Last Palo Alto Post: 17-Mile Drive, Carmel, Baker Botts Events

17-Mile Drive
The 17-Mile Drive is a scenic road through the Pebble Beach area near Monterey.  You have to pay a toll to drive it because most of the area is privately owned but it is well worth it.  This drive and seeing the Monterey Aquarium are the two things Reed and I think you definitely need to do if you ever spend some time in the Bay Area.  They were our favorite activities.  As usual, pictures cannot do justice to the beauty of this area.  That's partly because the camera just can't capture the depth and all the colors of the area but also because part of the beauty includes the cool ocean breeze and scents of pine trees, flowers and beaches.

During our 17-mile tour we took a little time to play around on the beach.  In keeping with tradition, we had to get at least one picture of Reed doing his famous pose.  Reed was pretty proud of himself for writing a little love note to me in the sand (just look at that smile haha) but was not too happy when it was washed away.  I wanted to dip a finger in the water to see if it was really as cold as everyone said (it wasn't that bad). I actually didn't want to get my feet wet but obviously I misjudged how far the water would come in.

I don't know why I love taking pictures of birds so much haha (I included a very similar picture in my post about Monterey).  I think it's because they just add a little life to my scenery pictures without adding the cheesiness of some person looking at the camera and smiling.

The most well-known part of the 17-mile drive is seeing the Lone Cypress.  If you ever see ads for Pebble Beach, it's very likely they will include a shot of this tree.  The picture of Reed and I is a product of some annoyed tourist who waited as we tried 3 different times to take a picture of ourselves and finally (with great exasperation) asked us if he could take the picture haha.  He really just wanted us to get out of his way. Oh and you will also see a random picture of a spider web haha...we just thought it looked cool.

Carmel
I posted once before about some time spent on the beach in Carmel with Jaimee and Joey.  We loved the area so much and were sad we spent so little time there before so we went back after the 17-Mile Drive because the drive ends right around Carmel.  The town is so charming.  It's meant to resemble the style of oceanside French towns and I think it does a pretty good job of accomplishing that.  We decided to eat guacamole on the beach while watching the sunset.  Does it get more romantic than guacamole on a beach at sunset?!! It was the perfect romantic ending to our day.

Baker Botts Events
I planned to do separate posts for these Baker Botts events but I'm getting tired of playing catch-up with Palo Alto posts so I will just post a couple pictures from these.  Baker Botts is the law firm I worked for this summer in Palo Alto.   BB is an incredible firm made up of brilliant and fun people.   It was a really hard decision for me to turn down the offer from them and I'm really going to miss all the people I met there.  The highlight of my time at Baker Botts was probably our trip to San Antonio for Baker Weekend.  Reed did not go with me (it was really just for attorneys) but he was able to go visit his family while I was gone so he had a great time without me.  While in San Antonio we had various meetings, meals, nighttime get-togethers, a visit to the Alamo and on one of the days I got to go to Sea World with some of my fellow summer associates.

 Feeding dolphins at Sea World...

The Alamo

Our last BB event of the summer was a SF Giants game.  I wasn't super interested in the game of course but the stadium was really incredible.  I wish we had a picture to show how cool it was.  It sits right on the ocean.  At one point in the game you could see the fog coming in from the ocean over the stadium and settling down on the field.  It was a little eerie but really pretty.