Sure. Take a left at the Cliff House in San Francisco and head south. When you finally see someone in the water without a wetsuit, you’re almost there.
Day Five—The Scene Changes
For all its positive attributes, and we’ve pointed out plenty, the City By The Bay is pretty much a major waste of good beach. In the summer, you can actually go in the water in MAINE, for crying out loud. Even Canada. Try that in San Francisco and body parts begin to fall off. And the problem is reflected in the stunning beach real estate, row after row of gloomy apartment buildings all along the coast highway as you head south out of S.F. In chilly Newport, Rhode Island, they have mansions on the shore.
Another big surprise to us on the drive south was the amount of agricultural land encountered which ran almost right up to the Pacific. Stuff growing everywhere, not a half acre wasted. Maybe that’s why much of the produce we eat comes from California, every nook and cranny of arable land is productively occupied. If you like artichokes, and who doesn’t, you might like to know that 100% of the artichokes grown commercially in the United States are grown in California, which, of course, means you’ll be stopping in at Castroville, “Artichoke Capital Of The World.” There may be other little hamlets aspiring to the same title, but we’re going with Castroville. None of the other little hamlets can claim Norma Jean Mortenson as their 1947 Artichoke Queen, as Castroville does. You remember Norma Jean. Sure you do. She turned into Marilyn Monroe a few years later.
Our destination, Monterey, is a mere two hour drive from San Francisco on the coast route. Most of you old hippies out there hear the name of the town and immediately recall the iconic Monterey Pop Festival of 1967, where Janis Joplin and Otis Redding made their first appearances before a crowd of any magnitude, 50,000 souls in this case. The concert was truly exceptional, earning rave reviews and introducing exotic new performers to the masses. A terrific movie of the proceedings (Monterey Pop, directed by D.A. Pennebaker) did well in wide circulation. Monterey was the mother of all the big concerts that followed, preceding Woodstock by two entire years. Couldn’t wait for Monterey II, right? Well, we’re still waiting. Despite Monterey Pop’s incredible success, the city fathers were so shocked by the hippie invasion they quickly passed legislation limiting future public gatherings to a piffling 2,000, making the ‘67 affair a one-and-only. A little stuffy, if you ask me, but nobody did.
Monterey is also noted for its plethora of canneries, of all things. Or perhaps we should call them ex-canneries since the cannery buildings have been transformed into little shopping oases, filled with souvenir shops, ice-cream scoopers and massage parlors. There is no end to the number of massage parlors in California. If every person in California was having a massage every minute of their lives, they couldn’t fill up all the massage parlors. But hey, we’re talking canneries here. The canneries, of course, were first made famous by John Steinbeck in his novel, Cannery Row. You would know this if you were the type of cultured person who read the classics instead of watching Duck Dynasty on television. Steinbeck’s novel is set during the Great Depression in Monterey on a street lined with sardine canneries, his story revolving around the people who lived there. That street is officially named Cannery Row today, despite the fact the last cannery closed in 1973 and it is the main drag in town, also the site of the charming Spindrift Hotel, where we would be staying. The Spindrift had always been our first choice in Monterey but its prices were originally more than we were willing to pay. Twenty-four hours before we left San Francisco, booking.com advised that the rates had dropped by $100 a day for the two days we’d be there so we quickly signed up. The place is elegant, if small, smack in the middle of town and right on the water, although our large room, blessed with a balcony, faced the street. The hotel delivered a breakfast menu each evening, collected them before midnight and brought the morning meal up to our room at the time designated. Whenever we returned, the motherly little lady in the lobby made sure to greet us with “Welcome home!” even though we were paying reduced rates. I’m not entirely sure, but I think the full-price customers got a big hug and a back rub. Suffice to say, we’d give the place a big Eight Rating, even without air-conditioning. It has a nice tune and it’s easy to dance to.
Room At The Spindrift, Monterey
Gosh, George—The Tide Is REALLY Out Today!
A View Of Big Sur From The Flight Deck
Bridging The Gap
I Don’t Know, Emma—I Woke Up This Morning And There It Was!
Big Sur
Monterey, itself, is a typical tourist destination, nicer than many, just a bit north of the natural gem that is California’s Big Sur, a sparsely populated region of the Central Coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. Its boundaries vary according to what you read and who you talk to, but most people will agree on the 90 miles of coastline from the Carmel River in Monterey County south to the San Carpoforo Creek in San Luis Obispo County and extending about 20 miles inland to the eastern foothills of the Santa Lucias. The northern end of Big Sur would be about 120 miles south of San Francisco and the southern terminus approximately 245 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The name “Big Sur” derives from the Spanish “el sur grande,” meaning “the big south,” referring to its location south of the city of Monterey. The area features spectacular views along a mostly winding highway which continually ascends and descends for most of Big Sur’s 90 miles. There is a smattering of gorgeous little beaches strung out along the way, as well as a number of campgrounds, hiking trails and highway pull-offs, often packed to capacity, for picture-taking. Big Sur’s Cone Peak is the highest coastal mountain in the contiguous 48 states, ascending nearly a mile above sea level only three miles from the ocean. There are a few scattered residences in the area, most of them having been there a while and virtually none of them obstructing the constant view of the coast.
Henry Miller lived in Big Sur for eighteen years (1944-1962), writing his novel, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch to describe the joys and hardships which came from escaping what he called “the air-conditioned nightmare of modern life.” Love the book, Henry, but I’m keeping my air-conditioning. Maybe Marilyn would have hung around a little longer if you’d been a tad more reasonable about the AC.
Hunter S. Thompson worked for eight months in 1961 as a security guard and caretaker at Big Sur Hot Springs, just before it became the Esalen Institute, while there having published his first nationally-circulated magazine feature about Big Sur’s artisan culture. The surroundings had a pacifying effect on Thompson, who never shot so much as a single person while in residence.
Jack Kerouac spent a few days in Big Sur in early 1960 at poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s cabin in the woods and wrote his novel, Big Sur, based on his experiences there. Poet and artist Carolyn Kleefeld wrote her books and created much of her artwork in Big Sur.
The Big Sur area eventually acquired quite a bohemian reputation, inevitably drawing in the weird and the curious. Miller reported that one night a deluded traveler showed up at his door, looking for “the cult of sex and anarchy,” requiring summary dismissal. Big Sur also became the home to centers of study and contemplation, which included a Catholic monastery, the New Camaldoli Hermitage, in 1958, the Esalen Institute in 1962 and a Buddhist monastery, the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, in 1966. And then, of course, there was the redoubtable Nepenthe.
Arriving At The Elusive Nepenthe
The Peripheral Walkway
A View To Dine For
Sunset At Big Sur
Nepenthe
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore.
--Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven
The increasing popularity and incredible beauty of Big Sur inevitably drew the attention of Hollywood. Orson Wells, and his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth, visited and were taken with the place, buying a cabin on a trip down the coast in 1944. Oddly, they never spent a night there, eventually selling the place to Lolly and Bill Fassett, who moved in with their five children in 1947. The Fassetts had a notion to build an open-air pavilion restaurant with good food, wine, dancing and a sense of community for Big Sur residents. They commissioned Rowan Maiden, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, to build their complex using native materials: redwoods hewn from area canyons and hand-made adobe bricks. Two years and $22,000 later, their vision became reality with the opening of Nepenthe.
The word “nepenthe” first appears in the fourth book of Homer’s Odyssey referring to a drug that elicited a calming state of mind. Later, nepenthe was a potion used by ancients to induce forgetfulness from pain or sorrow. Nepenthe was mentioned as having been given to Helen of Troy by an Egyptian queen to quell her sorrows with forgetfulness. Its use became widespread. Greek warriors wishing to dull their senses to impending danger took it before going to war. In the case of the restaurant, the definition best befitting might be “isle of no cares” or, better yet, “What? Me worry?”
Not long after its creation, Nepenthe, with little competition, became the epicenter of life in Big Sur. Henry Miller practically lived there and it was a home away from home for actors like Steve McQueen and Kim Novak.
Their home at Big Sur was an exciting place for the wide-eyed Fassett children and grandchildren. One of the latter, Romney “Nani” Steele wrote a book about the experience. “The log cabin we lived in was the hub of everything that went on,” she says. “The restaurant was built in such a way that it was somewhat added to the cabin.” The Bohemian aura of Nepenthe fostered beatniks, belly dancing, poetry readings and parties galore, all of which began in the little cabin—always the first stop for guests. “When we were growing up, nightly there were 10, 15, 20 people in the living room visiting with my grandmother,” reports Steele in her book, My Nepenthe. “People came in and napped there, fell in love there (some of them with the Fassett daughters), married, then continued on their journeys. People would get up and dance. Someone would be in a corner, playing music. I can remember the sun coming through the window and watching what was going on for hours.” In 1964, Robert Burton and Liz Taylor filmed part of their movie, The Sandpiper, on the terrace, its theme song, “The Shadow Of Your Smile” becoming a classic. When the movie premiered in 1965, Nepenthe was transformed. The Fassetts opened the restaurant from seasonally to year-round. The family continues to operate the restaurant, now hugely popular with locals and travelers alike, to this day.
We first heard about Nepenthe from Siobhan’s yoga teacher, Gail Deckant, an old, well-travelled Bohemian herself. Gail said it was “my favorite place in the world.” Well, I don’t know about you, but when somebody who has been around a bit tells me that a certain piece of real estate is her favorite place in the whole goddam world and I’m in the neighborhood, there’s a good chance I’ll be dropping in. Gail wasn’t kidding, either. Nestled right up to Highway 1 and overlooking the Pacific Ocean (much of the dining area is structured so that guests are looking out over the terrain), Nepenthe is probably a ton of people’s favorite place in the world. Not to mention, the food is great and the staff is more than friendly and competent. If you want to hang around, nobody cares. There is sort of a concrete bleacher outside near the entrance festooned with pillows for more comfortable seating, obviously meant as a viewing stand for special occasions but utilized nightly by people who decide to stay awhile. As the old song wonders, who could ask for anything more?
Well...maybe Siobhan, who held on grimly as we negotiated the scary curves overlooking the giant drop-offs on the trip up, requesting that Bill slow down at least a hundred times.
“Well, I would, Siobhan, but if I slowed down any more, I’d be stopped. The fifty cars behind me have their windows rolled down and the passengers are waving their fists in the air.”
“I think we missed it. It’s supposed to be forty-five minutes from the hotel. Maybe we should go back,” she thought.
“No way we’re missing Gail’s favorite place in the world,” I told her. “You’ll never be able to go back to yoga.” With that, a vista-viewing area popped up and we pulled over. “It’s another half-hour ahead,” advised the knowledgeable fellow-traveller. “Big sign. You can’t miss it.” Siobhan groaned at the distance but took heart that it was still within the realm of possibility.
When we got there, all was forgiven. She scoured the colorful and interesting Phoenix gift shop almost until it closed an hour later. She bought presents for her friends. She traversed the walkways, looking out with appreciation over the spectacular panorama. She delighted in her savory meal.
“Worth all the teeth-gnashing of the trip up, right?” I asked.
“No doubt about it,” she replied.
“So the serene demeanor of the attendees and the quiet majesty of the surroundings have brought peace to your troubled essence,” I supposed.
“That, too,” she agreed, “ that, too….”
“And so what are your closing thoughts? What do you take from all this?”
“Well, first I take satisfaction that I discovered this amazing place, that I came to Big Sur at all. Second, I take pleasure in knowing that one hundred, two hundred years from now people will be standing on these same cliffs, exhilarated, looking out at the sea. And then I take heart that places like Big Sur actually exist, small wonders that send the human soul soaring with just a single glance.”
“Oh, and while we’re on the subject of taking—I’ll take those car keys, pardner. You’ve had your fun for the day. Momma’s bringing this wagon train home.”
The Sixth Day—Point Lobos And Carmel
Enough of this driving around in automobiles. We must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky. And we have just the spot—Point Lobos State Reserve, just a hop, skip and jump from Monterey. Word has it there are seals there, perhaps the very same band of critters who skipped out on our appointment at Fisherman’s Wharf. Maybe we could sneak up on them unannounced.
Point Lobos, by the way, is not your average state park. They have rock there which is hard to come by. Matter of fact, two different kinds of bedrock compose the foundation of the reserve. The older kind is granodiorite, a granite-like crystalline rock that underlies the entire Monterey Peninsula region. Then there is a younger sedimentary rock called the Carmelo Formation which consists of solidified layers of sand, gravel and mud. The latter sits comfortably on top of the granodiorite.
About 80 million years ago, give or take a decade, while dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, a mass of molten rock cooled and crystallized 5 to 10 miles beneath the surface at temperatures approaching 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, or so they tell us. Seems to us they’re just guessing because everybody knows thermometers don’t go that high, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, they being scientists and all. Anyway, as the rock became solid, further cooling caused it to crack. Mineral-rich superheated water pushed into the fractures where dissolved minerals crystallized. Today, these filled cracks are visible as veins or dikes, light-colored sheets, a half-inch to many inches thick, that cut across the rock.
Minerals in the granodiorite include the feldspar minerals orthoclase and plagioclase, quartz, small, scaly flakes of dark mica or biotite and little masses of shiny greenish-black hornblende. The orthoclase crystals are particularly large and show a striking parallel alignment. On sunny days, sunlight reflects from perfect fracture plates within the orthoclase crystals.
Well, that’s all well and good, you say, but what about the seals? Oh, they were there, alright, in batches. You could hear them from the parking lot, not to mention detect their distinctive aroma. We’re not sure why the seals opt to vacation on Point Lobos but it could be because many of the rocks they choose to bask on are far enough out in the water to prevent camera-toting tourists from climbing all over their territory. Or it may be because cell phone reception is unusually good there, take your pick. At any rate, Siobhan was thrilled to see them. She also professed to eyeball a small group of whales flopping around a gazillion miles from shore but it looked suspiciously like a couple of tiny waves to me, a cynical sort when it comes to whale-watching.
About noon, the sun began its daily battle with the morning fog for dominance, emerging in all its radiant splendor by one o’clock. Satisfied that all was well with the seals, Siobhan decided it was alright to move on to little Carmel, home of ritzy retail establishments and Clint Eastwood. We didn’t see Clint, but there were reminders he once mayored in Carmel, mainly Malpaso Creek, for which Eastwood’s production company is named, not to mention Malpaso Road, Malpaso Lane and Malpaso Drive. If Clint is smart, he doesn’t live on any of them.
Hitting the shops, Siobhan was able to find a product not in evidence in normal towns, that being “Doggles”—you guessed it: goggles for dogs. Now, our dog Lila has no need for such accoutrements, of course, being adverse to nautical ventures of any greater difficulty than standing in the horses’ water trough. On the other hand, Siobhan has a blue-eyed goat named Casper whose eye pigment seems to be creating a health issue. She is of the opinion that Doggles, reconstructed for goats, will solve the problem. I, on the other hand, think this could lead to psychological problems for Casper when all the other goats begin laughing hysterically at his new optical enhancements. We didn’t do much else or buy much else in Carmel, but we’ll always have Doggles to remember it by.
Next Week: The final installment of this endless travelogue as Siobhan and Bill race over hill and dale, past elephant seals and herds of zebras on their trip to visit Alice (the Republican) in sunny L.A. Return with us to the iconic old Santa Monica Pier, to the sandy sidewalks of Venice, to the teeming hordes of Hollywood Boulevard as we walk poor old Alice almost to death, hoping she’ll be too tired to vote. Be there or be square!
That’s almost all, folks….
