In the morning I take the car on ’17 Mile Drive’ at Pebble Beach. As it is a privately owned community of golf courses and large houses, nearly all of which are gated, there is a $9.50 charge to enter. The US Open is being held here next week and the tents and fences are being put up around the Pebble Beach Links course.
Not all the homes on Pebble Beach are luxurious, but those on the coastline tend to be massive and are probably worth $10 to $20m, or at least they probably were before the real estate crash. One of the homes hidden away off 17 Mile Drive is for sale at $1.6m, though it wasn’t near the size of the seaside houses.
Though the coastline is very beautiful, it is not out of the ordinary for northern California. The centre piece is the ‘Lone Cypress’, a 250 year old tree standing out at the top of a rocky point. The rocks on which it rests have been artificially reinforced, the marketing men needing to keep the tree alive as the symbol of Pebble Beach.
There is a cool breeze and it is quite foggy today, so it is not the best day for the visit, though I have some fun at one of the numerous official viewing sites teasing the seaside chipmunk and sea bird population by pretending to have some food. This was at ‘Seal Rock’, another chunk of rocky coastline though with a small sandy beach, so named because of a seal colony that inhabits a large rock protruding out of the ocean a hundred yards or so from the edge of the tide.
Is Pebble Beach worth $9.50 to take a drive around? Yeah, even if it is just to see how you could live if you had the money...though it’s perhaps a locale you would choose only if you liked Golf.
After Pebble Beach, I visit Pacific Grove, a small seaside town with some of the oldest homes in the area – dating all the way back to 1880s, the middle ages in American terms. Most have a Victorian summer house look to them, though the choice of colours can be more flamboyant than that would imply. There is also a smattering of Art Deco architecture to add a bit of flavour. It looks like a posh retirement village, though the rocks that make a cove of the small beach are referred to as ‘Lover’s Point’, and there are some young families and kayakers on the sand. When I return to my car parked on the roadside, I find that I have a ticket for being ‘the wrong way around’, i.e. facing traffic on my side of the road. Mr Eastwood, another northern California town needs you.
I have booked a 16 day bus tour of national parks of the west with Green Tortoise starting from San Francisco. However, the tour doesn’t include Yosemite, which is only a couple of hours away, and I have been told I should go, and I have a couple of days before I need to be in SF.
I stop for the night at Merced, which apparently has some sort of historical significance, but now just looks like a town of motels. Indeed, my motel is the cheapest one I can find on ‘Motel Drive’ ($50).
For dinner, I find a Thai restaurant. Thai food in Thailand is light and subtle, but this one piles on slodgy and over flavoured portions.
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| at far left, parked the 'wrong way' |
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| at 'Lovers Point' |
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| the roadside wildlife |
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