Monterey

For our last gasp at summer vacation, we scheduled one final trip and spent a few days out in Monterey, CA. This was a destination we had tried once before and had to cancel at the last minute, but this time the stars aligned, and we made it.

Not unlike San Francisco, this area can be quite cool in the summer. (Didn't Mark Twain say that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?) Even though we got a little taste of that, most of the time we were there it was sunny and gorgeous with record highs. Good for us; bad for the fires.

Like most of our vacations, this one revolved around food and some kind of sport. Ahh, the food. What's better than fresh seafood, pastas, salads, and wine? Lots of good wine. What's better is that you get to look out at all this beautiful scenery while you're enjoying it!

Besides the food, this area is known as golf heaven. The guys got in a few rounds, but I think they got the biggest kick out of walking around the Pebble Beach course. To our surprise, this gorgeous course is very accessible, and we were welcomed to walk around to our heart's content.

After having seen this course for so many years through tournament television coverage, these signature holes were familiar, but like everything else, were so much more fun to experience in person. We could have sat by this par three along the coastline all day.

Between golf days, we took a drive down to Big Sur. It was a warm, sunny day and the traffic was light, so we were able to take our time and pull off the road a few times to admire the view.

This was the perfect way to end our summer--a great summer. So, now we're home and getting ready to take our son back to college for the year.