Tour of Monterey

I had an idea given to me for my next post... I realize most people may not be familiar with the Monterey area, so I have placed dots on a map as to where we live our everyday lives right now. I have posted a few others that shows you a larger prospective of where we are in relation to California and the coast.
So here is your guided tour of The Monterey Peninsula!

In the picture above, you can see Monterey is located on the central coast of California, almost exactly central... just a little north. San Francisco is about 2 hours north, and Los Angeles is about 6 hours south.

This picture shows you a little more of the surrounding cities and the peninsula itself. The south side of the peninsula is where you will find Pebble Beach. The south side is also filled with pine trees, forests, hills, and winding roads. Carmel and Carmel Bay is also to the south. The airport is about 15 minutes to the east.
On the peninsula itself, everything has a very small town feel. Most all the stores are single shop, local stores. There is not even a handful of fast food stores closer than 15 minutes. We have a Carl's Jr, a McDonalds, a few Subways, and we recently just found a KFC! Therefore, I have gotten pretty good at cooking home cooked meals so we don't have to eat at the few fast food places we have to choose from, all the other restaurants are pretty expensive! The closest Target is 15-20 minutes away in Seaside, and the closest Walmart is 25 minutes away in Marina. Needless to say, we won't be going shopping at either of those places very often.

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Last picture... Here is a closeup of the northern half of the peninsula (where we are everyday!). First one on the list is Our condo/Apartment. We live in a great location for Justin and the base where he goes to school everyday. Our church is located towards the southern half of the peninsula. It's about a 10 minute drive, through the forests! There are 3 wards that attend at this building... 2 family wards, and 1 singles ward. There used to be just 1 family ward, a year or two ago it got big enough that they split the ward into two! I put a dot on there for the grocery store we go to...there are only two large grocery stores on the entire peninsula!! You can see where downtown Monterey is... there is not much to see there though, it's not a big downtown at all, mostly just historical buildings with businesses. The last 5 dots on the list are all tourist areas and attractions. Very neat places with some great things to see and do!

Well there you have it! Your very own guided tour of Monterey... hope this gives you an idea of the Monterey Peninsula area and where we are living our everyday lives!