Fueled by Starbucks we drove out of SF and headed south to Monterey. The drive was amazing, you don't have to go any distance outside of San Francisco and you hit beautiful farm land, with roadside vendors of fresh fruit and vegetables and then in no time at all we hit the sea. Ah lovely. At this point we stopped for a breath of chilly blustery fresh sea air and I took the wheel. I drove us along the coast road almost as far as Monterey where we had scheduled to stop for lunch but let N take over before we entered the town. Me try and park the Vanilla Beast? no way jose.
Monterey was the site of holiday stress number 1. After looking around for somewhere to eat we finally found a fairly inexpensive looking nice cafe - we stood at the counter and ordered our food and then we went to pay. N reached for his wallet and started rooting around in it. He started to look very stressed and declared that all his holiday cash had gone missing from the wallet. So he checked his rucksack. Had it fallen out in there? No. I checked his rucksack. Well where was it? It must be in the car. Off N treks back to the car park. He's gone for ages. The food comes. He comes back looking really stressed it's not in the car. We eat halfheartedly. He doesn't talk. I feel sick. Where could it be? The last time he had his wallet out he had taken money out to pay the toll on the bridge. The money must have fallen out in the car. We go back to the car. There's no money. We look in a nearby dustbin as we'd discarded our Starbucks rubbish on arrival. Not there. N looks more and more stressed. He takes his wallet out. He says 'I just can't understand it, I mean I put all of my notes in this compartment'. There's a pause. He turns away for a moment. He turns back. He opens his arms and smiles. Oh no I say. Oh yes he says, look it was here all along. I scowl. He says 'give us a cwtch'. I can't speak.
At this point we say 'solloks' (ever seen Noel Coward's Private Lives?) decided to move on and take the 17 mile drive from Monterey to Carmel. You have to pay to drive on this private road and it was an interesting little route - you get to see Pebble Beach golf course (N was interested in this) and some big houses perched above the water but knowing now how amazing the coastline gets further south I probably wouldn't do it again. This road does take you to Carmel where Clint Eastwood was mayor back in the 1980's. It's a funny little place but more on Carmel later. We didn't have too long to linger as the day was getting shorter, mist was rolling in from the sea and we had to drive a fair way down the coast road to get to Treebones and our yurt....
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