As our adventure continues, we check in to get our rental car, the office of which is conveniently located around the corner from our hotel. Once the paperwork is completed, we go back through our hotel lobby, pass the convention rooms, up an elevator, and into a large parking garage. There we see a cluster of cars under a large Hertz sign.
We push the key fob so that what will be our car for the next several days will greet us with lights and a beep. Nothing.
I walk closer, pushing the key fob. Nope. Nada.
We check the license plate number from the rental documents. No car.
Finally, a Hertz employee saunters over and asks have we tried any of the cars on the other side of the parking garage. I refrain from saying no, why would we check cars that are not under the Hertz sign. We slowly make our way over to the few cars and a sinking sensation comes over me. Surely not. It can’t be. Not the only one in the entire garage that doesn’t have California license plates. I push the fob. Of course, the little sub-compact SUV that doesn’t look anything like the mid-sized SUV we paid for beeps and lights up. The one with Florida license plates, which in my neck of the woods marks you as a tourist with, shall we say, a unique driving style, which I assume will be the same in California. So much for blending in.
For some reason, the trunk of the car – I’m not going to say what make of car it is, but the old joke on them is they are often Found On Road Dead – won’t open. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have any latch, button, handle … anything. Nothing inside to push, either. Puzzled, and getting more frustrated by the second, the rental employee comes over again, not even trying to hide her smirk at the tourists who are soon to be from Florida, and shows us how to open the trunk.
Yes, let’s reinvent the wheel here: the latch is hidden inside a recess in one of the rear lights. And the trunk door swings open rather than up, revealing a space that would easily fit into our bathroom on the train we had left the day before. I squeezed one of our two suitcases in after we decided not to go all the way back down, through the hotel, etc. and wait in line to in the unlikely event Hertz would give us what we had paid for.
So off we went, leaving Oakland behind and heading across the bay to find the mighty Pacific, which turned out to be right over those mountains over there in Half Moon Bay. A fine sight to see it was, the day clear and cool, the scenery a feast for the eyes, excitement in our hearts as we headed down the coast. Our destination: fabled Monterey.
Along the way, we stop in at the northern end of Monterey Bay at Santa Cruz, home to a state university where the athletic teams are known as the Banana Slugs. If that doesn’t make the city unique enough, there is a 24-acre boardwalk and amusement park stretching along most of the city’s beautiful beach.
It also has a pier that you can drive out on that is lined with shops and restaurants. We were getting into our car after a delicious lunch of clam chowder when we heard this godawful hooting and bellowing. Looking over the side of the pier we got a look at our first seals in California, although technically speaking they were actually sea lions and there is a difference between the two that I won’t go into here and if you really want to know you can Google it like we did.
At last we arrive in Monterey and check into our hotel, with fabulous views overlooking a beach and the bay, sea otters bobbing about in and atop the kelp forests. Most of the bay is one giant sea sanctuary, where the wildlife is protected. Monterey itself is a bit more bustling and touristy than I had thought it might be, but still with a wonderful ambiance and plenty to do, including a great aquarium.
The beach out our balcony apparently is a great place to scuba dive from shore, and we saw lots of wet-suited divers heading out to play in the kelp with the otters. We also saw a couple of people in swimsuits wade in and swim about as if it were South Beach in the summer; keep in mind the water temperature in the bay was in the low 50s. One woman was swimming around for more than 30 minutes – long enough for me to look up how long someone could be in water that cold before hypothermia set in. (The answer is about an hour.)
The only problem with our room was that it was noisy at night, what with the sea lions at the nearby Fisherman’s Wharf barking and woofing it up all night. Reminded me of home with the neighborhood dogs and coyotes making a racket at night.
We drove down the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur. Wow! What can I say? It’s better than advertised: Absolutely stunning, breathtakingly beautiful. Waves crashing on the rocks from the glittering blue ocean stretching off to Asia on one side, mountains soaring to the sky on the other. There were even redwood trees – smallish by Redwood National Park standards, but still impressive.
So we drove the 50 or so miles down the coast until we got to where the road had been washed out, turned around and headed back. I’m eyeing the gas gauge, so we stop for lunch and gas up in one of the few spots for miles around that have restaurants and gas stations. We had already paid about $5 a gallon – this is California, after all – but this was $6 since we’re miles from anywhere else. That’s when I realize that our rental car had a gas tank of a little more than 10 gallons, and while it got decent mileage I’m wondering how it – and we – will fare once we get out in the desert in a couple of days.
We toured Carmel, technically known as Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood used to be mayor, and it is every bit as charming as it is billed to be, with a very nice beach and expensive homes climbing up the hills.
The Monterey Peninsula is also famous for its golf courses – Pebble Beach being the most well-known. They have what is known as the 17-Mile Drive that winds around the golf courses and shoreline and beaches and neighborhoods of gazillion-dollar mega mansions. I don’t know which is worse: that they actually charge $11.75 (WTF?) for the right to drive around or that we actually paid it.
After loading up on hotel tissues since my sinus issues have not cleared up yet, we fondly bid adieu to Monterey and head out into central California. Our destination this time is less defined; the original plan was to drive south and then drive back up the Pacific Coast Highway to the other end of where it was closed. By the time we got to San Simeon, we decided that was enough and headed back out to central California.
San Simeon, of course, is a castle built by William Randolph Hearst, of whom I had more than a passing knowledge of since we had to study him in journalism school. He was a notorious newspaper publisher in the late 1800s and 1900s who was famous as one of the forerunners of sensational “journalism,” inciting wars and supporting the Nazi party and the like. Fortunately, journalism has matured since then and is far more responsible. Like many other rich people, he was all in on extravagance and build a castle just because he could.
We didn’t tour the castle – we were told there were many steps, which require knees (which F does not currently have, for those who have not been paying attention) to navigate – but had a nice lunch at a quaint motel restaurant. But the real highlight was a couple of miles up the road: the elephant seals.
A beach complete with a boardwalk for viewing offered an unbelievable sight: Maybe a hundred or more seals lolling on their backs, white bellies catching the rays or flapping sand on their backs with their flippers, looking like a bunch of plump Americans charring themselves on a Caribbean beach. Occasionally a few would ungainly hump down to the water through the crashing waves where they would transform themselves into sleek, graceful torpedoes cavorting in the cold Pacific. Mesmerizing in their magnificence.
Elephant seals are so named because of the protruding proboscis of the males. While we wouldn’t dream of describing people with large noses that way – hey, you must be an elephant human! – the seals didn’t seem to have taken offense at the name we had given them.
We said goodby to the Pacific and headed east into farm country. It’s no wonder so much of our food comes from California: they have some big farms out there. We’re driving along with mountains in the distance on both sides of the valley, fields spreading for miles in all directions. The fields were so big you could ride a tractor down one row and have to stop for lunch before returning. (OK, I made that up.)
We passed the hours trying to figure out what the crops were, since the climate – at least so far – allows crops to be gown year-round. Broccoli, spinach, something we weren’t sure of, grapes, oranges, something dozens of people were planting … We passed miles and miles of trees we didn’t recognize, but F’s extensive research eventually revealed them as pistachios. We looked for roadside stands selling local crops like they do in the South, but it wasn’t until the next day we scored some local pistachios at a fruit and nut shop.
We saw some strange red fruit growing on trees that were not apples and couldn’t figure out what they were until we stopped at a crossroads by some huge building and saw red pulp pouring out a conveyor belt into a big truck. We looked up the name of the company on the building and realized they made pomegranate juice. Go figure.
I realize many people might find it odd that we were so fascinated driving for hours amid farms and fields, but we try to find our fun wherever we are. You have your eco-tourists; call us agro-tourists.
We spent the night in Bakersfield, whose main claim to fame is that it is the home of the only Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to be deposed, although they have not had time yet to erect a sign on the outskirts of town to proudly proclaim that achievement.
I had been led to believe that there were some nice parts of the town, but somehow they managed to elude us, making me wax nostalgic just a tiny bit for Oakland.
So, on to the wilds of the desert and the heat of Death Valley! I’m pretty sure I’ll need a jacket.