HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (23) - RODS ON THE WHARF (PHOTOBLOG)

NOVEMBER 09 (Cont'd)

Sometimes the general reverence for the motor car is somewhat misplaced, I feel. But when the whole street is filled with shiny and beautifully preserved examples like this, i think you can at least begin to appreciate why people find them so very fascinating.

After a while of people getting "In My Way" I started focussing on the extreme close-ups, and how the various pieces of several cars broke into the frame of my viewfinder, and, after that, I found that I was having a lot more fun.

I think I was trying for an "abstract", "people-free" set of pictures, which is no mean feat in a crowded place like Monterey was on the morning I took these, and I rather like them. I was thinking of making them all black and white and upping the contrast - and I may still do that - but something about those shiny metallic colours appeals to me far, far too much to do that.

Finally, here's a sight that immediately reminded me of a former colleague of mine as I stood in the sunshine, and which I hope will make him smile... one of those "half-timbered cars" as my Beloved still refers to them.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (22) - MONTEREY

NOVEMBER 09

Well, our second or third choice of hotel didn't turn out to be too bad, and we got up after a decent enough night's sleep and planned to have a "reasonably quiet" day just mooching about in Monterey and walking along the coastal path looking at the wildlife, not least because I was a little bit tired of doing all that driving and fancied a day off from it.

So, we gathered together our cameras and binoculars and headed out into the bright morning, stopping for breakfast at "The Wild Plum Cafe" where we'd been a couple of times on our previous holiday, and which we'd found to be a truly excellent breakfasting spot, even on a busy Sunday morning like this was.

Soon afterwards, having filled up on a rather excellent breakfast, we headed on out towards the Wharfs and, for a time at least, I became more than a little obsessed by the (to my mind at least) incongruous juxtaposition of the Christmas Decorations and the bright blue summery skies.

But then, after noticing just how many people were around, we then became aware of a couple of old motor cars parked up on sidewalks of the main road and, as we moved into the historical area itself, a lot more "classic" and "hot rod" style cars were on display with hundreds of people milling around admiring them, sharing a nostalgic thought or two, or generally photographing the heck out of them.

Naturally, we began photographing the heck out of them, with me eventually and reluctantly deciding to "make a feature of" having to have people in my way.

This was, apparently the annual "Rods on the Wharf" event in which shiny, beautifully maintained and highly polished cars from all eras of motoring history gather in Monterey, and might also go some way towards explaining the lack of available hotel space that weekend. Naturally, as a pair of addictive snappers, the opportunity to take pictures of something that we might not otherwise get the chance to was far too tempting to resist, and we stayed far, far longer in the historical area of Monterey than we might otherwise have done.

In fact we stayed beyond eleven o'clock when it became apparent that the event was strongly linked with the town's Veteran's Day Commemorations, and the honour guard went through their paces whilst some very moving speeches were made and both "The Last Post" and the (American) National Anthem (naturally) was played by a lone bugler, which was all terribly moving and, given the hustle and bustle moments before, you could have heard a pin drop.

Being so far away from home on what we call "Remembrance Sunday" had felt strange, especially with this being the centenary which was being well marked back in Britain, but this did at least partially make up for it, even though it became very apparent very quickly that America makes far less of the First World War than the Second with regard to its commemorations, perhaps, I admit, because there are still so many veterans of that conflict still around.

Moving on, we found ourselves at the Wharf and then walking along the part of the coastal trail that leads towards Cannery Wharf and the Aquarium, and it took us a very, very long time to walk a very, very short distance, because we kept stopping to watch the sea birds that had gathered upon the rocks and other perches close into shore, and which gave us a ridiculously convenient opportunity to see all sorts of birds and wildlife in close-up.

Afterwards we spent the rest of the day walking slowly backwards and forwards along that along the waterfront looking at so much of the bird and marine life which lives so very close to the shore in Monterey Bay, and it made for a very special day.

There really is just so very much of it, and all so surprisingly close to the shore, and to the centre of town that you really don't have to make all that much effort to see some rather amazing sights.

The Beloved had one tumble during our walk, however, which did rather curtail our planned walking distance ever so slightly, as did the chilly sea fog which began to envelop the town during the afternoon, but the Pelicans and the Sea-Lions more than made up for that, as well as the excellent meal that we enjoyed in "Cibo" that evening.

Mostly the Pelicans, though.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (21) - MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM

NOVEMBER 08 (Cont'd)

I do like Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's the one place that I've made a point of visiting every single time that I've been to California, and I never tire of it, even though my photographs never seem quite able to capture the beauty and splendour of the place.

This time around, we arrived on Saturday afternoon, after having parked in one of the more "tourist trap" style car parks along Cannery Row, to find the place to be more heaving with people than we had ever seen it before, although the girl who sold us the tickets after we had queued up for a while explained that this was because it was a "Holiday Weekend" and that lots of people were taking the opportunity to tie it to Veteran's Day the following Tuesday to make their visit.

Suddenly, all the problems that we had found in booking our hotel rooms, and the presence of all of those hordes of people milling about suddenly made a lot more sense, and a great big "Ah, NOW I understand…" flowed through our minds as we were suddenly wondering about our next hotel booking and just how difficult it might turn out to be.

That was for later, of course, because first we had to admire the splendour of all that marine life, from jellyfish to penguins, sharks to turtles, and sea otters to puffins that we were going to look at until the aquarium closed at around 5.00 am "I think" (as one employee we asked helpfully replied).

Still with its vast plate glass windows, and large kelp forest, alongside all of the other displays, (one or two of which failed to convince me that they were genuine sea creatures - Ahem!) Monterey Bay Aquarium remains a good and inspiring afternoon out, despite the hustle and bustle of all of the people and the many and varied types of human activity on display.

I wonder what the jellyfish make of the "Educator" style of parenting, or the more passive "Being Educated by their kids" type…? They probably remain utterly oblivious, of course, and are maybe unaware that they are even in tanks, however vast and temperature controlled they might be.

One of the most beautiful things about the aquarium is the outdoor areas which give a spectacular view across Monterey Bay itself, and give you the chance to see the marine and bird life of the bay in its more natural environment. Seeing various Gulls, Cormorants and Pelicans, Seals and Sea Lions is pretty much par for the course, and the aquarium will now even lend out binoculars to visitors so that they can get a closer look, which was especially exciting as a Peregrine Falcon had recently taken to perching on the high towers of the building's cooling system and was helping to keep the local pigeon population under control, as well as fighting a bitter territorial feud - as we were able to witness - with another Peregrine whose area of interest was overlapping with its own.

The only problem I could see with that particular view of the bay was that it didn't face towards the sunset, not that this made the view any less impressive as the setting sun behind us painted the clouds in rich hues of pink and orange as we ended our afternoon's visit.

Walking back along Cannery Row, we were able to see the even richer colours of the sunset itself and then we decided that, instead of returning to the car immediately and heading off to check in at our chosen hotel, we would instead risk having a meal in one of the food outlets on Cannery Row itself and, with us both suddenly really fancying a proper American hamburger, we found ourselves heading inside "Johnny Rockets" for what would turn out to be a memorable experience, mostly because of the truly excellent staff.

You see the burgers were perfectly fine, and the milkshakes were utterly wonderful, which is much as you might expect, but what earned the waitress a much larger tip than we might otherwise have left was her efforts in making us feel welcome, not least by drawing little portraits of us in the ketchup bowls she brought, and then the entire staff (or so it seemed) suddenly joined in with an impromptu dance routine when Aretha's "Respect" came onto the Jukebox which was very enjoyable to watch, and made all the more so be not being pressured to join in with it.

I did wonder whether they have to do this whenever that particular track comes on, or whether they plan it, and I also wondered whether they were limited to one performance an hour, otherwise they would end up even more shattered than they might otherwise be.

That, and a truly wicked, wicked person could, if they put their mind to it, put that track on endless repeats and completely wear them out...

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (20) - SANTA ROSA TO MONTEREY

NOVEMBER 08

Saturday, the mid point of our holiday, was a day of transitions as we travelled a lot of miles  as we moved from the areas north of San Francisco those to the south of that great, if vulnerable City.

But thoughts of that were far from our mind as we packed up and set off with a fruit pie at Duarte's Tavern, in the vicinity of Pescadero firmly on our minds for breakfast.

I had called in at Duarte's a long, long time ago, and had been introduced to "Olallaberry Pie" and had, in turn, introduced my Beloved to the same delight on one of our first visits to California about ten years ago, and so a re-acquaintance felt long overdue.

However, the journey south to San Francisco took far longer than we had anticipated and, having sat in a long queue of traffic, we took a swift diversion up the Marin Headlands to take our ritual pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city beyond it from that most famous of vantage points, possibly with an idea to post the pictures for the folks back home, although, in the end, that didn't actually happen.

We did, of course, know that we'd be returning to the city before heading home, and could have put off this stop for a "photo op", but it was a nice morning and, as things turned out, it was just as well that we took the opportunity when it presented itself, even though the city lacked that impressively classic white sparkle which we'd seen on earlier visits because of the brightness of the sun and the slight mist still hanging on to the morning.

So, with that all done and dusted, we headed back down and into the city, causing ourselves great angst over the payment of the toll for those travelling across the bridge in a southerly direction. You see, the famous tollbooths are now unmanned and empty, and will be disappearing forever fairly soon, we were told. Instead you just drive through and either pay with some kind of CityPass, or the number plate recognition system identifies you and send you a bill.

After making a few enquiries, and reading through our Rental Agreement, we decided that the Car rental Company would probably just add it to our bill eventually, and that it might be unwise to set up a payment that was linked to the Registration Plate of a Rental Car that we were unlikely to ever drive again, so we are now fully expecting the entire weight of "Federal Law" to land upon us at some future date long after we've forgotten all about it.

Hungry as anything, and troubled by this as yet unresolved situation, we decided to call in for breakfast at our favourite little Mel's Diner on Lombard Street, the place where we had usually had our farewell meal to the city on previous visits, because Duarte's still seemed to be an awfully long way away.

After this, we negotiated our way through some Big City Saturday traffic and found ourselves heading southwards once more on the Pacific Coastal Highway and, eventually, we did arrive at Pescadero where we took a moment to stop at a lovely little beach and watch the Pelicans fly by.

Pescadero itself seems to have made some improvements since we were last there, not least by developing a huge Bird Sanctuary / Nature Reserve just next to the highway about which we had not previously known, and, had we not really needed to get a move on to get to Monterey in the early afternoon, we would have spent far more time there, and we added it to our short list of places to be investigated later, if we found the time.

We did try to stop for Coffee and Fruit Pie at Pescadero itself but at that time, half way through a busy Saturday morning, the little town was far, far too busy for us to find a parking spot - must have been all those bird watchers - and so we turned the car around and headed southwards again, arriving as planned at a packed Monterey in the early afternoon of a Saturday on what turned out to be a "Holiday Weekend…"

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (19) - POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE

NOVEMBER 07

We had decided to use Santa Rosa as a base for revisiting the same Point Reyes National Seashore which we had briefly visited on the first full day of our trip, and so we got up in Santa Rosa fully intending to drive the third-odd miles to Point Reyes Station and were rather surprised to find ourselves battling through the rush hour on the Freeway in the sort of thick, dense fog that could only remind me of home.

Of course, it wasn't exactly unexpected. After all, it was November, and coastal California is notorious for its sea fogs, but we hadn't quite imagined that it might appear this far inland. Still, there's always something rather appealing about low-lying mist, and, as we left the Freeway and found ourselves travelling through the coastal hills, we were able to see some beautiful views as we climbed above the cloud line.

Soon afterwards we arrived in Point Reyes Station and parked up, and headed into the Station House Cafe for a very welcoming and very welcome late breakfast, before mooching around what seemed to be a rather pleasant little town which had at least one slightly anachronistic-seeming little nicknack shop that swallowed up more of the Beloved's resources.

Then we drove a little further back down the road to Bear Valley Visitor Center and walked the half-mile "Earthquake Trail" that we had decided against attempting upon the previous Sunday morning.

It wasn't a difficult walk by any means, although the lovely little lad who was walking it with his mother seemed to make it far longer than it needed to be by choosing to cross over the little bridge several times, before taking a short cut (that he obviously knew well) back to the car park. Meanwhile, our version of the walk took a little longer than planned because we found that we were a few yards behind a visiting school party which we were reluctant to overtake, and from which we learned much, even though most of the information was being read out from the helpful boards that were dotted along the trail.

As far as being an "Earthquake Trail" went, it might have been a little disappointing for anyone expecting to be rocked and rolled by the shifting of the earth, or to see the ruins of mighty structures, but, half-way along, you do get to see the fence that was shifted sixteen feet by one of several "Big Ones" which have shaped and shaken the area over the past century, and that is something that makes you stop and think, especially when everything below your feet seems so "rock solid" (whatever that may mean…) and you are standing on the actual and infamous San Andreas Fault, a fault, incidentally, that was reported to be under immense stress at the time of our visit, and liable to shift at any moment.

 With that in mind, we returned to the car and headed over to one of the excellent bird watching areas that had been suggested to us the previous Sunday, Abbotts Lagoon.

After driving for about half an hour, we arrived at a fairly deserted car park to find it surrounded by thick fog, but, game as ever, we nevertheless walked the mile or so down towards the lagoon itself and enjoyed a fun couple of hours spotting lots of birds including seabirds, waders and raptors in the fog, before heading back to the car park just before the fog began to clear and reveal to us just how close to the Pacific Ocean we'd been.

A couple sitting on a bench as we got back reliably informed us that there were other sights to be seen further towards the coast, and so we set off, only to turn back fifteen minutes later as the road deteriorated and the fog closed in on us again.

However, this "missed opportunity" was not completely a waste of time because we managed to spot several birds of prey just sitting on the fence posts as we travelled back along that long, lonely, and rather mist-shrouded road, some of which even paused for long enough for us to take a snapshot or two of them wondering quite what it is that we strange humans were up to.

And so, after actually having one of those "bird watching" days that we'd sort of planned the entire holiday around, we booted up "Min" and headed back towards our motel in Santa Rosa, stopping on the way at the Mall - a sudden burst of "civilisation" which did not sit at all well with our day in the great outdoors - and settled for a meal in "Mary's Pizza Shack" in which I, perhaps strangely, failed completely to order a pizza.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (18) - CHARLES M SCHULZ MUSEUM, SANTA ROSA

NOVEMBER 06 (Cont'd)

This is the wall-sized mural designed by Yoshiteru Otani for the Charles M Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California.

It is entirely made up of ceramic tiles printed with Peanuts comic strips representing about ten years of work from the original newspaper cartoon strips.

Well, I liked it anyway…

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (17) - CHARLES M SCHULZ MUSEUM, SANTA ROSA

NOVEMBER 06 (Cont'd)

Mid-way through a sunny Thursday afternoon, we arrived at the Charles M Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa and, eight years after our first attempt at visiting, on that disappointing Tuesday which was the only day that we were in town, we finally found it open to the public and went inside to be greeted by some of the most enthusiastic museum staff that it has ever been my pleasure to interact with.

After giving us a joyous welcome, and shared tales of their own adventures in visiting England, we entered the mail hall which is dominated by a large ceramic mural of Charlie Brown and Lucy and the famous football image, and another wooden one depicting Snoopy in his various guises, both designed for the museum by Yoshiteru Otani.

The staff may very well have been a little bored because one of them positively fell over himself to offer us the opportunity to have our pictures taken in front of the great mural and outside on a park bench being fed cookies by Snoopy and Woodstock, before leaving us to explore the video room, garden (including a "Kite Eating Tree", a huge baseball hat pagoda, and the laser fountain), and exhibition rooms, one of which was being worked in for an exhibition that started "next week", for which they constantly apologised.

Of course, for an old and rather lapsed scribbler like myself, seeing some of the original artworks on display on the walls and in the exhibition cases was just as exciting as seeing the Mona Lisa might be to other artists, and that was rather ironic given that, just a couple of blocks away in the Snoopy Gift Shop, a completely different Mona Lisa actually hangs.

Upstairs there are more original strips, alongside some of "Sparky's" earlier works, as well as a replica of the studio in which he worked for many years on his comic strips, and, dotted around the walls were tiny images of Woodstock and other characters sitting just above the skirting boards giving the whole place a rather loveable atmosphere which seems only right given the uplifting and positive nature of the original strip cartoons themselves.

Because, as well as being endlessly talented and witty, he was a very forward-thinking and inclusive chap was old "Sparky", as the strip reproduced at the top of this page shows, and many of those four-panelled masterpieces (other, longer Sunday Supplement strips were also created) can still make me laugh out loud.

Now, I've always been a huge fan of the "Peanuts" comic strips, so going there really was a bit of a "must" for me and I really was not disappointed, and, of course, I just had to visit the little gift shop and get myself one of those ceramic tiles to take home with me, even though we fretted endlessly about it breaking in transit and I still don't really know what I'm going to do with it now that I have it.

Heading back out into the sunshine, we headed over to the more "commercial" gift shop before going for a sandwich and soda in the "Warm Puppy" Coffee Shop which is attached to the Ice Rink that Mr Schulz built in Santa Rosa and upon which he even played a game or two of Ice Hockey in his time.

The cafe was full of concerned mothers looking on as several coaches trained their beloved children in the gentle art of Ice Skating and, whilst that seemed to this jaded old head to be a very odd thing for any of them to be doing, it probably made a lot more sense to them.

Those sandwiches, by the way, turned out to be a plenteous enough meal to make us not really feel that it was necessary to venture out into Santa Rosa again that evening once we'd checked in at a motel that Trip Advisor assured us was not full of "Whores and Crack Dealers", and so, after our lavish meal at one of the finest restaurants in Mendocino the previous evening, we found ourselves drinking a half bottle of Pinot Noir that we'd picked up at the Cheese Factory in Sonoma, accompanied by a huge bag of salted potato chips.

"It really is full of variety, this journey…" we thought.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (16) - CHARLES M SCHULZ MUSEUM, SANTA ROSA

NOVEMBER 06 (Cont'd)

Need I say more…?

I just knew that I'd like the guy...

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (15) - MENDOCINO TO SANTA ROSA

NOVEMBER 06 (Cont'd)

We left Little River and faced a pretty long drive towards our next destination, the town of Santa Rosa, a place which we had briefly visited one Tuesday long before, when my Beloved had been suffering from a migraine, and which was once the main location for Alfred Hitchcock's film "Shadow of a Doubt", and where a museum that I particularly wanted to visit just happened to be closed on Tuesdays.

We hurtled along the old "two-lane blacktop" passing through dark curtains of Redwood trees, and then the landscape started to change and we were back in Wine Country again and I just had to stop at random just outside a little Vineyard that turned out to be called "Goldeneye" to mark the arrival of autumn (or, if you prefer "fall") to the Wine Country, judging from the spectacular colourscapes that were on display amongst the grape vines.

It's not only Halloween that the Americans celebrate in a far larger way than we at least used to, but the entire season of fall.

Pumpkins and many of the decorations that we associate with Halloween remain in place long after you might expect them to, and only finally seem to get packed away by the arrival of Thanksgiving (and the beginning of the run-up towards Christmas) towards the end of November and long after we had returned home from our little visit.

But we're very fond of Pumpkins and had wondered whether we might have missed the best of them by travelling on the day after Halloween, but we needn't have worried, because they really were pretty much everywhere, even outside the "Warm Puppy" cafe, which was waiting for us at our next destination, the Charles M Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (14) - MENDOCINO MORNING II

"Disappointing" sunset, Mendocino - November 5th 2014

NOVEMBER 06

Well, the sunset may have been slightly disappointing as the sea fog rolled in across the Mendocino Coast, but the sunrise the next morning was well worth us both getting up early for.

For about an hour, both before and after the sun finally came up, we both walked around gazing in wonder at what the combination of light, cloud and low-lying mist was doing to the landscape as we clicked our shutters feverishly and disturbed the birds and wildlife busily getting on with their daily routine amongst the early morning joggers, dog-walkers, and newspaper deliveries.

Then we, perhaps slightly reluctantly, returned to the hotel and had another truly excellent breakfast in our room, before packing up the car and bidding a long farewell to our hosts, and, after a very useful stop at the local Gas Station, the beautiful little town of Mendocino itself.

We do hope to return again one day. In fact, we think that we'd really like to spend an entire trip discovering the entire northern Californian coast one day, given that this was as far north as we were going to get on this trip, and other, warmer and far more southerly locations were calling out to us.

That said, we were only about ten minutes down the road when we got to another lovely spot and just had to pull up the car and spend a happy twenty minutes or so looking at the birds and the views to be seen at a place called "Little River".

Yes, Mendocino County, if the fates are prepared to allow it, we may very well be back some day.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (13) - POINT ARENA

NOVEMBER 05 (Cont’d)

Sometimes I get a bit obsessed with an idea, and, even though the idea might be interesting, my execution of it can be something of a let down.

Such it was when, whilst enjoying the spectacular scenery around Point Arena lighthouse, I noticed a row of those roadside poles carrying the electricity or telephone wires out towards the lighthouse itself and thought that they might make the sort of interesting image that fills the pages of all those photography books of mundane yet – in the right hands - photogenic roadside things that I find so very collectable.

So I set off towards the road trying to frame several of them nicely in my viewfinder and got a couple of okay – if not very interesting really – pictures, and was about to give up after admonishing myself about how ridiculous I was being thinking that I could take any photograph worthy of comparison with those old books of mine when the Ravens, or Rooks, or Crows, or whatever they were, arrived.

So, okay, none of my pictures are ever likely to adorn a book jacket or anything like what the voices in my head might have been saying as I was taking the dullest set of pictures in the history of photography (the mud flats of South Wales set I once took as an Art Student notwithstanding…)but I did manage to get a reasonably framed picture of a telephone pole, and a very nice picture of a Raven… or Rook… or Crow.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (12) - MANCHESTER BEACH

NOVEMBER 05 (Cont’d)

Sometimes you just get lucky.

Sometimes, even I get lucky(!)

As we were returning to the car, leaving Manchester Beach and about to head off towards Point Arena lighthouse, I took a quick look at the small hillock masking the view of the beach from the car park, noticed that there was a bit of a path worn into it by previous ramblings, and wondered whether there might be a nice view of the beach to be photographed from the top of it.

Naturally, the young couple who’d climbed up it a few minutes earlier, (presumably stimulating my peripheral vision enough for me to notice the hillock at all), and who were now settling down nicely in a hollow a few hundred yards ahead of me might have been less pleased to find some long-lenses fellow strolling along behind them, but they swiftly vanished from my mind as I realized that the dunes stretched on for those several hundred yards and more, and the beach was not to be seen.

What I did see, however, not so very far over to my left, was a row of fence poles and perched upon one of them was what looked to me to be a very fine ooking young raptor.

I swiftly ran off a swift photograph or two before wondering whether, just whether, it might still be there if I scrambled quickly back down the hill towards the car park and took the other little path running next to the very fence upon which it was sitting.

So I hurried around and got to a point close enough to get a couple of decent shots, and I tried to get a little closer and get a couple more… and still it sat there, and it continued to sit there until I was within about eight feet of it, before finally flying off having given me what I consider to be one of my luckier moments of the entire trip.