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It’s been thirty-three years since I first visited the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel and Big Sur with my old friend, Steve Gerisch, on a seven-day whirlwind tour of the coast. As one might imagine, that was the quintessential driving tour, for one cannot begin to experience all this region has to offer within such a short time.
And it’s been at least seventeen years since Joanna and I last explored the Carmel tidal pools, so it was with great anticipation that we looked forward to our expanded visit... |
All photos (except popups) ©2006 by Chris Morton
Music: Dancing With the Lion, Andreas
Vollenweider
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Leaving home on Wednesday morning, we passed through
Castroville where a certain Norma
Jean
had once been the first artichoke festival queen. After a quick snack lunch, we toured the
Monterey Bay Aquarium
with Richard, a 24-year aquarium denizen (with depth!), then had dinner at
Stokes' Adobe
with him and his wife that evening. This was a unique and very fun reunion, for we had only briefly met the Keirs one-and-a-half years ago as a small group of us departed
Varenna, Italy, by taxi after a mountain landslide had buried the railroad track back to Milan.
Meet new friends,
But keep the old.
Some are silver,
The others gold.
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Exercising one of Richard and Kelly’s recommendations,
Thursday we hustled (not knowing they serve breakfast through noon) down Hwy 1 for a fabulous, relaxing breakfast
at the historic
Deetjens
in Big Sur’s Castro Canyon. What could be better than “roll-your-own” eggs benedict (I chose gravalax, spinach
and sliced tomato for mine) and freshly-squeezed orange juice accompanied by lilting classical flute and French horn
music? All of this in a Bohemian camp setting, built many years ago by “Grandpa” himself, with the morning embers still
aglow in the fieldstone fireplace. (Legend has it that Garbo
made a few, uh, visits to Grandpa's workshop.)
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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As we continued our exploration of several of the haunts
along Hwy 1, Joanna and I stopped at the famous
Nepenthe
restaurant where Steve and I had lunched so many years earlier. Unfortunately, the place is now a well-known tour bus stop,
so we opted to move along, but not before wandering through the adjacent Phoenix gift shop. Here I was (“easily”, Joanna would
say) amused by gongs of several shapes, sizes and tones as I drifted back to 1968 to play alongside on the ambient opening to
Pink Floyd’s
“Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun”.
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From the shopkeeper we then learned of the
unmarked way in, so—periodically stopping for more wildflower photos—we made our way down to one of many glorious
Big Sur beaches
(all seemingly named Pfeiffer), each as stunningly beautiful as the next.
Later that afternoon it was a crab appetizer
and white wine
alongside the Big Sur River, followed by
patio dining at Clint Eastwood's Mission Ranch and an evening stroll around Carmel and the city beach.
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Packing a picnic lunch, we followed
Friday’s relaxing patio breakfast in Carmel with a hiking tour of
Point Lobos Reserve
just south of town.
Besides the incredible varieties of
colorful wildflowers along the trail, we were able to easily spot many harbor seals, with pups, both in the water and
on the beach.
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After a breather back at the hotel,
we had reservations at
L'Escargot, where Steve had first introduced me to the French namesake delicacy on our ’73 trip. Settling in with a bottle of Bordeaux
(terrific
terroir, as well it should, eh?) and strains of the always-listenable
Paris Combo, Joanna tried the bouillabaisse, while I
was again enticed by what I knew would be a terrific rack of lamb with demi-glace.
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We were then off to the magnificent
Sunset Center
to hear Swiss jazz electro-harpist
Andreas Vollenweider, back on tour after a ten-year hiatus (you're listening to his music). This was quite extraordinary—on a scale of
one-to-five, I rated the group's performance nothing less than a 20, never before having been quite so emotionally caught
up in what I was hearing (and I/we attend many performances). This is
absolutely a concert not to be missed!
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Saturday morning after a late
breakfast we biked from Cannery Row along the Monterey coast, stopping to admire a couple of Victorian B&Bs I had missed
on the Web when booking reservations. It was then that Joanna spotted a sea otter out in the surf, lying on his back and
flapping his flippers (or—as they sometimes do—flipping his flappers).
After checking in at Santa Clara’s
Madison Street Inn, we enjoyed an early dinner at
Valeriano's
Italian restaurant (now permanently closed) in Los Gatos, the only town I know of that features both an Aston Martin and Lotus car dealership (one can
only wish). After a pleasant walk exploring many other fine shops, we were off to the Carriage House at
Villa Montalvo
(one of our favorite intimate venues) to hear a solo performance by ex-Byrd and '60s-survivor
Roger McGuinn
(immortalized by the Mamas & Papas as they sang "McGuinn and McGuire, always gettin' higher, in LA you know where
that's at").
We were not disappointed, Joanna
only knowing Roger’s music via the historic
“Sweetheart of the Rodeo”
release that paved the way for the entire country-rock movement. Playing banjo, twelve-string electric Rickenbacher and both
seven- and twelve-string Martin acoustic guitars, McGuinn’s endearing solo performance compressed much of his own personal
history, with names ranging from Miles Davis to Bob Dylan, Peter Fonda to (of course) David Crosby.
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Sunday we drove to Woodside
to tour the historic 654-acre
Filoli
estate of gold mine owner
William Bourn II
(and later
Matson Navigation Company's
William Roth). The gardens dwarf those of Cranbrook and we were just in time to enjoy the rainbow spectacle of tulips in
bloom.
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Now we headed back to Golden Gate
Park, since we had missed the
Japanese Tea Garden
on our previous visit in March. Afterward it was a short walk to the park's
Stow Lake, where an island hike takes you to a high point overlooking all of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands and
the Pacific.
Nearby is our one of our favorite
restaurants,
Thanh Long; we arrived just as they opened to enjoy their specially-prepared roast crab and garlic noodles. This is simply the best! Wanting to then walk off some of our indulgent feast, we headed crosstown to
Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill
near sunset to look for
wild parrots.
We didn't see any parrots,
but walking in the footsteps of a memorable film with such a scenic backdrop brought an appropriate close to our own whirlwind
tour of a portion of the Pacific Coast—this one being far more focused in scope and with ample time to tactically experience much of what the
region has to offer. |
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