A weekend of not diving

A friend of mine insisted that we have a weekend in Carmel. I think this came up from combining my weekly hiking goal and her wanting to show an out of town friend Carmel. The plan started with hiking at Point Lobos. Steven and I have been there a few time times, but only for diving. 

There are some nice trails with lots of beautiful views. We managed to see some sea creatures anyway. The last time we were there we got to swim with some of them. We hiked from Highway 1 around Point Lobos and back, it was a little over 3 miles. I would actually classify this hike as easy, unlike the last "easy" hike we tried. 

Here we are overlooking where we would normally dive.

After hiking we went to Carmel-by-the-Sea for a late lunch and wandering. Most of the stores were Art Galleries and fancy clothing stores. I did find a hat shop and a yarn shop. There wasn't much I wanted at the hat shop, but I did find the most ridiculous hat ever. Also it was huge, I don't have a small head, and it easily went to my nose. 

The yarn shop is called Knitting-by-the-Sea. At this point I was very tired, and happy to enjoy the chairs. The lady in the shop was very friendly, and I learned a new thing about the yarn store I went to in Montana. Apparently they are one of the older suppliers of hand painted yarn, they've been doing it long before it became the new in thing. 

I ended up getting a skein of yarn, because it looked really interesting. I really don't need more yarn, but it was pretty and soft. It is mostly shades of gray with bits of greens and lavenders in it. It has slight variances in textures, so I'm hoping it will look neat when knit. 

The original draw of this trip was to have a beach bonfire at night. I love being outside at night. Beaches are so much better when the sun isn't out turning you red. We lost about half the group to tiredness and other things before we made it to the beach. It took awhile to figure out where was nearby and legal to have a fire. We ended up lucky, right off the state beach line was almost dead fire left by someone else. Steven added a log to it, and it started right up. 

I thought this would be a good time to finally try spinning fire. I've been learning poi for awhile. I had been planning to get really good at it, and then try fire. I changed my mind and decided to just do the moves I knew well. It was much louder than I expected. It makes a big wooshing noise. 

Sunday we went to Cannery Row. We found another potential dive location. The water looked completely clear and Steven and I were sad that we missed a good day of diving. You can see the bottom, that is so rare. We ran into the divers later and asked them about the dive spot. Apparently out farther it wasn't so clear on 15-20 feet. 

Shopping at the stores along Cannery row there was yet another ridiculous hat. It is supposed to be a Jellyfish. I have no idea why anyone would want a hat like this. 

Part of the group wanted to walk out to Lover's Point. I was tired of walking and it was too sunny. Steven and I were going to go get coffee and wait for people to come back. The only problem was all the good looking coffee places were closed or far. The other yarn store and the one open coffee shop were both a few blocks from where we parked on the other side of Cannery Row. It turned out that the yarn store was out of business. The lady who runs the antique store told me about another shop. It sounded far away, but once we got to the coffee shop I looked it up and it was only a mile away. 

Dolphin statue outside of the coffee shop.

The yarn store was called Monarch Knitting. It was a beautiful store. Lots of light, hardwood floors, lots of yarn, comfortable chairs. They had by favorite yarn, books by my favorite designer, and I found this beautiful yarn. The colors are even prettier in person. 

For lunch we completed the weekend of not diving, by going another place by K-dock that we have gone to after diving. I got fish n chips because I could, it was delicious.