Epic Road Trip 2017 - Day #11

Today we woke up on our last morning at Dorst Creek.  I made some coffee for Katy and we packed the truck for our next adventure.  We hit the road with Monterey, CA as our destination.  We fueled up at Squaw Valley again and went through some of the same roads we came in on as we left the park.  Once we got into a few larger towns, we stopped at Starbucks for more coffee and a small breakfast. It was quite warm again once we got down off the mountains.  There was a good bit of desert before we hit some rolling hills and the famous California fruit orchards.  Once we got on the outkirts of Monterey, we stopped at Mundo's Cafe.  It was a quaint little shop with lots of sandwich options and we got to sit by an open window with the sea breeze blowing in as we ate.

Our hotel in Monterey was the Comfort Inn by the Sea Monterey.  It was a great hotel with a nice room, a pool, and lots of flower decoration around the buildings.

We were very tired from the previous day's hike, so we chilled out for a bit before we went out into Monterey proper.  We ate dinner at Caffe Trieste, a local all day breakfast place downtown.  We had awesome breakfast food and there was a guy playing live music on a flute during our meal.  Katy said that he reminded her of the character Lars Hammond from Serendipity if he were aged a few years.

 After our dinner, we explored Monterey, walking downtown and down to the Fisherman's Wharf.  We enjoyed the views from the piers, and I hiked down to a small beach and put my feet in the surprisingly cold water.

There were also lots of informational plaques to tell us about the history of the area and its Italian, Spanish, and Latino heritage.

What We Learned: Today we learned about the California State Water Project.  I knew vaguely of the fact that Southern California piped lots of water across a long distance, but I didn't quite know the scale.  The State Water Project (SWP) provides water for 23 million people in Southern California by transporting it from the more water-rich areas in Northern California.  It involves many hundreds of miles of water transportation through pipes, reservoirs, canals, and tunnels, including the highest single water lift in the world to get the water over the Tehachapi Pass.  What sparked the research of the SWP in the first place was us passing the San Luis Reservoir and wondering about where the water came from and went.

For the day we traveled 234.1 miles and saw license plates from 17 states.