It Rained!

Well, it was a bit more spectacular than rain really.

The last few days here have been a heatwave - your typical offshore flow, with temps in the 100's inland and in the 90's here at the coast.

After another warm night, it was already in the high 80's by 9am this morning and small clouds started to form almost immediately.

By lunchtime, these small clouds definitely looked like thunderheads, so I set off down to Cannery Row as the view of the clouds would be better from there.

I got a treat, lightning and thunder over the peninsula, then over the bay, and then over the hills on the opposite side of the bay.

It also poured with rain for 10 minutes, so I hid out in the entrance to a restaurant.

As you can see from the photo on the right, the storm clouds looked very impressive, and I got lucky and actually captured a lightning strike with my point and shoot camera (although it's not completely in the frame, I'll take it!).

Here you can see the Fish Hopper restaurant in the end of the old Monterey Canning Company building - and the strike is hitting somewhere the other side of the aquarium (it wasn't that close as the thunder took a while to get to where I was).

Although it was a spectacular show, it was not without its downside. Once the storm got across the bay, I could see lightning strikes hitting the hills around the Watsonville / Gilroy area - and later I saw smoke rising, so I suspect there's another wildfire in an area that's already suffered from two in the last few weeks.

Hotel Del Monte

I try to make a habit of checking out the Monterey Weekly to see what's going on around town in case something cool is happening. This weekend was no different, and I noticed that the Maritime Museum was opening a new exhibit on the Del Monte Hotel, a Monterey landmark that is today owned by the Navy (and is therefore off limits to us mere civilians).

Besides the opening of the gallery, there were a couple of presentations, with the one today promising a history of the place followed by a walking tour of the grounds - sign me up!

Both the gallery and the presentation were very interesting, explaining how the hotel was built by one of the four California rail tycoons and what a large part it played in the history of Monterey - in its day, it was a major vacation resort and sports destination.

After the presentation, we went on the walking tour from the museum to the hotel (naval base) with two guides, one from the museum called Tim who talked us all the way to the hotel and one called John who gave the presentation and the tour of the property.

It turned out to be a lot more than a tour of the grounds - we did tour the grounds and we went into the main building of the hotel (now still a sort of hotel - short term billeting for visitors to the Navy base), and we even got to go to the top of the tower and check out the amazing view.

The picture below is looking towards the main entrance of the hotel.


Once inside, we saw the cool artwork, architecture and tilework before we headed to the top of the tower to take in the view.

Although the Navy has done a good job of preserving the hotel's history, the main swimming pool is now full of sand (done for various reasons about 10 years ago), which resulted in the interesting photo below.


The Del Monte Hotel spawned a lot of what is famous in the area - 17 mile drive officially starts and ends at the hotel, Pebble Beach was a lodge of the hotel back in the day, the hotel had a lot to do with explaining why Cannery Row is where it is, the area's fame in the golf world - they're all thanks to the hotel and its owners over the years.

Some things are no longer around - there was a mile oval race track at one time, and the cool maze is now a parking lot - but in its day it was a world class resort destination complete with its own railway station (the foundations of which are still around).

Very cool.