MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA - The Final Chapter

We've been covering our home state of California with a summer long series of reports up and down the Golden State. That summer long tour concludes today with the finale of our trip to the Monterey Peninsula and the cities of Carmel, Pacific Grove, and Monterey. Hope you had fun on this trip, be sure to let us know via the comment link at the end of the report.

In Part One of our Monterey Peninsula trip, we dodged poison oak to get breathtaking ocean views, had breakfast in a patio across the street from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and walked the streets of Carmel. Now on to part two...

The next morning we have an even better breakfast at Toasties, a comfortable and cozy diner parked in an old house in downtown Pacific Grove on Lighthouse Avenue.

Omelets filled with chorizo and avocado accompanied with silver dollar pancakes, along with French toast for Letty, make a great start to the day.

Monterey Peninsula Video

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Passionfish…our favorite area dinner house…is across the street. Tim, having heard us rave about it for years, says he wouldn’t mind giving it a try.

This is a surprise as Tim would not usually volunteer to eat at a mainly seafood restaurant.

Our plan today was to go to the fair and load up on the fair food as our lunch and dinner. This throws a happy kink into our plans as I was lamenting not being able to eat there this trip.

“If I can get a reservation, we’ll go for dinner,” I tell Tim and Letty.

Walking across the street, I see there’s no one inside. There’s not a phone number printed on the sign or the menu posted on the door. Should we just try our luck later…on a Saturday night…to see if they have a table available?  Sounds very iffy to me.

Letty goes to a stand of newspaper machines nearby and pulls out one of the local freebie flyers. We’re in luck…Passionfish has an ad in it with their phone number.

Driving off to the fair, I call the number and leave a reservation request on their voice mail.

We get to the fairgrounds about a half hour before opening at noon. Even now, there is no parking available at all. Probably due to the fact that this facility has no parking lot…it’s all adjacent street parking.

Remote parking is available…with a wheelchair accessible shuttle too…but we could not find any confirmation at the time that the shuttle was available. We end up parking about a quarter mile away on a side street and walk in.

The fairgrounds here are small, a long narrow strip about two blocks long. There are exhibit buildings and a kids carnival at one end, a lot of food and drink booths clustered around the entrance in the middle, and the animal exhibits, the main carnival, and an arena at the other end.

The arena, quiet while we’re there, is also home of the historic Monterey Jazz Festival which has featured some great performances over the years including Jimi Hendrix’s historic performance back in the 60’s.

After watching a local dance troupe perform, we wander around a few exhibit buildings ending up at the Agriculture building where, in  addition to seeing blue ribbon winning produce, there’s a farmers market stand where you can actually buy the produce…pretty cheaply too!

I get a quartered navel orange in a plastic bag for a quarter. Nearby is a table giving away samples of berries.  Strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries…all very delicious and, even better, free.

Back in the mid section, the local high school wrestling team sells fried calamari. It’s sort of a famous tradition here at this fair. I’m not a seafood lover but I buy some for Tim and Letty, who seem to really like it. I try a piece, just to shut them up. It’s good…really good.  I want more. It’s some of the best fair food I’ve ever had.

We get to the other end of the fair to check out the animals. Cows lick our hands, goats climb up the side of their pens hoping for a neck scratch, and lambs want to see what we smell like.

It’s all a lot of fun…just wish they had better parking.

After a fun-filled day at the fair, we head over to Passionfish for dinner. We’d gotten a call while at the fair saying the only time they could seat us was 5:30 so off we went.

Dinner was excellent and it’s nice to see how this place has taken off over the years. I see we’re not the only ones who think it’s the best the area has to offer.

With plates of scallops, braised lamb, and duck confit preceded by an appetizer of prosciutto wrapped dates, we were overwhelmed with the deep flavors and fun atmosphere of Passionfish.

One more night, but in the morning it’s time to pack and make that long drive back to L.A.

Darryl

Copyright 2011 – Darryl Musick

All Rights Reserved

MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA - Looking Beyond the Usual

The trail had lead to a bluff precariously perched about fifty feet above the breakers and rocks below. It was smooth and wide enough for the wheelchair to roll easily and avoid the hedges on each side that appeared to be about halfway composed of poison oak.

A mild enough scare watching Tim navigate his way out through that bit of a challenge and the wooden railings at the edge were enough to bring my parent’s worrying pulse rate down a bit.

Monterey Bay Video

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Beyond, however…where the ocean had eaten away at the edge...the railing gave way to rope strung across metal stakes about ten feet apart.

“We’re not finishing the loop,” I told my wife. “We’ll go back the way we came.”

There are two wheelchair accessible trails here at the Point Lobos State Park in Carmel, California. Not enough parking in general and especially in regards to handicapped spaces, I pull halfway into a regular spot so I can unload Tim from the van, then pull the rest of the way in.

It was the last spot left. If I didn’t do that, I’d have no place to park and the ten dollar entrance fee would have just been for a short, but scenic drive through the park.

The trail was nicely maintained and a park docent was set up with a spotting scope pointing out to sea. He was very helpful and maneuvered the tripod to where Tim could roll up and get a close-up look at the hundreds of sea lions lounging on an offshore rock.

This was the second day of a Labor Day getaway for us to the Monterey Peninsula. We’ve come up here many times and thought we’d come up for an end of summer trip pegged to the Monterey County Fair, which runs a week or so from the end of August to just after Labor Day.

The hotel for this trip was the Rosedale Inn in Pacific Grove, just a block from the ocean sitting on the backside of Asilomar State Park and Conference Center.

Our room had a king size bed, queen size sofabed, tub with bench and shower hose, roll-under sink, fireplace, free wifi, and a big open area to wheel around in. What it didn’t have were any extra seats which would have come in handy for friends that were visiting us there.  It did have an expansive outdoor deck adjacent to the room that served that particular function well.

After sleeping off the long drive from L.A…made longer by a meal stop in Bakersfield and more traffic than we bargained for…we have a delicious and lingering breakfast at First Awakenings.

Technically in Pacific Grove, but just across the street from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we feast on crepes, crab benedict, and French toast on their outdoor patio while the nearby fire pit helps chase away the morning chill.

After our hike, we spend a little time in downtown Carmel. Cute, charming, and full of shops, it’s nice but a little shopping goes a long way for Tim and I.

There's more to come, stay tuned for part 2...coming soon!

Darryl

Copyright 2011 - Darryl Musick

All Rights Reserved

TRIP REPORT: Monterey and Pacific Grove - Part 2

We've had a great, first day in Pacific Grove and Monterey (see Part 1 here), it's time to complete the trip.

In the morning, we went to First Awakenings for breakfast.  It’s nice that the inn has a continental breakfast, but we want the full meal.  This spot, in an old fish cannery just around the corner from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, really hits the target.

We have some really superb omelets, along with their great bacon and sourdough toast to start off our day.  This gives us some good nutrition and energy for our next activity, a hike across the bay to the 17-Mile Drive.

There’s a nice, wheelchair accessible boardwalk across the sand that bisects the beach from The Links at Spanish Bay golf course.  It’s about a half-mile walk across till you get to a little point where the 17 Mile Drive comes out of the woods and a vista point is available.  Since it’s a drive, you can take your car here – for a fee – but it’s an easy walk from our inn and we get some exercise along the way.  It’s also a great way to get up close and personal with the ocean.

At the vista point, we marvel at the view and have fun watching the many chipmunks that scavenge the area for food before walking back.

In the evening, we head over to Carmel to window shop and have dinner.  We’d never been to the Hog’s Breath Inn, formerly owned by the former mayor of Carmel…Clint Eastwood, so we thought we’d try it out. 

Underneath a jazz radio station and music shop, the restaurant has a large dining room and a pub, separated by a really nice outdoor area with multiple fireplaces, free-form tables, trees, and a large, painted backdrop on the building next door.  Way out back is the very cozy pub that looks like it was lifted from a Tolkien book.

This looks like the perfect setting for dinner!  We tell the maître‘d that we’d like to sit out here and have dinner but he tells us that this is only the bar and just appetizers are served here.  If we’d like dinner, we’d have to eat inside in the dining room.

In we go.  As lovely as the outdoor area is, the indoor dining room has all the charm of a high school cafeteria.  I don’t care how good the food is here, I can’t believe it’s served in such an austere setting so we go back outside and just have a few apps and a couple of drinks.  It turned out very nice but, really, either redo the dining room or ditch the silly “no dinner outside” rule.

The next morning, we get in the car for a drive up the coast.  We head in the general direction  of Watsonville to see what we can find. 

Past the navy’s language school, you come into Marina where you can learn how to hang glide.  Continuing on we get to Moss Landing.

We stop to take a look at this beautiful fishing village.  There are a couple of restaurants and some antique shops but it’s mostly a working fishing fleet here so our time is short-lived.  Eventually, we make it to Watsonville where we buy some freshly picked strawberries to take with us and head back to Monterey.

Back in town, we walk along Fisherman’s Wharf and have free samples of the clam chowder that each restaurant is giving out.  It’s good but I remember coming here in the past and having one of the worst dinners in my life.  After the wharf, we go over to Cannery Row where we have a cocktail at a waterfront lounge with a friendly bartender.  Unfortunately, it has since closed.

Dinner tonight is back in Pacific Grove, this time across the street from Passionfish at International Cuisine where we have a couple of very good pasta dishes along with some good red wine, but still not as good as Passionfish, which will go down as the best place we saw on this trip.

Another sunset with our Watsonville strawberries and champagne, another night in our cozy little inn, and then it’s back to L.A. where we have a couple of days to rest before we pick Tim up from camp.

Darryl
Copyright 2010 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved