After two pandemic years of only sporadic local travel, the other day we took a chance and hopped on a non-stop flight to San Francisco. Our itinerary was modest. Arriving in early afternoon, we'd take possession of our over-priced sub-compact rental car and drive up and over the bay peninsula ridge to the Pacific coast for a few days of hiking and bird-watching. No rain in the forecast, temperatures fluctuating between 45 and 60. Half-Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Pacific Grove. Sound idyllic? It was. For the most part.
We ran into a hitch, however, at the car rental counter. The line was long, and by the time I got to the counter, all the compact cars were gone. My friendly agent thought I'd be pleased about an upgrade to a Chevy Camaro. A convertible, no less. I had my doubts, but I was hot and tired and eager to get on the road, and sight unseen, I said, "Sure."
I did not know how hard it is to get into a Camaro. Once you're firmly ensconced behind the wheel, you might as well be going to Mars.
Nor did I know how absurdly bad the visibility is. And the two-door concept did not jibe well with our habit of repeatedly throwing jackets, vests, binoculars, and bird books in the back seat and fetching them out again at the next roadside stop.
I didn't want to return to the rental counter inside, but Hilary knew it would be time well- spent. We waited in line again—not quite so long this time—and when an agent was free he waved a yellow happy face on a stick, I walked down to his post, and I said, "We rented a compact, but we ended up with a Camaro, and isn't going to work for us. I can't even get my suitcase into the trunk. Maybe you've got a Corolla or something."
"A Corolla?" He looked surprised. "That's a mid-sized car. Well, let's see. It might be a fifteen-minute wait while they process the incoming cars." But he continued to scroll through the screen, and then he said, "How about a Jeep Wrangler?"
"A Wrangler?" I said. "That's the boxy little one that actually looks like a jeep. Right? It's the opposite of a Camaro. We'll take it."
The agent redid our paperwork. (Same price? of course. Though I noticed on the final invoice that a Wrangler is categorized not as a compact but as a "Cool Car.")
Out of the airport, south on the freeway, a right turn onto Highway 92 (I think) and we were winding our way with almost shocking suddenness, and also great delight, through the eucalyptus groves, up and down the hilly, verdant, and aromatic Santa Cruz Mountains, past horse farms and dilapidated million-dollar shacks. Ten or twenty minutes later we emerged from the hills and found ourselves in Half Moon Bay.
Some people come for the restaurants, others come for the golf. We come for the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve. And the ocean itself, of course. I don't get excited about harbor seals lounging on the beach with their pups like overcooked Polish sausages, but they're usually there, if you want to see them.
I love the smell of the forest, and the nasturtiums blooming to a height of ten feet amid the shrubbery. The tide pools can be great when the tide is out, with starfish and sea urchins and other small creatures I've never been able to properly identify. And don't forget: everything is green, unlike Minnesota. And the wind is blowing in off the ocean, and the waves are resounding. There are very few people around.
Also, there are plenty of birds migrating north along the coast. Our best sighting at the reserve was of a junco. I know what you're going to say: we have plenty of juncos in Minnesota. (It's been estimated that there are more juncos in North America than people.)
But the ones in California are different. Take a look.
A minor disappointment on this visit was that the café at the local airport was closed for remodeling. Our big find was the Pillar Point Wetland Salt Marsh Habitat. I had saved a brochure from a previous trip and Hilary made use of it, but also of her phone, to guide me back and forth along the highway as we struggled to find a way into it. Finally we succeeded in locating the tiny village of Princeton-by-the-Sea and drove past several swanky Italian restaurants and a microbrewery before we located a warren of backstreets named after Ivy League colleges, all of which were lined with warehouses and small-scale marine industries. (There's a story there somewhere, but I don't know what it is.)
Finally we found the slough. And almost immediately, amid the buffleheads drifting out on the water in evening light, we spotted several cinnamon teal, which only rarely wander as far east as Minnesota, and also a snowy egret closer to shore, standing near a great egret, as if to highlight the differences. A few golden-crowned sparrows were feeding amid the gravel alongside the parking lot. I'd never seen one before. A California towhee hopped by. A raven landed in the gravel on the side of the road.
Visitors nearby were few, and they were all dog-walkers. We chatted with a man from England who'd moved to Half Moon Bay recently. "Well, I lived in Philadelphia for twenty years, so I'm not right off the boat." He and his wife bought a place five years ago and rented it out while they settled affairs back east.
He also told us about the military installation at the top of the hill. "If a missile goes haywire, that's the only place on the West Coast that can shoot it down."
"A nice place to spend your declining years," I said.
"Well, there's a bumper sticker that says HALF MOON BAY SUCKS. DON'T COME HERE."
I was going to ask him how he managed to afford the million-dollar price tags roundabout, but suddenly it dawned on me: he was Keith Richards' little brother!"
We ate an early dinner at Sam's Chowder House, gazing out the window at the marina while other diners enjoyed the cool breeze coming in off the sea under terrace heaters. We then returned to our motel a few miles up the road and crashed. It had been a long day.
The drive south along the coast from Half Moon Bay to Pacific Grove on Highway 1 would normally take about two hours. It took us six. Our first stop was the Purisma Creek trailhead, where we hiked up the canyon through the redwoods for a mile or two. We also stopped at Pompanio Beach because we'd spotted a flock of shorebirds from the highway. They turned out to be whimbrels. At least 80 of them. (Whimbrels don't often mix with other birds, for some reason.)
A young man was surf-fishing on the beach. I walked over and said, "Fishing for stripies?" This may have been a dumb thing to say, but the last man I had seen surf-fishing had been after that species. (But that was in Nova Scotia.)
"No, I'm after Dungeness crabs. I had some bites early and I thought it might be a good day. But it's been quiet for the last two hours."
He explained the method. "You just throw out the bait, wait a while, then pull it in. There are no "bites" or signals. It's like pulling in a wet boot. I've even started using Spam for bait."
"Do you sell them or eat them?" I said. "If you catch them."
"I eat them."
The coastal highway north of Santa Cruz is remarkably undeveloped for twenty miles. Santa Cruz itself is highly developed, and it can take quite a while to get through all the traffic lights downtown. From there the freeway trips south along the coast, passing a number of unglamorous sounding towns such as Watsonville (the artichoke capital) and Castroville (the garlic capital). Once you round the bend of the coast westward toward Monterey the nomenclature improves, but only slightly—Marina, Sand City, Seaside.
The one municipality along this stretch that stands out is Moss Landing. Most would agree that the nuclear power plant there is an eyesore, though it bears a more than passing resemblance to the Pompidou Center in Paris. No, it's the harbor, the beach, the slough that commands attention, because it's usually crawling with shorebirds.
We did not know this, but once again, we spotted some activity from the highway just before the turnoff and made a surprise stop. Wow! Alongside the godwits and whimbrels that you see everywhere on the coastal beaches were several duck species, various grebes, tiny sandpipers and bulky dowitchers, sinister cormorants and graceful terns, gulls and loons, herons and stilts, plovers and sanderlings. I was delighted to see clusters of ruddy ducks and widgeons floating in the bay. Similar birds pass through Minnesota at this time of year, but you don't see them that often. At least we don't.
The road to the beach crosses over a backwater of Elkhorn Slough, and there are a number of good places from which to view the birds and also the sea otters drifting casually on their backs, seemingly without a care in the world.
And Hilary noticed that there's a robust kayak rental on the inland side of the slough. (We might have to come back here someday.)
A few days later, we were hiking near Jack's Peak above Monterey (where Monterey Jack cheese was invented) and we ran into a couple who told us about a famous fish restaurant called Phil's Fish Market out on the spit in Moss Landing. "But it's hard to get a table there," the woman said. "Go early."
We drove there later that afternoon. We didn't get in.
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