Weird day trips from Monterey

The strangest Monterey finds are often a short drive out. These 10 day trips — Monterey County Agricultural and Rural Life Museum, The Phoenix Shop (Nepenthe), Henry Miller Memorial Library and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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Monterey County Agricultural and Rural Life Museum Worried the Salinas Valley's farming past was vanishing, locals in the 1980s relocated an entire scattered ru… King City (South Monterey County)
The Phoenix Shop (Nepenthe) When a coastal live oak on the property died in the 1970s, sculptor Edmund Kara didn't clear the stump — he c… Big Sur
Henry Miller Memorial Library Built by Emil White as his own home in the 1960s and turned into an ungovernable hybrid space after Henry Mil… Big Sur
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center hot springs America's oldest Zen monastery outside Asia, reachable only via a hair-raising one-lane dirt road that climbs… Ventana Wilderness / Los Padres National Forest, Carmel Valley backcountry
Santa Cruz Surfing Museum The world's first surfing museum, opened in 1986 inside the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse — built to honor… Lighthouse Point, Santa Cruz
Deetjen's Big Sur Inn Norwegian immigrant Helmuth Deetjen hand-built this cluster of single-wall redwood cottages starting in 1926,… Big Sur
Enriquita Mine The Enriquita Mine was a prominent mercury (cinnabar) mine established in 1859 within the historic New Almade… Los Gatos
Old Lime Kiln Ruins Tucked away in the redwood forest of the Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, these moss-cove… Felton
Pogonip Historic Lime Kiln Tucked away in the redwood forests of the Pogonip Open Space, these crumbling 19th-century stone structures w… Santa Cruz
Historic Lime Kilns Tucked deep within a redwood canyon in Limekiln State Park, these four massive, rusted iron-and-stone furnace… Big Sur