential areas, Inns and other
lodging places. The beach is actually about eight or ten blocks from the
business district.
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| Small Courtyard |
We covered about 90% of the shops and gallery’s by noon and
worked our way back to a small restaurant in a small complex of shops in the
center of town. One thing noticeable about Carmel from other small towns is
that the city has made a wide diversity of architecture work well together. The
use of small alleys, courtyards and small plazas, mostly two story buildings
with some three story when the building is on a hill with mixed use
development.
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| Carmel Plaza Shopping Center |
We went to Bistro Beaujolais in the Carmel Plaza Shopping
Center. This is a collection of shops and restaurants on two levels surrounding
an open courtyard filled with flower gardens, planter pots and everything in
bloom. There were lots of padded benches and chairs with small tables for
people to sit in and relax, visit or organize their packages. In front of the
restaurants there were umbrella tables and chairs for dining.
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| Lunch at Bistro Beaujolais |
Once we were seated our waitress brought out a large dog
bowl and filled it with water for the dogs. Carmel really is a dog friendly
place. After taking our order, several other couples came in and sat down with
their dogs so there was lots of back and forth talk about our kids. Tina had a
bowl of Gnocci and I had a Turkey, bacon, avocado, tomato Panini. Both were excellent
and our server was friendly, taking our picture with a smile!
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| Crossing the Carmel River |
We left Carmel and headed up Carmel Valley to check out a
large regional park located on the Carmel River. We drove to the small town of
Carmel Valley Village, a cute collection of shops and checked it out. We didn’t
see anything that caught our eye so it was on to Garland Ranch Regional Park.
This is a large area in the valley hills with lots of trails and places for
horsemen.
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| Garland Ranch Regional Park |
We crossed the river on a small bridge and walked up to the
visitors center. It is only staffed two days a week by volunteers and today
wasn’t one of the two. The area is very dry and dusty with warnings to watch
for cougar and rattle snakes. We really weren’t prepared to go hiking so we
decided to call it a day and do some grocery shopping for the next few days.
We got back to camp around 4:00 PM and after putting the
grocery’s away, Tina took a nap and I grabbed my book and went outside and read
for an hour. By then the sun was off the front of the rig so I was able to wash
the windshield and front, dump the tanks, flush the sewer hose and put
everything away to get ready for our drive tomorrow.
To see all our photos, go to:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdolanski
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