TRAVEL: LOS ANGELES AGAIN (JUST IN TIME FOR JUNE! GLOOM!) JUNE 2011

We spent a week in LA making a round of family events just in time for this spectacular weather:

Photo from http://sanpedrodaily.blogspot.com

This pleasant meteorlogical phenomenon is known as June Gloom in Southern California, where chilly coastal fog is determined to ruin your day at the beach.  For five days we suffered the gloom while we visited with family in Palos Verdes and Long Beach.  We celebrated with our nephew Bjorn as he graduated from high school and our other nieces and nephews - Ingrid, Julia, Grant and Lily - also made the gloom bearable with their smiling faces.  We were treated to excellent family dinners and a swank cocktail party with friends but we really wanted some sunshine too.  The spring in Yosemite had been more like Winter Part 2, and we were looking forward to the beach.  Lucky for us, the sun made an appearance on the last two days of our stay AND we discovered a great beach on the Palos Verdes Peninsula coast!

Ted and Bjorn the Graduate

Bjorn sets an excellent Sea King example for sister Ingrid

Julia, Lily and Grant put up with their aunt's photo sessionBeing a peninsula and all, Rancho Palos Verdes is surrounded by Pacific coastline and has many great beaches.  Unfortunately, dogs are not allowed and since we were traveling with stately old Grampa Fleabag, we give it a solid thumbs down.  However, if you belong to the South Bay Archery Club, then you know about a small beach past the archery range where there is absolutely no parking available but your four-legged friends can enjoy a swim after a day of target practice.

Fleabag doesn't do much in his senior years except sleep, but it was great to have him along.  The exceptional aspect of this beach is that the tidepools are seldom visited and teeming with sea stars!  Ted snorkeled with Garibaldi fish and dolphins showed up in the cove to feed in the kelp.  This beach is around the point from Abalone Cove with a hidden sea cave and the sea stars are piled up along with mussels, urchins, anenomes and crabs.  We spent two afternoons combing through the pools in the sun.  Thank you, Mother Nature.

After family time on the coast, Ted departed for Yosemite and I moved on to the swank part of the city to meet up with my friend Beth in Beverly Hills.  Beth is the new California Director for the National Wildlife Federation and was there to host the 75th anniversary fundraising gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, "Voices for Wildlife".  Beth invited her family and I got to tag along too.

The Pratt family and Chevy ChasePhoto from www.elegantresorts.co.ukOne of the gala guests was a familiar face from Florida, Jack Hanna.  Jack is a former Columbus Zoo Director known for the TV shows "Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures" and "Jack Hanna's Into the Wild".  Jack is also affiliated with the Busch Gardens zoo and theme park in Tampa where I worked from 1995 through 2003 and ran into him occasionally.  A tireless advocate for wildlife, Jack is also a very nice man and likes to share his experiences with humor and modesty.  He was honored by the NWF as a "Wildlife Hero" for education and conservation.  Jack is holding the alligator below (of course):

Photo from www.zimbio.com

Thanks to Beth, I enjoyed some Beverly Hills high life at the Wilshire where the room with a view is swathed in upscale bedding and the hotel restaurants were too pricey for me.  So I persuaded Beth's family to join me for breakfast the day after the gala at Jack & Jill's of Beverly Hills while Beth attended meetings (sorry, Beth).  Jack & Jill's is mere blocks from the Wilshire where you can get a hearty, healthful and affordable breakfast surrounded by shops like Jimmy Choo and Prada.  The House Scramble consisted of eggs with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, avocado and basil with sides for just $10.95.  Did I mention it was tasty?

After breakfast we had to road trip back into the land of the middle class, but the hotel porter handed us bottles of Evian as the valet brought our car around for departure.  Leaving June Gloom in the rearview mirror, we headed back to Yosemite where summer had finally arrived.

Junket Ratings:

Beverly Wilshire Hotel: Junk (and money) in the Trunk!

Jack & Jill's Bakery Cafe: Junk-O-Rama

  

TRAVEL: SAND IN SAN DIEGO AT THE DESERT AND BEACH APRIL 2011

My friend Beth hustled back to California to start a new job with the National Wildlife Federation, relocating back to her home outside Yosemite, just in time for an invitation to her long-time friend John's wedding celebration in San Diego.  Coming from Yellowstone and her home in Gardiner, Montana, Beth was essentially driving the American West from Canada to Mexico in a week.  She needed help with that, so she recruited me to assist with the California portion of her road trip.  I am, after all, the Queen of Road Trips and I am always happy to blow off every obligation for a trip in the car to places unknown (and known).  So I booked us into a motel north of San Diego in Encinitas two blocks from the beach and we jumped in the car Kerouac-Style for an eight hour trip south to sun and sand and fish tacos.

After a mostly uneventful drive south (with the exception of a maddening crawl across LA during rush hour where I thought we may petrify), we checked in to the Days Inn Encinitas and headed for Juanita's Taco Shop.  Included on most people's list of the where to find the best fish tacos in San Diego, Juanita's status was well-deserved.  Excellent fish tacos with just the right trimmings (though lettuce is never a substitute for cabbage in the realm of taco creation), we both ordered one too many but ate them anyway.  We consumed too many tacos while tippling Moet & Chandon and viewing the royal wedding in a low-brow/high-brow effort to celebrate Beth's return to California.  Though we were blocks from the beach, I persuaded Beth to take a drive into the desert east of San Diego the next day before evening wedding festivities.  Driving an hour or so we crossed several low mountain ranges to enter the Borrego Valley, home of Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

If you know me, you know how much I love the desert.  If you don't know me, you don't know how much I love the dry crunch under my feet, the spiky and scaly flora and fauna, the alien climate and the alien sightings, the supercool modern architecture, the sheer scale of nighttime sky with stars and the daytime sky with sun-blasted heat.  There's also the dark poet appeal of the wasteland: the desert should always be experienced with a bottle of whiskey, well-worn boots, aviator sunglasses and a sweaty cowboy hat.  Preferably in a muscle car from the 60s or 70s.  Of course we were in a Subaru wearing shorts and sandals, listening to the GPS after a stop at the Starbucks in Encinitas, but it didn't lessen my enjoyment of my favorite landscape.  And how lucky were we?  Besides catching the tail-end of the spring wildflower bloom, we were lucky enough to see desert bighorn sheep - a rare occurence in the wilderness of California.

After a short loop through the park, a stop at the visitor center with it's endangered oxymoronic desert pupfish pond, cruising through the desert town of Borrego Springs (where I could easily have my bottle of whiskey next to a motel pool), we sighted the Turkey Inn in Ramona on the way back toward the Pacific.  Another thing I love: turkeys.  Love to eat them, drink them, sight them in the wild and ponder the fact that Benjamin Franklin thought it should be the national bird and I tend to agree.  Turkeys are cool.  Kitschy roadside Americana also tops my list of loves, but I digress.

The wedding celebration for John and Jenny was hosted at the Naked Cafe in Solana Beach, some five miles south of Encinitas.  All the beach towns north of San Diego are clean and beautiful and the Naked Cafe faced the Pacific across the street from Fletcher Cove Beach Park.  The restaurant doesn't serve dinner, so the party was private.  Not only were the food and service swell, but the party was filled with lovely people.  John and Jenny were extremely gracious about my party crashing and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them along with their family and friends.

John, Beth and Michelle at the Naked Cafe

Beth shows off her blingSpending about a minute in Encinitas during the entire stay, we were nevertheless impressed with the town and our proximity to Moonlight State Beach.  The quintessential SoCal beach, Moonlight was crowded with surfers and families, concession rentals, kelp strands and swanky cliffside homes overlooking the ocean.  Next to fish tacos, San Diego is best known for surfing, and Encinitas is home to Hansen Surfboards.  We checked out the surf shop and the beach before heading back to the Sierra Nevada via the 5, the 99 and the Central Valley.

Between the beach and the mountains of California lies the Central Valley, home to the largest agricultural operation in the country, providing 8% of America's agricultural output on only 1% of it's farmland.  Not scenic when compared with California's coast and range, a trip through the Central Valley can educate about California's culinary delights.  A road trip must-see on the culinary tour is the Bravo Farms Cheese Factory ("A Taste of the Valley!") south of Fresno in Traver.  Local cheeses, olive oils, raisins, dates and other California delights await in yet another example of kitschy roadside Americana.  The raw milk Western Sage Cheddar is a true palate pleasure.  We loaded up on California bounty and hit the road home.

Junket Ratings:

Days Inn Encinitas: Junk-O-Rama

Juanita's Fish Tacos: Junk in the Trunk!

Anza Borrego Desert State Park: Junk in the Trunk!

The Naked Cafe: Junk-O-Rama

Hansen's Surf Shop: Junk-O-Rama

Moonlight State Beach: Junk-O-Rama

Bravo Farms Cheese Factory: Junk-O-Rama

Update on Monday, May 16, 2011 at 8:50AM by Michelle Hansen

Apparently the "Surfing Madonna" of Encinitas pictured above was creating quite a stir for the citizens, according to an article in the LA Times.  The artist is a mystery and the artwork is tile mosaic - not paint like I thought originally.  We need more anonymous artwork in this country!

TRAVEL: BIG SUR CALIFORNIA JUNE 2010

En route to a family event in Los Angeles this week, we feigned nonchalance about the flood warnings in Yosemite and detoured toward the central California coast to camp along the stretch of Highway 1 known as Big Sur.  Never having been there, we diligently researched dog-friendly venues and anticipated the crashing waves and rugged coastline.  We also planned to eat fresh seafood for our camp dinners and Ted trolled the web to find Phil's Fish Market in Moss Landing, just north of Monterey on Highway 1.

We left Yosemite in the morning and sped across the hot Central Valley where the ocean after Castroville (Artichoke Capital of the World!) was a welcome sight complete with cool breezes and patchy fog.  We approached Phil's Fish Market with visions of grilled seafood for our dinner that evening in Big Sur and accomplished our mission admirably.  However, the actual market is small - Phil's is mainly a restaurant.  From the market we purchased shrimp, bay scallops, squid, blue crab and black mussels.  From the restaurant we purchased two shrimp cocktails to go and then waited a long time to eat them.  Phil's is famous for cioppino and the restaurant is very popular, judging by the wait.  Though food is brought to your dining table, all diners order at the counter, receiving a number to take to your table or identify your carry out.  We waited a half hour for two cold shrimp cocktails and were none too impressed with the attitude of the staff in the restaurant. Since Phil's has been featured on the Food Network more than once, you would think that Phil would be concerned with the service reputation of his restaurant.  But to give Phil his due, we did see him tooling around the kitchen assisting the staff with their very busy lunchtime service.  And the guy who served us at the market was helpful enough to offer a complimentary bag of ice to go with our fresh seafood purchase.

Seafood in tow, we merged back onto Highway 1 and headed for Carmel-by-the-Sea, home of the San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission also known as the Carmel Mission.  Ted and I have a thing for mission church architecture and San Carlos Borromeo did not disappoint.  The Monterey peninsula was subject to June Gloom that afternoon, so we enjoyed a coolly pleasant tour around the church and grounds.

Founded in 1771 (and restored in the 1930s) as the second mission of Alta California (as opposed to Baja California), Carmel Mission is the burial place of founder Padre Junipero Serra, responsible for the entire chain of mission churches in California.  The picturesque cemetery is decorated with abalone shells and stones and each grave is marked with a wooden cross.

Feeling suitably prepared for the spirituality of Big Sur, we left the mission and headed for the beach.  The Big Sur coastline has little development since most of the land is national forest, state park or privately held by homeowners who seem to like it that way.  Most of the business is conducted in the village of Big Sur, some 30 miles south of Monterey.  For guidance, we relied on two books: Lonely Planet's Coastal California Travel Guide and Compass American Guides: Coastal California, 3rd Edition.  Giddy at the first glimpse of Big Sur and failing to find the turn-off for dog-friendly Garripata State Park Beach, we passed through the quaintness of Big Sur village and managed to locate little-known Pfeiffer Beach.  Though some months back I posted that Point Loma in Cabrillo National Monument was the windiest place on earth, I now know that I was dead wrong.  Pfeiffer Beach, managed by the Forest Service, is the windiest place on the planet.

Pfeiffer Beach has a day-use fee of $5.00 and the cleanest pit toilets I've ever seen.  An obnoxious one lane road goes for two miles to the beach after leaving Highway 1.  However, any inconvenience is worth getting to this beach.  Despite the wind/sand challenge, this is the most spectacular beach I've ever seen.  The tide was coming in and we were on our way to other places so our visit was short, but next time we'll spend the day and explore the sea cave, watch the sun set and search for more purple-hued sand.  In the meantime, we had dinner to grill. 

We chose to camp toward the southern end of the 90 miles of Big Sur coastline in a Los Padres National Forest campground, Plaskett Creek.  Situated on the east side of the highway, this campground is nestled among Monterey Pine and Coastal Redwood trees.  Crossing the highway on foot, you can walk to Sand Dollar Beach picnic area, also in the national forest, that provides access to the largest public beach in Big Sur.  The campground is overcome with birdsong in the mornings and the fog-fed vegetation is lush: we found Morning Glories and tiny white wild roses at our site among the ripening blackberry bushes.

With the bounty from Phil's Fish Market, we dined in style on the scallops, mussels, blue crab and squid thanks to Jamie Oliver's Smoked Barbecued Shellfish with a Chili Lime Dressing recipe from the Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life book.  This is possibly the best seafood dish I have ever cooked.  You use wood chips to smoke shellfish and then toss with the chili lime dressing immediately after removing from the grill.

We woke the next day to fog which burned off by mid-morning.  After a short and fruitless drive to Gorda to get ice, and a more successful drive to Lucia, we spent the day at Sand Dollar Beach.  Despite icy cold Pacific water and deadly rip tides, Ted was determined to snorkel.  The fog continued to make intermittemt appearances, lending Big Sur it's otherwordly aura.  Sunny or foggy, Sand Dollar Beach is the second most spectacular beach I've ever visited.

I explored the tide pools (kelp, snails, hermit crabs and kelp), Ted attempted to snorkel and Fleabag napped. We thoroughly enjoyed our day.  Though large and sandy, Sand Dollar Beach has cobblestones above the tide line.  I found a Garter snake amongst the cobbles and wondered if he had pitched off from the vegetation on the cliff above.  Sand Dollar Beach is also very close to Jade Cove and we found many pieces of jade strewn amongst the rocks on the beach.

After a day of beachcombing, Fleabag the 13-year-old dog had to be carried up the stairs that access the beach. But soon enough he was back in his sleeping bag awaiting dinner.  We spent the late afternoon catching up on our Big Sur alumni reading:  authors Henry Miller and Jack Keruoac.  In Big Sur & the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Henry Miller describes his life in Big Sur as a resident between 1944 and 1962.  In Big Sur, Jack Kerouac records his six week stay in 'Raton Canyon' at the cabin of a friend to write and dry out where he experiences a self-described "mad fit".  Keruoac's take on Big Sur is unique: he describes the "blue sea behind the crashing high waves is full of huge black rocks rising like old ogresome castles dripping wet slime, a billion years of woe right there..." and "... I gulp to wonder why it has the reputation of being beautiful above and beyond its fearfulness, its Blakean groaning roughrock Creation throes..."  It must take a fit of madness to view the shocking beauty of Big Sur with such a jaundiced eye.  Keruoac's crack-up doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for the area, nor my appetite for dinner. 

Our second seafood dinner consisted of Hobo Packs - tin foil packages of shrimp, corn, onion, and sausage combined with butter, thyme, Old Bay and white wine cooked on the coals.  We used crusty French bread to sop up the sauce.  Accompanied by a spinach and strawberry salad tossed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, Ted kept vacillating between which camp seafood dinner he liked best.

 We packed up the next morning in the fog and continued down Highway 1:

 

Big Sur is known for whale-watching and sea otter spotting, but so far all marine wildlife had eluded me.  So we planned to stop at the elephant seal rookery that is maintained for public viewing by the Friends of the Elephant Seal non-profit organization.  This interpreted site is seven miles north of San Simeon at Point Piedras Blancas with a large, well-marked parking lot off Highway 1.  Home to some 15,000 elephant seals, I was guaranteed some marine life action.

Oddly, many of the visitors seemed more interested in the tame squirrels and ravens in the parking lot than the seals.  At Ragged Point, south of Point Piedras Blancas, the landscape changes and widens as you leave rugged Big Sur behind. We planned to take Highway 1 all the way to Los Angeles and the Palos Verdes peninsula, so we follow the road inland at Morro Bay.  After San Luis Obispo we switch to the 101 highway to remain inland and pass through Santa Maria.  Though we would be sharing dinner with family that evening, we had one last culinary venture to make: Santa Maria style BBQ.

Much less involved than other regional BBQ, Santa Maria style consists of grilling tri-tip beef over a Red Oak wood fire after seasoning the meat with salt, pepper and garlic salt.  The tri-tip cut and the oak wood fire combine to create lusty slices of perfectly tasty beef perfect for a steak sandwich.

Junket Ratings:

Phil's Fish Market: Junkety-Junk-Junk

Carmel Mission: Junk-O-Rama

Pfeiffer Beach: Junk-in-the-Trunk!

Plaskett Creek Campground: Junk-in-the-Trunk!

Sand Dollar Beach: Junk-in-the-Trunk!

Point Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery: Junk-O-Rama

BBQ Land Santa Maria: Junkety-Junk-Junk

Update on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 9:49AM by Michelle Hansen

It seems I had an encounter with Poison Oak at our lovely Plaskett Creek campsite resulting in some contact dermatitis.  The rash took a week to show up, so heads up campers!  We stayed at site #42.

TRAVEL: SAN DIEGO AND LOS ANGELES FEBRUARY 2010

Cabrillo National Monument at Point LomaHeading to San Diego for a business conference in February, I dreamt of warm ocean breezes and fish tacos. Mmmmm fish tacos. Anyway, though the high desert of southern Utah where I live has sunny winters, we had just experienced that spate of storms from the Pacific that drenched California and then soaked us too. A week of cold, rainy weather in the desert is sacrilege. We even endured the Vegas to Barstow to LA drive in the rain. However, my mother-in-law treated me to Shabu Shabu dinner in Rolling Hills on Saturday night which made up for the sad, gray day. Next morning I drove the 405 – the highway I hate the most – to San Diego in the sun. I picked up my friend Steve from the Town & Country Resort and we headed for Cabrillo National Monument before the conference opening reception that evening. Now Steve is somewhat sheltered as he hails from the Great Smoky Mountains, so there was lot of babbling about getting his toes in the ocean. And he even wore bad sandals to facilitate this fetish. I'm vaguely obsessed with my GPS car navigation unit, so I snorted derisively at Steve's 'directions' and Daniel (the British guy who narrates my GPS unit) guided us to Point Loma. Located at the top of the point, Cabrillo makes up for lack of square acreage with access to the Pacific. Stunned by the views through the picture windows of the visitor center onto San Diego harbor, I said to Steve, “How'd you like to work here everyday?”

The timing of our visit coincided with the annual Whale Watching Weekend, though we were thoroughly unsuccessful in our whale-spotting efforts. Wind velocity plays a role in the ability to spot whales, and since Point Loma was the windiest place on the earth that afternoon, we were stymied. Steve tried to salvage the trip by suggesting we speak like pirates for the duration of our visit, but he wasn't any good at it, so we soon lost interest. And then he insisted we visit the military history exhibit (yawn!) to learn about the the Big Gun stationed at the point during WWII that could shoot artillery 28 miles over the ocean. I totally thought he was making that up, so I trailed along to the exhibit and learned the truth – the big gun was real. We saved the best for last by visiting the tide pools, and though we didn't see many critters – chitons, snails and kelp mostly – the eroding seashore was spectacular.

 During the conference week I managed to stuff myself with seafood galore at two restaurants and one rockin' taco shop. King's Fish House serves oysters from the Baja, and Brigantine is a local chain of restaurants operating in San Diego for 30 years. El Zarape in University Center (no website!) serves any manner of sea creature in a taco, and their lobster tacos made my week.

Seafood at Brigantine

Back in sunny Los Angeles, I reunited with Fleabag who spent the week in the care of Bestemor (Norwegian for grandmother) Wenche (my mother-in-law).  I love me some southern California and spending time in San Diego and LA on the same trip was just right.  Much as I love the swanky part of LA (Palos Verdes peninsula) that my in-laws inhabit, after five years of marriage to a native, I realize that I have never been to any other parts of the city - no Santa Monica Pier, no Griffith Observatory, no Venice Beach, no Beverly Hills, no Kogi BBQ truck, and no Getty Center.  Thankfully Wenche is on a mission to remedy my dearth of LA experience. Traveling to the Getty Center on Friday via the hated 405 (ever notice how Californians refer to their highways as "the 405" or "the 110"?  You can always identify someone from California by this peculiar trait), Wenche and I spent a lovely half day perusing the collections in this amazing complex of modern architecture. 

My postcard from the Getty CenterWe viewed masterworks by David, Seurat, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Rubens, Brueghel (Elder and Younger), Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Titian - all the big dogs are here.  I was particularly happy to see Titian's "The Penitent Magdalene" because I have Titian-colored hair after all, and I am always fascinated by paintings of Mary Magdalene.  Several dining options are available, though poor signage helped us miss the actual restaurant, so we sat in the courtyard sun with sandwich, salad and sipped a glass of wine from the food cart. An interesting exhibit on medieval illuminated manuscripts (look it up!) easily trumped an exhibit on the sketching of Renoir and students - kind of a yawner for me.  We couldn't resist the gardens and the gift shop before departing.

Junket Ratings

Cabrillo National Monument: Junk-O-Rama

Town & Country Resort: Jar Jar Junks

King's Fish House: Junk-O-Rama

Brigantine: Junk-O-Rama

El Zarape: Junk in the Trunk!

Getty Center: Junk in the Trunk!