San Francisco

Golden Gate Park

We drove to San Francisco the following morning, returned the rental car to a spot many levels down in a parking garage and walked to our hotel, Hotel Triton, the most bizarre and quirky of the hotels our travel agent had selected for us. 

We were given a room that had excerpts from Jack Kerouac’s “One the Road” as wallpaper.  The lobby had strangely shaped furniture, psychedelic decor and a tarot reader on duty from five PM until sometime later than when we retired for the evening.

Triton Hotel Lobby

Michael and I spent the last three days of the trip in San Francisco visiting with Michael’s sister Ronnie and her husband Steve.  We had three wonderful dinners at three very different restaurants, walked miles around the city, took light rail and antique streetcars, and visited Fisherman’s Wharf, Ocean Beach, the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park and many other places.  Our hotel was just at the gate to Chinatown so, of course, we had Dim Sum twice.  San Francisco is such a wondrous city that it is easy to spend time there.

Antique Trolley Running as a Special on Saturday

The Motorman Reattaches the Trolley Pole to the Catenary Wires

Golden Gate Bridge from Fisherman's Wharf

Mt Sutro from Golden GatePark

Carp at the Japanese Garden

Sea Lions at Fisherman's Wharf

Halloween Decoration in Chinatown

Michael at Ocean Beach

 

 

We flew home on Monday, November third and have been home nearly three weeks.  Tomorrow we leave for Ft. Lauderdale and a Caribbean cruise.  I find it very hard to believe that I am actually living this life.

Driving Along The California Coast

Wednesday morning we had homemade fruit muffins and nut bread, coffee and juice at the hotel before starting out for our next stop at Avila Beach, almost two hundred miles away. 

We drove north on the east side of the coastal mountains until we reached the Los Angeles basin.  Michael’s plan was to avoid downtown L.A. and its killer traffic by making a semi-circle around it.  This mostly worked.  We were slowed by only two traffic snarls and the Nuvi GPS unit guided us around one of them saving at least half an hour.  I did see the outskirts of Los Angeles from the highway and caught a glimpse or two of the downtown from highway 101 as it skirted the hill.

Once Michael and drove north of Los Angeles the landscape began to change.  We were not far from the coast and in the heart of the central California vineyards.  On the way to Pismo Beach we passed miles of grape vines and signs for obscure (to me) wineries.  We turned off the main highway onto a side road that lead to Avila Beach and our next hotel, the Avila Beach Lighthouse.

Avila Beach

Avila Beach is a very small beach town, well off the beaten path.  It is about two streets long by three streets wide. It boasts four or five hotels, seven or eight restaurants and six wine tasting rooms.  The beach is beautiful though the water is cold.  There is a quarter mile long fishing pier and an anchorage for small boats.  

Avila Beach from the Pier

We arrived in late afternoon with time to check out the town, explore the pier and attend a wine tasting courtesy of the hotel. The winery’s sole retail outlet was Avila Beach yet the wine was unexpectedly good. We watched the sunset from the balcony of our hotel suite (two rooms: we never used the living room) and chose a new seafood place for dinner.  We met the chef on our late afternoon’s exploration of the town and he impressed us positively.  We had an elegant, white tablecloth dinner and walked on the sidewalk adjacent to the beach.  It was wonderful to relax after a long day’s drive.

Wine tasting at Alapay Cellars

We woke early Thursday and were on the road before the hotel’s breakfast room opened.  Michael had purchased tickets for the nine A.M. tour of Hearst Castle at San Simeon, an hour’s drive north from Avila Beach. 

We arrived there shortly at eight AM as the visitor center opened.  We saw the explanatory movie, took the tour and headed north along highway one toward Monterrey.

Hearst Castle Entrance

 

Outdoor Pool Hearst Castle

View toward the Ocean

Hearst Castle is worth seeing.  The property is a testament to the excesses in architecture a wealthy man can afford.  William Randolph Hearst built himself a replica of a Spanish cathedral and turned it into an elaborate residence.  The castle was especially interesting as Michael and I had recently been in real, historic French and English cathedrals.

Dining Rom Hearst Castle

Billiard Room Hearst Castle

 

 

 

 

South of Monterrey

Big Sur Coast

Michael and I spent most of the rest of the day driving north on California route 1 along the beautifully rugged California coast.  The Big Sur country was marvelous.  After Monterrey, we passed through twenty miles or so of agricultural fields.  The biggest town was Watsonville that calls itself the artichoke capitol of the world.  Indeed, we saw roadside stands selling artichokes, Brussels sprouts and chili peppers.

At Santa Cruz, we crossed over the mountains  to Mountain View and the Hotel Avanti, our destination for the day.  Hotel Avanti definitely catered to the geek population visiting Silicon Valley on business.  The desk in our room had glass windows in the top so we could see into the drawers.  One had the usual paper, pens, tape and a stapler.  The other held an octagonal Rubik’s Cube and other plastic puzzles and a small book of Sudoku. It was an interesting place to be on Halloween night.

We had dinner with Michael’s nephew David and his wife Vali at a restaurant called Gravity in Palo Alto.  As is usually the case when we see David and Vali, the meal was superb.

On to California

Ten days after returning from Europe, Michael and I left Boulder for a trip to southern California.  We traveled from San Diego to San Francisco mostly along the beautiful and rugged California coast. We intended to make this trip a more leisurely exploration, more relaxing so to speak, than our very busy visits to Paris and London.  Apparently, neither Michael nor I am wired that way.  We packed a lot into an eight-day trip.

We tried an old-fashioned travel agent to find nice places to stay so we found ourselves in a number of very quirky but very nice hotels.

We landed in San Diego in mid afternoon, Monday October 28.  After a quick drive by the city sights, we headed to La Jolla and our first hotel, the La Jolla Kimpton.   The sixth floor room was very modern in a spare style.  We had a balcony with a view of the ocean.  Unusually, there was a plate glass window between the shower and the bedroom, something I had seen only once before – in Shanghai, China.  A motorized shade could be drawn for shower privacy.

Michael and I made the short walk to the beach and scouted out places for dinner.  Our hotel was in the very northern part of La Jolla in an area that is very much a beach community.  We saw one street of surf shops and restaurants surrounded by streets of condominiums hotels and upscale beach homes.  We walked along the beach and enjoyed the seventy-degree weather.   Boulder had been expecting snow that morning as we left.  In fact, we had good weather for the entire week while Colorado experienced a week of cold and storms.

Michael and I participated in the late afternoon wine hour at the hotel before returning to the beach for a sushi and sashimi dinner.  Later we watched the stars come out over the water.  We had a wonderful, relatively low key first day.

On the Beach at La Jolla

The following morning we drove inland a few hours to the tiny town of Borrego Springs.  The town is entirely surrounded by thousands of acres of Anza-Borrego State Park.  The park is at the southern end of the Sonora Desert a few miles west of the Salton Sea.  

Michael and I hiked to a palm oasis a mile and a half from a trailhead.  The simple hike was complicated by summer flash floods that changed the landscape enough that the trail was hard to follow.  Hiker’s footprints went in many directions; we chose one of the wrong ones.  Fortunately, Michael had a topo map on his iPhone and there was adequate cell coverage.  We were able to get back on the trail after going astray several times.  

Looking for the Trail

Fern Palm Oasis

 We had been told to follow the “red flags” which turned out to be small ribbons tied to trees or bushes.  They were difficult to spot going up the canyon. Coming down they were much more visible.  We made it back to the car much more quickly than we found our way to the oasis.  Maybe partly because of the difficulty finding the trail, maybe because of the spectacular scenery Michael and I both thought it was one of the best hikes we had taken.

We arrived at the Borrego Valley Inn mid afternoon.  Our lodging was a desert resort; two rows of rustic efficiency units surrounding a sandy courtyard.  We even had an enclosed patio in the back.  

Borrego Valley Inn

We had time to drive out to Borrego Springs‘ most bizarre tourist attraction.  A wealthy local philanthropist had commissioned metal sculptures of large land animals:  living, extinct and imaginary, spread out over several miles of scrubland both east and west of the center of town.  We drove along a dusty road.   At intervals, we passed a tapir, a mammoth, an elephant and even a dragon.  There were reputed to be more than one hundred sculptures in the collection.

We ate dinner at a local bar/restaurant that was said to serve the best ribs in the area.  We were surprised to see that the customers were mostly our age or older.  Many looked like elderly refugees from the nineteen-sixties.  We saw biker wear, cowboy wear and outfits that fit no known category.  A woman at the table next to us wore a necklace of flashing LED lights and a bandana.  It was a fascinating group and the ribs were decent.

Later we walked a ways behind the hotel and watched the clearest night sky you might ever see.  Moonrise was after midnight yet the Milky Way and the stars were so bright they cast shadows.  We saw a small red light on the ground near us.  One of the other guests was taking a time exposure with a motorized camera.  I hope the light we briefly made to identify the object didn’t ruin his exposure.