US Trip Part 2-Monterey

Next, we drove from Los Angeles to Monterey, on the way to San Fransisco. We stopped at a number of small towns on the way. We stopped at Lake Cachuma and saw caravans. We also stopped at a town where there was a house this man had made entirely out of waste he collected as a garbage man and otherwise over the years. The man no more lived there, but it was interesting to see what all inventive stuff he had done. He had used pipes, for example, as railings on the stairs and for some reason, toilet seats as photo frames(seriously?).

We saw this alley called bubblegum alley where thousands of people had stuck there chewed bubblegum.

We also stopped at a quaint danish town called Solvang. It was really pretty, almost like a fairy village with cute little cottages.
 We tried some local danish food-it was something like a pancake ball called an Aebleskiver. There were loads of bakeries and small stores including one which was a fairy store and sold all sorts of fairy-related stuff. It was a unique experience. On the way we also went to Big Sur, a redwood forest and dipped our feet in a small stream running through it. The forest was very serene and relaxed me. Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world although the ones there were not as tall as redwoods normally are.

Redwoods

The whole drive was very scenic and a large part of it was by the sea.We also stopped at Mystery point, a place where apparently there is some mysterious force pulling towards this one point although we thought it was a hoax-still fun.
We reached Monterey in the evening. There was a wharf(harbor) and it was a nice little town. The next day my dad and I went deep-sea diving, my third time since the certification last July (click here to view blogpost about that). It was the first time I did a cold water dive and from the beach instead of off a boat. It was a nice dive place and a unique though challenging experience. We (my dad and I) saw a kelp forest, a wall with corals on it and even spotted a bird fishing underwater. We saw loads of starfish and these kind of giant water slugs. It was awesome and cold. We did 2 dives and were more comfortable with the new conditions by the second one. Swimming in between the kelp was amazing and the kelp was growing like a forest down there. It was one of the most diverse dive sites in the area because it had kelp, the wall, boulders and sand, 4 different landscapes underwater to explore.