Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

Monday, March 1. Clouds roiled but no raindrops were falling, so after a nice breakfast, I left Phil in the midst of his teleconference meeting for my first solo trip. I drove over to Capitola, a tiny beach town cuddled between the coast and steep hills with an artistic flair. It's not so upscale or precious as Carmel, and especially on such a gray, chilly day, the brightly painted clapboard buildings seem like a bit of manmade sunshine. The shopkeepers are also very warm, brightening each time a rare rainy day customer appears. It's easy too imagine how crowded these streets must be on a sunny weekend, so I feel thankful that this pretirement excursion has given me the opportunity to linger in the shops and stroll along the beach as if I owned the place.

I also decided to do a little grocery shopping on the way home and unfortunately Highway 1 was not as idyllic as Capitola-by-the-Sea. I was shut out of the exit ramp I wanted to take so I had to take the next one and bushwhack back, getting a closer look at a few office parks than I wanted. Finally, I got there and Trader Joe's was as busy as ever. It felt good to get home and have a quiet lunch with Phil.

While I showered and changed clothes for our Valentine dinner, Phil had his second Monday teleconference. Then we headed off to Pacific Grove again. It was still chilly and cloudy but the sky had brightened a little, and Phil was excited about finally golfing at the Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Links and I looked forward to strolling around sleepy Pacific Grove. It's one of the first places I ever visited in California and way back then, it seemed a special forgotten place.

Now, it's not so forgotten. The shops along Lighthouse Avenue have been gussied up and many of the charming turn of the century residences have been refurbished. I couldn't help nosing around a few with "For Sale" signs and it seems there are still some reasonable (by California standards) prices as long as there is no ocean view. The Hart Mansion is going for $900,000 and a two bedroom a few blocks away was selling for $400,000.

The high point of my excursion was visiting the Point Pinos Lighthouse, conveniently located across the street from the golf course. The volunteer there had grown up in Long Beach and went to Lowell and Wilson. She told me about a lady lighthouse keeper, a wealthy widow who entertained Pacific Grove's finest families in her cozy quarters and I noticed a display about Robert Louis Stevenson's visit to the place. Outside again, I encountered a deer only about ten feet from me but unfortunately I did not get my camera out in time to capture the moment. There were also a gaggle of Canadian geese making life miserable for a frustrated golfer on the 10th hole.

I continued walking back towards town and stopped by the monarch butterfly grove, but the butterflies appear to have flown for the year. Along the way, I was impressed by the clever use of paint and other accents to make the vintage homes distinct. Not so flamboyant as Capitola, but still colorful and bright. I checked out the menus of several restaurants, including Fandango and Passionfish. Making a choice for dinner was not easy. There were even some tempting open air booths at the farmer's market. Finally, I decided on the Victorian Corner Restaurant, lots of variety in the menu and good mid-range prices for the entrees. I started to walk back toward the golf course when Phil called to let me know he was done and coming to pick me up.

I had eggplant parmagiana and he had butternut squash ravioli at the Victorian Corner. Our waitress was very attentive and suggested cheesecake for dessert. It was excellent. Phil told me about his round of golf. The marshall had escorted him past a party of slow golfers so he could play a few holes along the ocean. He said the views were spectacular, but the wind off the ocean was freezing. Both of us are pretty amazed at how much the rain and cold weather have affected us. We've gotten spoiled by the mild winters in Southern California, I guess. By the time we left at about 7 pm, Pacific Grove had practically shut down for the night.

Rainy Days and Sundays

February 28. It was a little sad waking up Sunday and realizing that Drew and Tony have to leave today. We had a very healthy breakfast of oatmeal and bran muffins, and then they started packing and even fitted in the extra set of golf clubs Phil had brought up for Peter. The weather was fine, a brisk wind and blue skies with dramatic billowing clouds. We drove two cars to Pacific Grove and stopped at Toastie's for brunch. It's got a great country kitchen decor and generous servings and the place was bustling with the after church crowd.

We walked around town a bit and then went down to Lover's Point to watch the surf. Maybe is was the aftermath of the earthquake off Chile or maybe it was storms at sea, but the breakers kept thundering in and booming against the rocky coastline. We walked from one location to another and took lots of photos of course. Silly us, how can you possibly make a wave stand still? Phil got a call from Peter and learned that his mother was doing better and would be able to go home on Monday.

Around 2 pm, Drew and Tony got in the Mitsubishi and headed south, and Phil and I got in the Honda and took the coastal route by the golf course and even drove through Asilomar. We decided if tomorrow was not rainy, we'd return to Pacific Grove. Phil hoped to get 9 holes in and I wanted to see the butterfly grove and the Pinos Point Lighthouse. We had put off a special Valentine's Dinner (we had thought Peter would be visiting us that weekend) so we decided to find a nice restaurant in Pacific Grove and have a dinner out there.

The drive from Aptos to the Monterey area is much less hectic than the drive north. The road passes massive sand dunes and acres and acres of cultivated fields, strawberries and artichokes mainly. Now and then, there'll be a farm stand with piles of brilliantly colored fruits and vegetables, and glimpses of farm towns like Castroville and Watsonville in the distance. It's just a thumbnail of all the growing that goes on in the Salinas Valley and the San Joaquin further east, but it's very restful and reassuring taking a Sunday drive in the country--a throwback to childhood.

As we passed the huge towers of the power plant at Moss Landing, a long-legged crane stood right by the side of the road, watching us pensively as we passed. The Elkhorn Slough is a well-known bird sanctuary and has become a kayaking mecca of sorts. It was fun to think we'd bagged a birder's trophy from the comfort of our car.

Back home, we took Dixie for a long walk all the way to Hidden Beach. She was in high spirits, prancing ahead of us on her leash. We met a Pekinese mix (with an owner attached) and the owner explained "parallel socialization" to us. If two dogs are confrontational meeting head on (as Dixie and the Pekinese were), they may slowly accept each other if they walk side by side for awhile. We tried it with excellent results for the humans. The Pekinese's owner had lots to tell us about his trips to India and the care and feeding of small dogs. Sad to say, the two dogs were still a little snippy with each other as we parted ways at the intersection of Los Altos and Dolores.

The pathway into Hidden Beach, hemmed in by two steep hills, is always a little spooky to me, made even spookier by the shadows among the towering eucalyptus trees and the ominous hooting of an owl. Phil had heard the owl when he walked the golf course, so he knew what hole we were near. Most of the families at the playground were packing up to go home, and we passed several dog walkers heading home too. We did make it to the crest of the path by the park benches for a look at the surf. Thick cloud cover made the sunset pretty murky so we didn't linger. Dixie is such a little trooper. She made it all the way home on her own steam and gobbled up her dinner.

We had a more leisurely dinner of fat free refried beans and tofu burritoes and rice with half a beer. We have been reading passages from the Jon Kabat Kinn book and wanted to be relatively clear-headed for a meditation session. It went well. Dixie sat quietly on the sofa between us, like a miniature Buddha. (Hats off to Ron Burgundy) Then we finished watching Hitchcock's Vertigo and I got curious about the San Francisco locations. Phil said we could stop by San Juan Bautista on the way home if the timing was right and the rain wasn't falling.

Oddly enough, having spent most of the day away made Steve's house seem more like home to us. We settled in to a nice deep sleep. We can't figure out why we're sleeping so well. Is it the quiet or the cold or pushing back our sleep schedule to 11 pm or is it pretirement?

A Coast in Wolf's Clothing

Saturday, February 20, was cold and cloudy, but the sky gleamed blue behind to clouds. We had a leisurely morning, working on email and Sudokus, except for Phil and Peter, who had a run along the beach. I'm still trying to build a rapport with Dixie, who mopes around hoping her master will show up. After lunch, we piled in the car and headed south toward Monterey. Peter especially wanted to see Point Lobos, but since we got off to a late start, we weren't expecting to have much of a hike.

We stopped for coffee in Cannery Row at Cafe La Strada overlooking Monterey Bay. It's an upscale cafe attached to the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa, and we enjoyed the comings and goings of the well dressed crowd over elegant white cups of delicious coffee and a sweet roll shared between the three of us. A bride posed for wedding photos with the ocean as her backdrop, which reminded us of Peter's daughter's wedding last summer and got us to talking about all our children and how they'd grown up before our very eyes. We looked out over the bay and watched the waves mark time.

We drove south and stopped again at Lover's Point in Pacific Grove. We got a great parking place and walked out to the rocky point with a great view of another wedding in progress, or was it the same one -- the bride's gown did look awfully familiar. The men went right to brink of the rugged outcropping, and I stayed behind watching a couple with their pants turned up to their knees standing in a tide pool and eagerly studying whatever the waves brought their way. The water eddies and swirls around the rocky point with beautiful, almost translucent aqua patches brightening the dark surf. When we got back to the car, the windshield was doused with sea gull poop. Now we know why we got such a good place to park.

Riding past the cypress shrouded campus of Asilomar Conference Grounds, I remembered staying here with Phil when we visited Mark Anderson over 30 years ago. It was such a magical place and we were so young and ready to believe in magic. The area has been developed since then with several well appointed ocean view homes, but the insistent rush of waves remains the same, bringing the power and the secrets of the Pacific deep up to the stony beach. There always seem to be people here strolling on the boardwalks looking out toward the horizon absorbing those secrets -- conference goers, kite fliers, and kids with plastic pails.

The land rises as we approach Point Lobos State Natural Reserve with tall eucalyptus and evergreens making the ridge seem even more foreboding. I've read somewhere that Robert Louis Stevenson used this area for inspiration for the pirates' lair in Treasure Island, and even now the demarcation between the minimalls of cozy suburban Pacific Grove and the wild abandon of the nature reserve is very clear. A deer crossed the winding road on the approach to the entrance, but luckily the car in front of us braked in time for the graceful creature to clamber up the bank and disappear into the underbrush.

Many cars huddle along the road just before entrance. Tourists walk into the park to avoid the $10 entrance fee. Peter generously paid for us, but I still resented the price until I saw how patchy the asphalt road was and later how eroded the footpaths were. Then I felt the money to maintain this place was well worth it. We had to drive in a ways past Whaler's Cove and the cypress grove before we found a parking place near the piney woods.

As we walked along the path above the rocky shore, I thought of the subtitle of the Point Lobos website -- "the greatest meeting of land and water in the world." The water catches your attention first as it writhes and twists, forced by opposing currents into frothy swells far offshore. As the water crests and billows toward the land, it crashes against dark ragged rock, sometimes breaking into explosions of salt spray reaching up a hundred feet and sometimes disappearing into unseen hollows with supernaturally deep booming sounds. The eroded land formations are almost as fascinating as the everchanging water. Gradations of many colors -- from goldenrod to brick red to coal black -- make beautiful patterns on the rock, and every now and then, weird eroded shapes loom up, pocked with smaller stones embedded in the surfaces.

Peter had read about the Devil's Cauldron and we searched the shore for it. Finally, we saw what appears to be steam emerging from a hole in the rock about ten feet above the water level. A larger wave rolled in, and after a few seconds delay, we heard a boom and then water gushed out of the hole like gigantic insolent spittile. We watched the show several times and Peter got a good video. We moved on toward the sea lion rocks, but were disappointed to find that the path was closed to get a close look even though we could hear the barking and make out the sleek black bodies lumbering around on the small group of islands about fifty yards out in the ocean.

Soon we turned back and Phil and Peter climbed up on a high overlook. Peter got soaked when one of the waves splashed high enough to reach him. Both men took lots of pictures of the moody sea, now made even more dramatic as the setting sun broke through the clouds from time to time and made bright patches in water and shadows in the craggy rock. We were all quiet on the drive out, a little drained by the walk in the cool weather and full of images of the beautiful scenery.