Earlier this week, Darlene and I made a little two-day, round-trip bike excursion to Monterey and back from Santa Cruz. It worked out to about 101 miles round trip from my place in the hills near Scotts Valley. We had actually intended to go down on Monday, hang out on Tuesday and return Wednesday but as we weren’t really ready to go until late Monday afternoon, with two hours of sunlight left…. oops! So, Tuesday morning we finally headed out.
It’s a common route and except for a couple of miles around Moss Landing, you stay off of Highway 1. And in fact, there’s a great bike trail that runs from Castroville all the way into Monterey which we didn’t know about until we stumbled on to it en route.
We had great weather both days and a lovely ride and stayed overnight at the inexpensive but nice Cannery Row Inn – across from San Carlos Beach and The Breakwater (a popular SCUBA diving spot).