Carmel River State Beach with my Minolta X-700

On our second-to-last full day in Carmel-by-the-Sea, we took a walk along the aptly named Scenic Drive to get to Carmel River State Beach. Last year, the river didn’t reach the ocean. After a very rainy winter, we were curious if it would this year, and it more or less did. It approached the ocean and then ran parallel to if for a stretch before just barely connecting.

I still had some frames of the roll of Lomography 400 remaining in my Minolta X-700 that I had started on our Redondo Real/Del Monte Forest trails hike. I took several photos along our Scenic Drive walk, including an attempt to take a macro shot of a shell and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Clinton Walker House.

Clinton Walker House by Frank Lloyd Wright

It was a bit of a gray and gloomy day so these photos don’t quite capture how scenic the area can be. We had better luck with the weather last year on a similar walk.

I shot the final 4 frames of that roll when we reached Carmel Beach State Park. I got a photo of where the river met the ocean.

The next day, we drove to Ribera Beach and Carmel Meadows which is the other side of Carmel Beach State Park. We had never been there before and it was interesting to see Carmel Beach State Park from a different perspective.

Since I had finished the roll of Lomography 400 the day before, I loaded a roll of Kodak Pro Image for this outing.

In addition to taking pictures of the same area as the day before from a different angle, I also was able to get photos of Carmel River wending down to the ocean.

Carmel Meadows features a wooden cross at the top of a hill. It made for an intriguing focal point from numerous vantage points. A sign at the bottom of the path leading up to the cross read Calle La Cruz but didn’t provide any additional information about how it came to be at that location.