Most Excellent Weekend

Saturday the 18th we were in Pacific Grove. After a muffin and coffee we went on a walking tour of the town and completed our trip back along the walking trail that follows the coast line. There is a nice beach at Lover's Point where they were setting up for a wedding. The ocean view is fabulous along the Monterey Peninsula!

After the walk we took off for the jazz festival. This is a really great event held at the Monterey Fairgrounds. There is an arena where the big name acts perform. Saturday's top bill was for Dianne Reeves and Chick Corea.  The are also 6 additional venues and the lawn in the food vendor area where three or four groups perform during the day and night. At any given time attendees have the option of seeing at least three different acts. Grounds ticket holders have access to all of the venues except the arena where seats are reserved. We took the grounds option and saw four complete shows and bits of several others. We watched John Firmin and the Nocture Band, big band instrumentation with vocalist who did Hank Crawford and "Fat Head" Newman tributes as well as others; Trombone Shorty, a New Orleans horn player with lots of your musicians who played Dixieland jazz as well as Suprafunkrock, his description of his style of jazz, hip-hop and soul music. This band was really good. Next was JakeShimabukuro, a ukulele player who is unbelievably talented, followed by Chris Potter's Underground quartet, an incredible group with Chris on tenor saxophone, a guitar player, drummer and Fender Rhoads keyboard player. All in all a super day. I also had some "Brother Thelonious",  a Belgian style abbey ale by North Coast Brewing. Described by them as Bottled Bebop. We got home late and went to bed.

Sunday we slept in a bit and I took a short walk to the Monarch butterfly sanctuary. The Monarchs will arrive in October, winter overin Pacific Grove and breed in the spring when it is warm enough. It takes several generations of butterflys to complete a life cycle and it is the great grandchildren of the ones that winter over this year that will winter over next year. They all seem to know where to come, however. Also, Monarchs west of the Rockies stay on the west coast in their preferable micro-climates, it's our Monarchs on the East Coast that migrate 2000 miles to Mexico for the winter!

We then drove to Carmel (Clint Eastwood was mayor there for a while and still has a restaurant), a little south of Pebble Beach. Another beautiful coastal town with a nice sand beach. We had breakfast there and walked around a bit. Today is Ellie's 26th birthday so we got her a new car (not) pictured below.

As we were walking back to the car, a miracle happened! It must be the Pacific Coast salt air or something but I think that my hair is coming back! Hope it lasts till I get home so you can see it.

 

Our best to everyone.