Sightseeing

Today my dad took me to two places - namely, the Monterey/Big Sur area and then all the way up north to Big Basin (where I hiked a bit wearing flip flops but we weren't planning to go to Big Basin so that's why).  

So first we drove down along highway 1 along the coast and I took a crapload of beach pictures but everyone has seen plenty of beach pictures before so I'm not going to post any here.  This was the famous bridge that I wanted to see but it didn't turn out as grand as I thought it'd be.  It was a nice, scenic drive though.  It's called "Bixby Bridge":

and after that we went to a little European-styled/architectural area called "Carmel by the Sea".  All the buildings looked really old and European.. ish.  Like this one except this isn't really a good photograph:

Poor poodle (yes, the one in front is the real one).  It was cute, though.  It didn't have its leash attended to as you can kind of see but it was an obedient dog and just stayed in front of the doorway.  This strip had tons of dogs and puppies and I just wanted to pet them all.

The strip also had funny-looking stuff like this: 

This place was probably my favourite of the area because it was in an actual cottage (I didn't get the chance to get a picture of it), but it looked really old and... actually like a small countryside cottage, haha.

These reminded me of dear Eddy :)

Cupcake display in some bakery window:

Dad wanted me to get a picture of this:

This was my first time seeing a five-way stop sign..

And then we headed up north to Big Basin.  This tree is over 1,000 years old, and those little placards are describing different events according to the year (number of rings) of the tree trunk, such as when some famous religious leader was born a few hundred years after Jesus died to when Big Basin was named as a state park:

This odd-looking tree was near the entrance.  It's super tall - I couldn't see the tip of it (as with many other redwood trees in the area):

Inside a dead trunk:

Scenery driving back home:

A more artistic version :)

and to top the day off I got fruit tart for myself (not my money though :)

Here are some (unedited) pans: