Monterey - The Salad Bowl

For those of you reading this that have never been in Monterey or the Salinas Valley in California, you have to know that this region has some of the most fertile earth for growing fruit and vegetables in the entire country. Once you come down hwy 101 into the valley you are completely surrounded by artichokes (see photo above), newly planted strawberries (see photo right). The chokes are in season and the berries have just been planted on top of plastic sheets). There is field after field of freshly turned earth ready for planting. I have

cycled through this valley and the surrounding coastal mountains 4 times during my AIDS Rides from San Francisco to Los Angeles in the late 90's. Riding my bike through the early summer crops of lettuce, chard, strawberries, cabbage, cauliflower, celery (you name it) that cross the landscape, into infinity, is a site to behold. One develops a whole new appreciation of farm workers when you see them bent over in the fields for hours and hours in the hot California sun. Work none of us white folks would ever think of doing today. Even if we were out of work and on food stamps! Sorry if I'm getting political, but hey, I AM a progressive Californian. :o) We need to give thanks to all of

those Hispanics who pick the food we eat every day. As we approached Monterey and the ocean, you can sense the change in the smell of the air.

Fresh, salty, misty, alive. The sand dunes are simply stunning with their winter ice plant color on to contrast the sand dunes in the background (see photo).

We arrived at Nina and Kim's Monterey home (see photos) to 'no power'. No surprise if you remember my last blog entry about the storm we drove through to get here. We spent the late afternoon getting settled and arranging candles

around the house so we could see as darkness fell. We decided to go out to Carmel for dinner, since we still had no power. We ate at a most excellent sushi restaurant called Sushi Heaven on Dolores Street. Well, of course I had died and gone to HEAVEN! I still can't get enough fresh seafood!

I do love coming to visit here. We just kick back and relax and do 'whatever'. No expectations. No worries. Sit and read a book all day. Do a little work via the Internet. Go for a hike. Shop for great food and then cook it together (of course it helps being on sabbatical and having

the time). That laid back California image the rest of the world has can exist every once in a while. As the storms kept coming, we kept losing power. We had to cook dinner one night by candle light. Very intimate and quite challenging to not lose a finger while chopping onions. We managed to make some great pasta with tofu meatballs (remember, you are in California!).

YUMMY! The tofu meatballs tasted just like beef. I SWEAR! Nina

is just a queen in the kitchen (see photo) :o) I will end this blog entry with a beautiful Monterey California sunset sky picture.

Cats and Dogs!

O.K., so you know how the saying goes, 'it's raining cats & dogs'? Well, when Nina and 1 tried to leave San Francisco on Monday, Jan. 18, it started raining sheeps and cows! I mean right when we got in the car it started coming down like that. You would think we were in the mid-west, forchristsake! We headed towards ocean beach to pick up coastal highway 1 to get us to Monterey. By the time we drove the 10 minutes to ocean beach, it was getting pretty scary. It was raining so hard the wiper blades on the car were useless. The wind was gusting between 45-60mph. The ocean was out of control, crashing against the beach and walls like a monster. By the time we started to round the curve and go up the hill towards devils slide (how comforting) we had zero visibility. What made it even nicer was they had the right lane closed (the one on MY side of the car!) due to that lane being eaten away by the violent ocean. Good thing it was raining so hard I couldn't see out of the window! :o) That's when we looked at each other and said, "NO! This aint happening today!" We pulled over till the rain let up a bit and we could see and then we turned around and headed back to the house. On our way back,

the flooding was crazy. Manhole covers were popping up off of the street from the amount of water going through them. Cars were swerving around them as the geysers were randomly popping up out of the street. You have to remember, this

is California

and it doesn't usually rain like this here. Geeez, this was almost as exciting as a tornado where I live! We got back to the house and

went right to the computer to get

the weather map to see if we were going to be able to make it down

to Monterey today or not. We saw that there was going to be a 3 or 4-hour break between

the next system coming through, so we jumped right back in the car and tried again. This time we took the hwy 101 route that goes a bit more inland and we were successful. The drive down was really beautiful with all of the dramatic thunderclouds and random sun popping through on the lush green hills. We did have the occasional rain shower, but nothing like our earlier experience. Here are a few photos of our beautiful drive south to Monterey.