Home ports for several hundred fishing vessels are Monterey, Santa Cruz and Moss Landing. This is part of the fleet which bases at Monterey.
Santa Cruz Means Redwoods and Mountains, Fertile Fields and Fragrant Orchards, Long White Beaches, Fishing, Festivals and Fun for All
Party boats on which the land-lubber may embark for a day of deep-sea fishing are operated from Monterey and Santa Cruz.
Also not to be overlooked in Pacific Grove is an excellent Museum of Natural History. Its collection of Monterey County birds and its displays of marine life found in nearby waters are exceptionally complete. In Butterfly Park is another museum, though it is called a gallery, in which are displayed hundreds upon hundreds of butterflies, moths and other insects.
If, like most visitors to Monterey, you continue to follow the bay shore, where miles of wildflowers adorn the bluffs, you will come eventually to the Seventeen Mile Drive, which runs through a tremendous private preserve. On this, for most of the way, you travel with the fantastically blue ocean on one hand and truly marvelous dark green forest on the other. At times your route runs on low bluffs near the ocean, and again you are on rocky cliffs high above. Back among the trees, near the Pebble Beach area where the sports car races are held every year, you frequently see homes that are almost palaces.
On your way you pass Cypress Point, which is one of only two places in the world where the Monterey cypress is indigenous, and Midway Point, a rugged rocky spine jutting into the sea and bearing a single lone and twisted cypress, probably the most photographed tree in the world. Not far away is the Ghost Tree, another cypress whose whitened trunk and limbs seem like the bones and shroud of a fleeing wraith. Then your route leads past Del Monte Lodge, with its array of fashionable shops, and on through Pebble Beach, and thence to Carmel.
Carmel is unique, a “village” conceived by artists and now perhaps the home of more well known writers, painters and other workers in the arts than any other community in the state. Carmel has no street numbers, no mail delivery, and you have to get permission from the town council before you may even cut down a tree on your own property.
In spring the apple blossoms whiten thousands of trees and spread their delicate fragrance over many a mile in the Watsonville area.