The day started with Peggy and me heading over Hecker Pass again and, like every other time we go, we stopped to see the sea otters in the lagoon at Moss Landing. We weren’t disappointed. These animals seem like they only have a good time.
After that we headed south to Monterey again to see if we could take a spin on a very scenic section of the coastline called the 17 Mile Drive which wanders around through the ritzy Pebble Beach golf course and through neighborhoods filled with big ass houses. Last week our efforts to take this drive were foiled by golfers, their bat slaves and watching wannabes who apparently couldn’t be bothered by slow-moving traffic a few miles away.
Today we were successful. We gave the gate troll $10 and we were in. We went in the south entrance where the first few miles of the road pass through some skinny conifers and sections with glimpses of houses obscured by big ostentatious gates to keep out the ordinary folks. Soon the road breaks out of the hilltop scroungy forest and into a vista of the entire down slope landscape and a gorgeous coastline beyond. The water between the shoreline rock formations and the beach is turquoise. The wind was blowing offshore and perfectly formed blue waves spewed spray that blew into the air and formed rainbows as it was blown over the shoulder. It was pretty spectacular.
Peggy and I took advantage of the many coastline pullouts along the drive, giving us time to photograph the sights and explore the beach. We spotted big groups of sea lions that were hauled out on the offshore rock formations. We spotted numerous otters fooling around in the seaweed clumps and floating over the swells while laying on their backs. As usual, the adolescents were roughhousing. There is a great variety of gulls, cormorants, kiwi-looking guys with long beaks that were digging around the shoreline rocks and we spotted a few hawks. Peg spotted some deer that were apparently getting fat on some of the most expensive grass in the world as they dined alongside the fairway.
The beach sections have lots of open mussel shells that are dark blue, big snail or hermit crab shells, small abalone shells and the broken bodies of some quite colorful urchins mixed in with the extraordinarily clean sand.
We drove the entire route both ways and the sights were magnificent along this section of private road. The houses near the golf courses or the coastline are massive structures that I doubt even their owners have explored. They have big towers, copper fences, acre-sized residential footprints, stainless gates, ample lot sizes and beautiful views but terrible access. There is one road in and out and the speed limit is 20 mph. The multiple golf courses surrounded by the drive are a luscious emerald color except where there are ponds, streams or sand dune hazards. This place offers truly wonderful views and we think we definitely got our $10 worth.
We departed through the north gate into the town of Pacific Grove where we clogged up the skinny streets with Charlotte’s ample volume while checking out the beautiful old houses sprinkled around. We then hopped onto CA-1 north headed back toward our campground. Below Watsonville, we pulled off the west side of 1 to shop at a fresh fruit stand. The fruit may be okay but getting back on 1 northbound late on a weekday is almost impossible since both the northbound lane and the southbound lane were filled with endless lines of traffic doing about 50. We quickly abandoned our effort to turn left across the highway and instead went south, exited east, hung a U-turn, turned right and headed north on 1. As we passed the fruit stand, we saw the car that was trying to turn north in front of us still stuck on the west side of the road.
Not too long after we got back to the Invader in Morgan Hill, the weather turned to shit and it started to rain quite hard. I’m glad Peg checked and fixed any roof defects yesterday.
For pix, click here