6. Full Circle to San Francisco

As well as the rocks we also avoid pretentious and prim Carmel, getting onto the 17 mile scenic drive around the Monterey Peninsula instead.  Carmel is the place that Clint Eastwood was elected Mayor.  Don’t you think “Make my day, punk, vote for me” would have made a catchy election slogan.  The scenic drive is really just that once out of the trees.  It’s a gated drive with some very expensive and surprisingly ordinary looking houses on it, several top class Golf Clubs and some great white sand beaches.  Doing the drive now was a mistake because we’re well overdue for some food and drink.  We finally get what would have been lunch after booking into our hotel and finding a café.  It’s 3.30. 

Monterey we like.  Our hotel is fairly close to the sea and the Old Fisherman’s Wharf where I had the best meal of the whole trip.  Macadamia crusted halibut on a bed of sweetened sweet potato with a papaya salsa and lighted steamed spinach.  It was truly delicious.  Heather had a really good pasta but wanted a half portion.  Our knowledgeable and helpful server told us they didn’t do half portions but then came back and said he was taking half of it home for his dinner and reduced the price accordingly.  I’m sure it was load of tosh about no half portions but it was a good story from him.   Half a mile west is Cannery Row where sardines were landed, gutted cooked and canned as per the Steinbeck novel or perhaps it’s a novella at 123 pages.  Today, due to overfishing there’s no sardine industry left, just the tourists.  I’ve bought a copy of Cannery Row and plan to read it on the flight home.  We passed a drive-in shoe repairers here in Monterey. 

At night we can hear the seals under the wharf from our hotel room so I’m glad we’re half a mile away.  We had a ‘rest’ day here which will cause some guffaws I dare say, seeing as we’re on holiday.  Enjoying ourselves this much is tiring though and we tend to be doing things from breakfast to bedtime so the occasional day off is useful.  This was a sit with a coffee and watch the world go past day.  At least that was the idea but we still ended up walking a lot and still being tired but at least it was a day without driving.

“Black coffee and a toasted Bagel please”.  Simple question, Well not really.  “Small, medium, large” “Medium roast, dark roast or decaf” “Is that white, wheat, blueberry, onion or sesame ?”  “Butter or cream cheese ?” “Cream cheese” “Would you like plain, New York cheesecake, hazelnut, chive and onion, wild blueberry, roasted vegetable or honey walnut,…… Actually I’m not hungry anymore.   In case anyone is wondering, the last paragraph is no exaggeration and I didn’t even mention Pumpkin Spice Latte coffee.

One of the things I do find hilarious about the states are the outrageous claims made by towns and various businesses.  We drove past Castroville ‘Artichoke Capital of the World’ and every other town has some product which is allegedly ‘World Famous’, Buellton – Home of Split-Pea Soup, at Bishop we saw World Famous Sheepherder Bread and at Santa Cruz there’s a tired old seaside funfair which is the ‘World’s Best Seaside Amusement Park’.  I tried to find a website with a list of these self appointed ‘capitals’ but couldn’t, although I did find one in which New York claims to be the Capital of the World !  You could believe that this is ironic but I think the general view is that most Americans think irony is what goes rustery.

Having left Monterey we carried on up the coast to spend our last night in Santa Cruz, the secret love child of Father Christmas and Lady Penelope from Thunderbirds.  A place bigged up by Lonely Planet as weird and lively and we thought a fitting farewell to California.  Another boo-boo by Lonely Planet.  It was as quiet as the grave and it turns out that the funfair and visitors stop sometime in September.  It seemed like a rather sad, abandoned place.  We did find a very good bookshop though and later on we saw a couple of basking Sea Otters.  They rest floating on the surface, face up but they wrap themselves in kelp as a camouflage against predators which makes them difficult for us to see as well.

We thought that California would be no problem for getting vegetarian food but outside the big centres, and there weren’t many of those on our itinerary, it was surprisingly difficult to find.  Restaurants could always do something without the meat included but few places had vege food and those that did had no ‘V’ next to it, we just had to read carefully and then ask.

North America west of the Great Plains has long been a target destination for us.  On a line of say New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana and areas west of that.  This is geographical not political so includes British Columbia and some of the Rockies east of that.  An RV has been a possibility (particularly as we could do our own vege food) but we’ve looked and looked and nobody seems to do an RV that includes what we want without a huge engine in a vehicle coming up for 30 feet which is completely unnecessary.  Even two berth rental vehicles have a five litre engine.  Shipping ours over is a problem because I don’t think the electrics are compatible.  So, impasse and a problem to be sorted at a later date.

Driving is very easy and drivers seem very courteous.  If when out walking we pause at a street corner all the traffic comes to a halt because the drivers think we’re waiting to cross.  This doesn’t have to be at a proper crossing either and sometimes just crossing a street will cause a halt.  A few roundabouts are creeping in although I read of one politician (congressman ?) who is agin ‘em because they’re ‘un-american’.  One of the things we don’t have and which are everywhere are 4-way stops which is simply a junction where every entrance has a stop line and the drivers take it in turns to drive on based on first at the line goes first.  It needs those courteous drivers and seems to work well. Turning right on a red light if the road is clear is OK and so is overtaking on either side on a main road while most drivers stick to the speed limit.

So we end by driving further north along the coast, cutting east to San Francisco airport and completing our 3,200 mile irregular circle.  We hand the car back and make a big thing about photographing all the corners and sides so that no later damage (or indeed invented damage) can be landed on us.  We’ve done this for years but this time the driver behind rushed up and told us what a great idea it was before photographing his own rental car.  How satisfying.