“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” – John Steinbeck – Cannery Row.

Cannery Row Stohan's Gallery and El Torito Mexican Restaurant.

Cannery Row is still somewhat of an eyesore on half the length of the street with vacant, fenced off lots on the ocean side and a large asphalt parking lot on the other side. By the the mid-1970s all the canneries had closed down. Restaurants and shops come and go and change names frequently.

Culinary Center of Monterey closed its doors in 2010.

Cannery Row Hotels

A few fine hotels have opened along Cannery Row over the past few decades with the Monterey Plaza Hotel being a leading redevelopment project for Cannery Row when it opened in 1985 one year after the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the opposite end of Cannery Row. Monterey Plaza Hotel is a member of Stash Hotel Rewards. The newest addition is The Clement Monterey InterContinental Hotel opened in 2008 and available as a Priority Club Rewards hotel at 40,000 points per night.

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This year we are staying home in Monterey for the holiday season and welcoming family to our locale. That means hotel stays, restaurant dinners and outdoor activities. Our ten day weather forecast for the Monterey Peninsula shows no rain and temperatures in the mid-60s next weekend. This has been a gorgeously clear sky December on the central coast of California.

Many visitors come to Monterey for the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the famed Cannery Row. Here is my photo walk along the less touristed southeastern half of Monterey’s Cannery Row named after John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel.

Cannery Row Monterey

Cannery Row is a half-mile stretch of oceanfront road on the northwest end of Monterey. A century ago this parcel of Monterey developed canneries for processing sardines from Monterey Bay to feed the world. The street was called Ocean View Avenue up until 1958 when the name changed to Cannery Row in honor of the novel by Monterey County’s John Steinbeck. The road name is still Ocean View Blvd. in Pacific Grove where the town line begins just west of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

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Fort Ord Dunes State Park is a beach wilderness park established in 2009 on the shore of Monterey Bay a couple of miles north of the city of Monterey. The Fort Ord Dunes park encompasses almost 1,000 acres of shoreline west of Highway 1. These dunes in the former Fort Ord military base had beach rifle ranges during the 1970s when I was a teenager living in Marina, the adjacent town north of Fort Ord.

Here is a photo walk of my stomping grounds around Monterey as I walked north from Sand City to Fort Ord Dunes State Park a couple of weeks ago.

View of mountains beyond mountains from Edgewater Shopping Center, Sand City, CA

Edgewater Shopping Center in Sand City is one of the biggest changes in the Monterey area since 1980. This is where the local Costco is located.

Many California cities are unrecognizable after the past thirty years of growth with population doubling, tripling, and even more since 1980. This is what happened in Salinas, California a dozen miles inland from Monterey Bay.

The towns of Monterey, Pacific Grove, Seaside and Marina along the shores of Monterey Bay have basically not increased population at all. Monterey actually had a population decline in the past decade.

This area is beautiful with forests of Monterey pines and Cypress trees up to the shoreline.  Beauty comes with a high price. There are few job opportunities and a high cost of living. This is a place where the Highway 1 traffic jams result from workers driving in the morning to the Monterey Peninsula cities for restaurant, hotel and tourism jobs and leaving in the afternoon to go home to places where they can afford to live.

View of Monterey Peninsula from Sand City.

Sand City beach path looking south to Monterey. (Best Western Monterey Beach hotel is located directly on beach.)

Fort Ord is where I was born. The army base was the largest military base in the country to be closed at the time it officially shut down in September 1994. The closure impacted my family when my parents relocated to another area to be near military medical facilities.

Highway 1 Mileage Marker near Seaside High School.

Sand dunes are the prominent coastal feature between Monterey and the Elkhorn Slough in Moss Landing in the center of the Monterey Bay crescent. I spent hours upon hours walking through the sand dunes north of Fort Ord between Marina and Castroville when I was a student at Seaside High School in the 70s.

The 1970s were an environmentally destructive time for beach dunes outside the military base too in those years. Beach parties were a regular event in the Marina dunes and the popular entertainment was partying around bonfires while watching people try to drive trucks to the top of steep sand dunes.

Marina Beach was designated a state park in the 1980s. Large portions of the sand dunes areas are off-limits to allow plant restoration and reduce erosion.

View from Sand City north along Monterey Bay.

Monterey Bay sign: Danger - unstable cliffs.

Only in the last couple of years did I learn that our prominent sand dunes and landscaping feature called “iceplant”, abundant around Monterey Bay, is a non-native invasive species primarily native to South Africa and Chile. I don’t know why it is called iceplant, but if you have ever driven on it, you might realize why it has the name. There are hundreds of species and at certain times of the year they produce colorful flowers.

Flowering iceplant on Santa Cruz shoreline

I have stunning pictures of vibrant purple iceplant flowers in Pacific Grove, but I couldn’t locate them for this post. I noticed the other day I have 120,000 photos on my portable hard drive. I need hundreds of hours to catalog all those photos.

Monterey Bay from Marina to Sand City is a popular place for hang-gliding. The winds blow steadily here much of the year. Fog is common and the summer months tend to be the foggiest months. October to April is our best weather in between rain storms blowing in from the Pacific. When I look back over years of photos I am always struck by the clarity of the air in January.

Tip for photographers is to come to Monterey Bay and Big Sur in winter as long as you come in between the Pacific winter storms. This is central coast California and sometimes the daytime temperature in winter even hits the 80s. September and October tend to be the warmest months if the fog isn’t present. Our warm weather streak in 2011 was three days in the 80s the week after I took this beach dunes walk.

bike path in Sand City

Portions of the bike path through Sand City are regularly bulldozed to remove sand covering the path after strong winds.

Keep out of fragile beach dunes to allow plant restoration.

It had been some time since I had the kind of alone time I found in Fort Ord Beach Dunes.

Restored dune plants in Fort Ord Dunes State Park.

shared bike and walking path through Fort Ord Dunes State Park.

Fort Ord Dunes State Park

January is one of the best months of the year to visit Monterey, if you are lucky enough to be here between rain storms. Statistically the least days of fog occur in the months of January and February with about 6 days based on records from 1951 to 2006. On the other hand, the Monterey Peninsula averages 10 days of rain in January making the month the rainiest of the year.

Summer visitors will learn that nearly 2 out of 3 days in July and August have fog on the Monterey Peninsula. A clear day in January, like yesterday when the temperature was 75, the same temperature as a typically warm summer day when the fog lifts, can be the ideal time to see the Monterey Peninsula and drive the Big Sur coast.

Here are photos from my walks around town this week.

The Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo or Royal Presidio Chapel is a sandstone building completed in 1794 in Monterey and the oldest continuously functioning church in California.

San Carlos Cathedral or Royal Presidio Chapel - built 1794 - Monterey, California

Custom House Plaza is the center of Monterey for social activities and festivals. Monterey State Historic Park encompasses many of the older adobes and houses from the 19th century. Unfortunately the California budget financial difficulties and voters’ rejection of additional taxes in the last ballot has severely reduced the opportunity for tours of these historic sites. Only a couple of museums like the Pacific House at Custom House Plaza are open this year and only on weekends and holidays.

Pacific House Museum, Monterey Custom House Plaza

Custom House Plaza is adjacent to Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf for tourists with many restaurants, tourist kitsch shops and the departure point for whale watching tours.

Whale watching cruises depart from Monterey Fisherman's Wharf

The real Fisherman’s Wharf for purchasing fresh caught fish from fish markets is located a few hundred yards to the east of the tourist wharf. Barking California sea lions congregate on large moorings in the harbor and underneath the two wharves and along the Coast Guard jetty. Most days sea lion barking is heard when walking in this area.

Real Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey with fish markets.

The Monterey Recreational Trail is a ten-mile paved bicycle and walking path from Marina to Pacific Grove. The half-mile between the tourist Fisherman’s Wharf and Cannery Row is one of the best locations on the Monterey Peninsula for watching seals. Seals bask on the rocks above the water line when the tide is low.

Last July the beach was taken over by sea lions for a month.

Sea lions on Monterey beach adjacent to Fisherman's Wharf

Harbor seals basking on rocks at low tide by Monterey Fisherman's Wharf

Monterey harbor and Fisherman's Wharf

Blue Whale sightings are at high numbers for Monterey Bay. Whales in the central coast area of California this past month are reported to be the most seen in the past decade in Monterey Bay.

Here is an amazing closeup of Blue whales and Humpback whales taken three days ago from one of Monterey’s whale watching cruises Princess Monterey Whale Watching 7-7-2010 Blue and Humpback Whales.

Princess Monterey Whale Watching is one of the major whale watching tour boats out of Monterey.  There are several other tour companies operating from the Monterey Fisherman’s Wharf.

For land viewing the coastline of Point Lobos is reputed to be one of the best places for seashore sightings of whales right now.

Sea Lions on the Beach at Fisherman’s Wharf, Monterey

They’re back !!!

The sea lions of the central coast left the region last year in high numbers. Food sources moved north and most of the sea lions of the Monterey Bay and San Francisco headed up to the Oregon coast. Then an unusual number of pups were born this spring in the cold waters of Monterey Bay. Normally they are born farther south in California. Apparently the trip south from Oregon was a bit too long for the moms.

The beach in Monterey near Fisherman’s Wharf has had hundreds of sea lions basking in the sun these past weeks.

Hundreds of sea lions on the beach below the path between Monterey Fisherman's Wharf and Cannery Row

Watching the young sea lions play and swim in the clear water is a treat. These large animals move incredibly fast under the water as they swim quickly around rocks and leap over other marine swimmers.

The sea lion barking is loud and their smell is strong. This is quite a spectacle to behold in Monterey. Come on down and check out the Monterey Bay wildlife this summer.

Who knows how long the sea lions and whales will hang around in such abundance and this close to people?

The Monterey pines on the ridge between Monterey and Carmel darkly dot the tree covered hills like a Monet painting. Muted sunlight filters through the rolling fog on the upper part of the landscape and various shades of golf course green lay the foundation of this Monterey Peninsula natural canvas.  The window I am looking out from the bed is Hyatt Regency Monterey, suite 860. The nearly wall width windows outline the dimensions of the morning’s visual setting.

The only sounds I hear are surprisingly quiet riding mowers moving across portions of the golf course immediately outside the hotel room. When I arrived yesterday the room temperature felt to be in the 70s. I have both windows fully open and the fans running this morning. It is in the mid-50s outside, but this is Monterey and the room only has a heater, no air conditioning.

There are signs in the room suggesting guests open the windows and turn on the fans if the room is too warm. This was an adequate solution for me as the colder air outside on this January day quickly cooled the room. I dread to think what measures one would employ if this were one of our rare 85 degree days experienced five to ten days a year most years on the Monterey Peninsula. Some years the hot days occur in the middle of winter, although more likely to occur annually in September and October.

The Hyatt Regency Monterey resort has two pools. The pools are an oasis from the uncommon sporadic days of outdoor heat. Typically Monterey has 60- to 70-degree weather around 80% of days locally in this California coastal microclimate. The main pool by buildings 3, 4, and 5 was in use by a couple of families and some kids on a 59-degree, partly cloudy January afternoon in Monterey.

We take the weather as it comes in Monterey. 59-degrees with medium humidity in January can be warmer than a foggy, high humidity 59-degree day in July. The kind of July day that is relatively frequent in a typical year on the Monterey Peninsula. Most of the United States, aside from parts of Alaska, have extended periods annually when the temperature is over 80-degrees. In Monterey, as in much of the coastal Pacific north of Monterey, California and on up to British Columbia, the rare days when it reaches 80-degrees sustained rarely exceeds two to four days in a row. Of course this is only true for the immediate coast within a couple of miles of the Pacific Ocean.  Go inland five miles during summer months, or however deep the fog belt and Pacific Ocean natural air conditioner extends, and most of the west coast is regularly 90-degrees and over in the summer months. But this is winter in Monterey and 60 degrees is baking for people who have been living in snow and ice for the past couple of months.

I love this view from the Hyatt Regency Monterey.  The nearest houses are hundreds of yards away and almost entirely obscured in trees. From the bed I gaze to the hills and see thousands of pine trees, yet only a glimpse of a few houses. This setting is unique for Monterey hotels. The Hyatt Highlands Inn or Pebble Beach resort hotels have similar tree-filled views, but the Pacific Ocean vista for enhanced viewing pleasure at these other hotels means prices are typically $300 to $600 per night.

My sister stayed at the Hyatt Regency Monterey hotel last month. Her room was across the hall from the room where I am now. Her room was a standard size hotel room, limited space, basic bathroom shower/tub, and a window overlooking the parking lot. Highway 1 traffic sounds can be heard from rooms not facing the golf course when the window or patio door is open. Some rooms at the Hyatt Regency Monterey are within 50 yards of the freeway (Buildings 20-26). Building 26 even has balconies and patios facing the freeway side.

Last month I asked my sister if she would like me to book her room and secure her and her husband a suite or would she rather book her own room and go for the free Hyatt night after two hotel stays. She went for the free night offer. She had a surprisingly good rate of $119/night for a Friday and Saturday weekend stay. She does not have Hyatt Gold Passport elite status.

My main advice for the Monterey Hyatt Regency is book a golf course view room. This hotel is an old hotel locals knew as the Mark Thomas in the 1970s. The hotel is located on the southeast side of Highway 1. The ocean is about one mile away on the northwest side of Highway 1. The hotel location is secluded from the city of Monterey. A car is desirable to get to tourist parts of Monterey which is about a 30 minute walk to downtown.  Monterey’s Del Monte Beach can probably be reached by foot in 20 minutes.

Two words – “Elite Status”

Yesterday I checked into the Hyatt Regency Monterey on an $89 limited time offer rate using Corporate Code #13147. I used one of my complimentary suite upgrade certificates in my Diamond elite account and received advance confirmation for a suite. Diamond members receive four electronic upgrade certificates annually. A single upgrade certificate can be used for a stay up to seven nights.

I called the Gold Passport Diamond member customer service line and asked for the 2,000 point G2 bonus code to be applied to my stay. At check-in I opted for an additional 1,000 points Diamond amenity rather than taking a free pay-per-view movie or food & beverage credit for my stay.

As a Diamond member I received complimentary Regency Club access with free sodas, coffee, cookies throughout the day, evening appetizers, evening dessert selections, and complimentary breakfast. Two computer stations and a printer are also available in the Club lounge.

My sister would have had to pay a rate $40 more per night for access to the Hyatt Regency Club.

I regularly read articles from travelers who do not find value in chain hotels and hotel loyalty programs. They would rather pay for trending boutique hotels, Priceline stays, the hotel with the best TripAdvisor review, or even skip the chain hotel scene altogether for a more economical option.

Hotel loyalty program elite members can experience so much more of a hotel without spending so much more money. Hyatt Gold Passport offered complimentary elite status to members in 2009 and several fast-track elite options including stays count double from October 1, 2009 to January 31, 2010.

Hyatt Gold Passport and Starwood Preferred Guest both require 25 stays in a calendar year to reach top elite level within the hotel loyalty program structure. Hyatt Gold Passport’s Diamond members and Starwood Preferred Guest Platinum members receive complimentary suite upgrades and elite bonus point gifts per stay on top of the percentage differential points bonus for being an elite loyalty member.

$55 Million Renovation

The Hyatt Regency Monterey has just been through a $55 million transformation. The Stay Fit fitness club and Accista Spa are two of the biggest changes in the past year.

The Hyatt Regency has six tennis courts with complimentary access for guests. There are two pool areas, both with swimming pools and whirlpools. The pool complex near the lobby and TusCA restaurant and room buildings 3, 4, and 5 has ping pong tables and a large chess board.

The Garden Terrace pool complex is between buildings 24, 25, 26 (road side) and 12, 14, 15 (resort side). Golf course facing buildings are 6, 7, 8 and 9, 10, 11. Half the rooms in these three-story buildings face the golf course and half face the parking lot.

Before the renovation, the Hyatt Regency Monterey received numerous poor reviews from guests feeling ripped off by the high price and old style hotel set-up.  I have provided a photo album with nearly 200 pictures showing different parts of the resort. There are plenty of activities and facilities to make the Hyatt Regency Monterey a good vacation hotel.

My main tip for guests unfamiliar with the hotel is to pay the premium to secure a golf course view room. The two main detractors of this property are the rooms looking out over the parking lots and the rooms facing the freeway side of the resort where noise can be a disturbance. The room interiors are nicely decorated regardless of the room location.

I live close enough to the Hyatt Regency Monterey that Tiger Woods could probably reach the green in two or three shots from my place. This was my first actual room stay at the hotel.

I liked it.

Being a Hyatt Gold Passport diamond member with a suite upgrade certificate and complimentary Regency Club access certainly made this a better hotel stay than the average guest might experience. And that $89 limited time offer rate I booked is probably as rare as our 80 degree days for pricey Monterey.

Here is a link to my Hyatt Regency Monterey annotated photo album on Picasa with 175 hotel photos.

I also have a Picasa annotated photo album for the Hyatt Highlands Inn Carmel with about 200 photos.

Golf course view Hyatt Regency Monterey

California has been battered by El Niño surf this past week. Storms turn me on. I am a stormy weather addict. When nature unleashes its full fury of wind, rain, thunder, ice, waves, and snow, there I am, often walking outside in the brunt of unordinary forces, saying “Bring it on! Is that all you’ve got?”

Saturday morning January 23, 2010 was Day 7 and the last of a series of El Niño storms that rolled each day off the mighty Pacific Ocean into California. Sunday, January 17, Kelley and I went to Carmel Beach. The beach was closed due to high surf. The wind was blowing cold rain horizontally and the sand erosion was already apparent along the 22 acres of Carmel beach. Large “Beach Closed” signs were screwed into the wooden stairway entrances. Barriers were erected in other locations to warn people off the beach; what little beach there was.

Big storms with huge waves blow into Carmel Bay and Monterey Bay every year. Some years bring monster storms. January 2010 was one of the biggies.

But it was two years of winter storms in 1981-82 and 1982-83 which are remembered as having historical impact on the Monterey Peninsula.

I worked on Cannery Row in 1981 at an aquaculture lab raising Atlantic lobsters. The building is still there immediately to the right side of the Monterey Bay Aquarium which opened in 1984. There were major storm waves in the winter of 1981-82 that ripped off most of the outside balcony for the aquaculture lab building. The balcony was where I performed one of my lobster feeding tasks of grinding up fish heads for lobster food. We purchased discarded fish heads from the real fisherman’s wharf of Monterey as opposed to the restaurant and tourist shop Monterey Fisherman’s Wharf where tourists are more likely to visit while staying in town. Then, I individually fed hundreds of lobsters with a weighed portion of fish food, from darting days-old babies to years-old crusty shelled, and no doubt, incredibly meaty lobsters.

Swell waves hitting Monterey Bay Aquarium January 20, 2010

But, despite the big storm waves of 81-82, the winter of 1982-83 is considered the modern day benchmark for major storm activity on the Monterey Peninsula.  The 82-83 storms severely eroded 20 to 40 feet of the bluffs above Carmel beach (photo link). The current walking path beside Scenic Drive and many of the erosion barrier walls and rock revetments to protect the dunes and bluffs above the beach were built after the 1982-1983 storms.

Carmel Beach walls and rock revetment (February 2009)

The storms of this past week created amazing surf. I spent hours driving around the Monterey Peninsula over several days taking photographs and just standing on the bluffs and at times dangerously close to the water in awe of the Pacific waves crashing into shore. At night I lay in bed and waves rolled through my mind as I drifted to sleep.

Waves crashing at road level Carmel Point, Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010

Here is a pictorial story of what transpired over this week in my Picasa photo albums for Carmel (122 photos)and Pacific Grove (145 photos) illustrating  the awesome power of the January 2010 El Niño storms.

Carmel Beach under the Pacific Ocean Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010

I finally took the time to figure out how to upload photos in FlyerTalk threads. Considering I have used 93% of my allocated space on BoardingArea.com I am glad to have another outlet for sharing photos.

The Loyalty Traveler post yesterday for the Westin Verasa Napa included the most photos I have ever successfully uploaded in a blog post. Typically the program crashes after I upload more than 12 photos into a single blog post and weird things happen with the fonts.

I do not intentionally alter the fonts in my blog posts. When the fonts change size and style within Loyalty Traveler posts, it is almost always due to a technical glitch. Uploading photos compounds the issue.

Anyway, I am finding it so much easier to upload photos into FlyerTalk threads and I can actually do it without compressing the photos as I have to do to save space with BoardingArea.com.

This morning I added photos to hotel master threads for about a dozen hotels. I have about 20,000 hotel photos so many more will appear in the coming months on FlyerTalk and here at Loyalty Traveler.

And someday I will launch my Monterey Traveler and Carmel Traveler websites to focus on the hotels in my hometown area. I have thousands of photos, suggestions, and advice for Monterey Peninsula hotels and travel.

So many hotels, so little disk space and time.

Big Sur, California

I added some photos to FlyerTalk in my album titled Monterey. This is my first time playing with this feature. Here are some shots and commentary from places in and around Monterey.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/members/satori-albums-monterey.html