John Steinbeck is a Butterfly

We woke up to Angella bursting into our room to say goodbye to us for the last time before she shipped off to work again, after which Katie and I quickly went back to bed for a few more hours. Even so, we woke up ready to take on the day around 8 a.m. Since we had packed up the car completely the day before in anticipation of leaving, we were all set to go the moment we finished showering. We left San Francisco unceremoniously and headed down the coast on Highway 1 towards Monterey. Our original plan for the coast was to take this highway all the way down to San Diego making various stops along the way. However, we decided to alter our travel plans when we heard that Russ would be traveling out to San Diego for his breast cancer walk. Russ had planned to do his walk in Tampa Bay Florida originally because he had some friends doing the walk there as well. During his training for this 60 mile hike he got a stress fracture in one of his legs, preventing him from being able to do the Orlando walk. Instead he booked his walk a month later in San Diego, hoping that his leg would be healed and ready by then. In light of this information we changed our course so that we would be able to meet up with him in San Diego and give him support during the walk. So, instead of heading straight down the coast, we planned to head northeast to Salt Lake City then south to explore southern Utah, northern Arizona, and a little bit of western Colorado before circling back to California. Since we would not be coming that far north during our return trip to California, Katie and I wanted to visit Monterey and the surrounding area for a few reasons. First and foremost, the Monterey and Salinas area is the setting for a good majority of John Steinbeck novels. Steinbeck being Katie's favorite author, how could we go to California and not visit these places. Also, we had read in a travel book of ours that Natural Bridges State Park outside of Santa Cruz is home to a yearly monarch

butterfly migration point where literally all of the monarch butterflies west of the Rocky Mountains come to stay for the winter in this little valley. The drive down the coast was awesome; sun shining, waves crashing, and no worries as we made our way toward Monterey. When we got to Natural Bridges State

Park we were stunned by how small the one remaining natural bridge actually was. We had seen more impressive examples of these natural wonders during other hikes along the coast and personally I was expecting a more impressive structure based on all of the pictures that we had seen. Still, it was a very beautiful setting but we were both happy that we had the butterflies to look forward to as well. Since the valley which the butterflies congregate is located in a state park our national parks pass wouldn't have saved us the $10's to enter the park, but I was willing to pay anyway. We pulled up to pay window and to our

surprise the attendant told us that we could just park across the street for free and walk into the park instead of paying the entrance fee. We sat for a minute trying to figure out whether or not this guy was serious, then put the car in reverse, parked for free, and walked into the park. The valley was full of monarch butterflies. Thousands of them flying all around you or grouped in bunches on branches of trees. We sat around and just stared at them fluttering

around as the wind blew them around or they sat sunning themselves in the hot afternoon sun. There was a short trail that circled the valley which we thought would give us a chance to see the butterflies away from the throngs of school children that were on field trips.

Amazingly, as soon as we left the valley there was almost no butterflies around. There were a few flying in the air but no big clumps on any of the trees. It seemed that the butterflies were content in their little valley and didn't like to stray much from it. After the hike we

went back once more into the valley to watch the butterflies again. There was an old lady down there this time who had put up informational signs all around the boardwalk and was all to eager to share her love and knowledge of monarchs with every passing person. We stayed and listened to her for a bit and after about 15 minutes we were ready to move on. We left the valley and headed to the beach where we took one more look at the arch, then headed back to the car. After a short ride through the Salinas valley, past the endless fields of lettuce, we pulled into Monterey heading straight for Cannery Row. Katie was super excited and began talking about how she planned on

buying a "John Steinbeck is my homeboy" tee shirt which "unfortunately" no gift shop had. We walked down the Row,

much different now that it is filled with restaurants and tourist shops, than when Steinbeck used it for the setting of his novels. Still, it was fun to walk around and read the various information boards about both Steinbeck and the old canneries. We shopped around for about and hour then headed to the Cannery Row Brewery for a snack which manifested itself in the form of a giant parmesan flavored pretzel. Next we headed to the water where

we walked shortly along the beach watching a sea otter swim around in the waves, then headed back to more shops.

We didn't have enough time to visit the aquarium and make the $65 entrance fee worth it before the aquarium closed, so we made our way back to the car and said goodbye to Monterey. Now that we were done with the northern section of the California coast, our next destination became Salt Lake City which meant lots of driving. There wasn't much in between that we wanted to see and decided to utilize the night as much as possible driving until midnight, finally stopping in the Sierra's right near Donner Pass, named after the ill-fated Donner Party which stayed their tragic winter nearby.