A few more things I forgot... Congraulations, first of all.

You'll be going through Santa Cruz on you way to Carmel from San Jose if that interests you.

If cars interest you at all, you should really aim for the weekend of August 16-17, as that is "Car Weekend" on the monterey peninsula. I wrote up a bit about it last year. I'm still thinking about a meet here that weekend if people are interested. Somehow I doubt your plans are too flexible at this point, however.

Matthew