Beyond Darkest Carmel-by-the-Sea

Saturday evening, February 20. After leaving Point Lobos, we continued toward Big Sur. Phil had no trouble taking the Fit through the steep twists and turns of the two lane road high above the ocean. It's always fascinating to me to get glimpses of the houses just off the road perched precariously on cliffs, some of them luxurious and some of them tumbledown, and wonder what it's like to live with your back turned firmly to the entire continent. I'd love to give it a try for a month or two as long as it's not too rainy.

We drove just past the Bixby Creek Bridge, the impressive, much photographed span that embodies the Big Sur drive for most people. We pulled over to have a better look and take some photos. Peter had lots to tell us about the engineering of the bridge and he seemed especially energized by seeing it.

Phil has a Carmel restaurant in mind for dinner. He had eaten there before with a golfing buddy and had taken me and our sons once on a rainy day several years ago. Jack London's Grill and Taproom has the comfortable wood-panelled feel of a gentleman's study. It used to be sort of a burger place, but now it is more of a sports bar with big screen televisions and the menu items are more sophisticated and more expensive. We enjoyed steak and shrimp fajitas and wine and beer. Our waiter was a little erratic, which put a damper on things. On the whole, the narrow cobbled streets of Carmel-by-the-Sea embellished with BMWs and countless art galleries do not appeal to me. The lack of street lights seem self consciously precious and inconvenient to the lowly tourists who dare to breech the hyphenated little enclave of the rich and filthy rich. It was a relief to leave the opulence and head for home.

Old Dog Tricked Out a New Way

Friday afternoon, February 19. Although they faced some showers, Phil and Peter soldiered through all 18 holes at nearby Seascape Golf Club. Phil had brought enough clubs for both of them so Peter didn't have to lug his on the plane. When Phil set a tee time in the pro shop, the attendant pulled up his record from Phil's local Parks & Rec membership, saving a lot of time. They also saved money by playing twilight rates, about $30 apiece. Neither of them was familiar with the course; it was hillier and narrower than they were used to and the ground was saturated. The towering eucalyptus trees that frame nearly every hole don't help either. But Phil felt good about transplanting his favorite pastime into his new location, and got in some quality time with his brother who he hasn't seen since last summer. Phil hopes to play the course again before we leave and maybe meet some local golfers with advice on Seascape and other courses in the area. It may be the same old dog, but playing with new people in a new location, tricks it out in a new way.

TIP: Play sports you're familiar with from home. It's easier to meet people and gives perspective on the new area.

When they got home. Phil called his (and Peter's) aunt who lives in Santa Cruz. We ordered some take out sandwiches and fries from one of our cousin's favorite restaurants, Carpo's. It's located in Soquel, a little town between Aptos and Santa Cruz, which made picking up the food convenient, even though we were running a little late after the post golf showers and dressing. It didn't make it any better that the Tomtom GPS didn't give directions once we were inside the rather large trailer park where Phil's aunt lives. After a couple or wrong turns we finally located her.

TIP: Don't depend on GPS if you're traveling in the dark to a place you're unfamiliar with. Bring a map or get directions online before you leave as a back-up.

Phil and Peter had a great time talking about old times with their aunt, and I had a few memories of the family too. Peter hadn't seen her since 1980 so he had a lot of catching up to do, and we all had a good time joking about other people getting older while we all stayed the same.

TIP: Be sure to look up family and friends of the family early on in your trip. Bringing food to their place can be an easy way to visit a residential area you would never visit otherwise without imposing on your host or hostess.

That night we used Skype to talk to our sons back in Long Beach. The online telephone service which incorporates a visual link through video cameras attached to the computer is a great way to stay in contact with friends or family you leave behind during a long trip. Peter talks to his son in Japan using Skype, and we hope to set up a call between Phil's aunt and his mother using Skype, allowing two sisters over 80 who haven't seen each other in over a year and don't expect to make any more cross country flights to share some face-to-face conversation. You can even share screen images (like a photo slide show) between your computers.

Putting Down Roots

Friday, February 19, our second full day in Aptos, was pretty laid back. We settled into the house and started doing some foundation work for the vacation, discovering some tips to make the long stay more pleasant. The day was cloudy and chilly, alien to our Southern California sensibilities. We took our time over breakfast, raising our spirits by talking with Peter over steaming hot coffee. We discussed things we might like to do in the next couple of days and then went grocery shopping.



TIP #1: In this land of chain stores, if you have a favorite grocery store, see if there's one convenient to your new location. We found a Trader Joe's a couple of miles away and headed straight there. The arrangement of the shelves was different, but we found our favorite items like pita crackers and Just Chicken and brought them back to make the house just a little homier. Be aware that some big chains have affiliates in other parts of the country. For instance, I was able to use my Vons grocery card at the Safeway.



We cruised around the Capitola Mall for a while. It's a somewhat confusing conglomeration of shopping complexes separated by parking lots and city streets (some even busy enough to have traffic lights). There's just about every kind of store you can imagine there, but it may take time to find it. Phil and Peter had decided to take a chance and play a game of golf despite the threatening storm clouds, so we pulled into a Big 5 Sporting Goods store for Peter to buy some spikes for his golf shoes. The manager was impressed by Peter's East Coast driver's license. "We don't see many of those around here."



TIP #2: Don't be shy about letting people know you're from out of town. Many people tell you about places to eat and things to do, not only in the vicinity but sometimes even places they've enjoyed in your hometown too.



After unpacking the groceries, we had a lunch of sandwiches and nice hot soup and P & P headed off to the golf course. I stayed home and tried to bond with Dixie, our canine companion for the next too weeks. She is very homesick for her owner, but we hope she will settle in soon. We went for a little walk and met a doggie friend of hers, which picked up her spirits for a while.



TIP #3: Find some excuse to walk around the neighborhood and say hello to a neighbor or two. Explain that you're house-sitting, pet-sitting or whatever so they won't be concerned that a stranger is lurking in the neighborhood. Again, you can pick up a lot of advice on places to go, places to avoid and even pet care advice.



I photographed the contents of all the kitchen cabinets and drawers and put post its up to remind me of the main things that were inside as I described in a previous post. I emptied the shelf of one cabinet and put our food there so it was easy to find those things in a hurry. The refrigerator has also been rearranged for my convenience. We also have a lot of packaged items on the kitchen counter since it's wide enough to store things and still have plenty of work space.

TIP #4: As soon as possible, take some time to get to know the kitchen. It saves a lot of time (and money) to know where the coffee is and how much is left as well as to take stock of items that you take for granted which are missing in this new place. Start a shopping list of things you need or brainstorm ways to improvise. We rigged up a towel to serve as a dish drain and I bought a stopper for the kitchen sink after using a large pot to do the dishes proved to be too much of a hassle.

And While We're on the Subject of Tours

There's a Hop-On, Hop-Off tour on a double decker bus over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, including the Presidio and Fisherman's Wharf. The Goldstar price is $10.75. Great if it's sunny.

What's so Funny about the Haight?

Flashback, a walking tour of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district, is coming up this Saturday, February 27 at 1 pm. With a Goldstar discount, it costs $15 and lasts about 2 hours. The promo says the tour is lead by a comedian, which made me wonder what kind of laughs they'd get out of those wild and crazy times. Weather predictions warn of rain that day, so I'm still on the fence, but it's in the hopper for my next foray into San Fran.

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.

San Francisco -- Not Quite My Kind of Town

Thursday, February 18, Phil's cousin left for Bangalore, India. We took Highway 1 along the coast north from Santa Cruz, trying to convince ourselves that the dense fog was sure to burn off by lunchtime. The rugged hills and lonely beaches had a mysterious appeal to me. What would it be like to spend time in one of the weather-beaten cabins overlooking the steel grey ocean?

After dropping Steve off at SFO, Phil, Peter (his brother here for a long weekend), and I headed up to "the city" as Steve advised us that locals call San Francisco. With the help of a Tomtom GPS, we limped through a few traffic jams and then past the Golden Gate Park and into the heart of the Presidio. Phil turned our trusty Honda Fit at just the moment to land us in the parking lot adjacent to the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog varied from dense to pea soup thick as we walked halfway across the bridge's nearly two mile span. The poor visibility frustrated me, but I was pleased to see that the pedestrian walk is wide enough to accommodate walkers and bikers heading in both directions.

We got back in the car and headed crosstown to North Beach, but hunger set in and a parking space appeared as if by magic on Union Street. We hurried into Crepes A Go Go, a tiny place with a funky ambience and great service. The coffee, served by a friendly young woman with a convincing French accent, was strong and the crepes were tender. I had nutella (hazelnut chocolate sauce) and bananas and the two gentlemen had heartier fillings followed by a crepe with butter and sugar. Before we left, Phil and Peter had a friendly chat with a young man double parked and blocking us in, but in no particular hurry to move his car. He was waiting for his ex-girlfriend to buy chocolates. Oh those inscrutable San Franciscans! We'll never know why the woman couldn't have found his bright red pickup if he backed up three or four feet.

We parked at one of the piers at the Embarcadero and walked up the overgrown gardens along the stairs climbing up Telegraph Hill. Phil and I are great fans of the film called The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and have made this trek before in hopes of spotting the parrots and for the view from Coit Tower in Pioneer Park. The fog had let up a little. We could see Alcatraz Island, but the bridges were still elusive. We didn't pay to go to the top of the tower, but enjoyed the depression-era murals on the ground level. We descended into North Beach and then climbed Russian Hill, where the flock of wild parrots swirled by us with a flurry of swawks and glinting feathers. At the summit we looked in wonder at the cars perched head in on the steeply pitched residential when a man came roaring up the incline and then just as quickly retreated (in reverse) down the roller coaster steep slope. Note to self: don't drive on Russian Hill.

We had a little trouble finding the Cable Car Museum, a favorite of ours not only because it's free but also it has lots of fascinating information on the 1906 earthquake and how cable cars work including the huge power wheels that drive the few existing cable cars. Then we plunged into the frantic crowds shopping in Chinatown. Fish of every size and color flapped their fins in shallow tanks in one shop while next door shelves rose up the wall twelve feet or higher, full of see-through bins filled with exotic herbs and roots. As we struggled to make our way along the crowded sidewalks, vendors popped out of every door, extolling the quality of their wares in loud, insistent Chinese.

After the hubbub of Chinatown, the hushed hipness of the City Lights Books was a welcome relief. I love the hodge podge of shelves here, placed at odd angles so close together, and the wild assortment of fiction from around the world, but there's a sort of smug intellectualism that can only be rivalled by Harvard Square. Night had fallen by the time we left, so we searched North Beach for an Italian restaurant that matched our appetites and wallets. Calzone's Pizza Cucina fit the bill perfectly. The decor combined the traditional -- black and white tiles and shelves lined with pasta tins and olive oil bottles -- with cutting edge modern --triangular plates and exposed light bulbs hung over every table. We had no trouble finishing off an arugula salad with walnuts and cranberries and asparagus orzo.

The conversation turned to what a magical city San Francisco is. Try as I might, I cannot agree wholeheartedly. Despite the hills upon hills and the charmingly impractical citizens, San Francisco seems like a New York City wannabe -- not quite as culturally diverse, not quite as culturally aware, not quite as culturally rich. But as I massaged my aching feet on the car trip home, I had to admit that however lacking this city may be, it easily had me whupped up and down the block.