Carmel on my mind.  Yesterday I finished The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Hard travelin’ times in California for those folks. The book is truly a stunning experience. Getting myself down to the sea seemed a good recovery strategy from living with the Joads this past week.

Seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home design in Oak Park and the Robie House in Hyde Park at the University of Chicago campus motivated me to take a closer look at Frank Lloyd Wright house design for the Walker Residence, currently a private home in Carmel, California. The past few May days have been glorious around these parts. Big Sur for some more nature time is on my agenda today. Read More…

I like to talk up the place I live – the Monterey Peninsula of Central Coast California. This is another one of my posts that has nothing to do with hotels. This post does share some of the great attractions of coming to the Monterey area.

The Monterey Peninsula is a place with nearly 200 hotels in three fairly small towns in Carmel (pop. 4,000), Pacific Grove (15,000) and Monterey (28,000)where the total year-round population is less than 50,000 people. Seaside, Marina, Del Rey Oaks, Carmel Valley and Pebble Beach add to the surroundings to give the area a real population a bit over 100,000 people. Salinas is a city of nearly 150,000 people that you might think would encroach on the Monterey Peninsula. Despite over 200 years of development in this area of the California Central Coast, the Fort Ord National Monument, agricultural fields, and hills separate the Monterey Peninsula from the Salinas Valley and the rest of the world. Read More…

Bruce Springsteen released the album The Ghost of Tom Joad in 1995. The album was his first album (Billboard highest rank #11) not to reach the Top 10 albums on Billboard 200 after a streak of eight consecutive Top 5 albums.

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad

- Bruce Springsteen “The Ghost of Tom Joad” Read More…

This is day three of the 32nd annual Steinbeck Festival. As I read and hear more writings from Salinas native John Steinbeck (1902-1968), I recognize my surroundings here in Monterey County through descriptive words from decades past that still apply to the places and people of the region today.

The Salinas Valley is 100 miles of premium agricultural land in about a ten mile wide strip of valley land sitting between the Gabilan Mountains to the east and Santa Lucia Mountains of Big Sur to the west. The center of Monterey Bay is where the Salinas River meets the sea. Read More…

Artichokes? Yeah, we have a festival for those!

Castroville Artichoke Festival happens the weekend of May 19-20, 2012 in the little town of Castroville about 16 miles north of Monterey. This is the 53rd festival. Looks to me like the festival started in 1960, the year I was born not too many miles away from Castroville across the fields of Monterey County. Though back in 1960 some of those fields between Castroville and Monterey were artillery ranges at the former Fort Ord Army Base. Read More…

Sunday morning reading to catch up on travel news is a relaxing way to start the day. One of the articles I came across today is a feature article on Budget Travel by Fran Golden – “How to Get a Free Upgrade“.

Here is a tip that made me laugh.

Remember that gate agents deal with a lot of demanding, obnoxious passengers,  and offering a few kind words and a smile goes a long way. John E. DiScala,  founder of travel-advice site johnnyjet.com, reveals that chocolate helps him get  upgraded-or at least moved to a better coach seat-about half the time. DiScala  says he brings one-pound chocolate bars for the gate agents and flight crew, who  have discretion on seating after the cabin door closes.

Of course there is going to be some expense in buying a pound of chocolate, so that strategy isn’t exactly free.

Here is my Loyalty Traveler tip to combine with JohnnyJet’s sage advice for all you hotel travelers wanting a free airline upgrade:

Save up the pillow chocolates from turndown service and see if a bag of little chocolates has the same result!

Club Carlson pillow chocolates.

I just got off the phone with my mother. She celebrated her birthday this week at the Wynn in Las Vegas. Mom needed to vent her frustrations.

So why does my Mom say she will boycott the Wynn hotel now?

My sisters prepaid her hotel stay. Turns out that when my mother checked into the Wynn she was asked for the credit card used to prepay the hotel room. She told the desk agent that the room was a birthday gift from her daughters, and then the desk agent asked if her daughter had given her the credit card for check-in.

“Why would I have my daughter’s credit card?” was my mother’s reply.

Read More…

The Inn at Spanish Bay is a Pebble Beach golf course resort built near the Pacific Grove town line. A public access boardwalk from Sunset Drive runs along the sand dunes above Asilomar State Beach to Spanish Bay. 17-Mile Drive and Sunset Drive form the road boundaries of Spanish Bay Resort on the Monterey Peninsula.

Google Maps showing Spanish Bay Resort, Pebble Beach at lower left of image. [click on image to open full-size].

This is not a hotel review of The Inn at Spanish Bay. This is another post in my Loyalty Traveler series “At Home He’s a Tourist” where I share the sights of the Monterey Peninsula from my walks around local communities near my home.

Walking to Spanish Bay, Pebble Beach

Asilomar State Beach and Sunset Drive see a steady stream of cars on any evening with clear skies as locals, workers, tourists, surfers and stoners come down to the wild western coastline to watch sunset.

Pebble Beach has a $9.25 car fee to enter the gates into the private residential lands of this scenic and exclusive southwestern point of the Monterey Peninsula. The famous Lodge at Pebble Beach can be seen from Carmel Beach, but natural barriers make it difficult to access the Lodge walking along the coastline. And climbing up the bluffs to the Pebble Beach Golf Course is certainly frowned upon.

The Inn at Spanish Bay is easily approached by foot or bicycle and there is no entry fee required into Pebble Beach for walkers and cyclists. Spanish Bay Resort was developed in the late 1980s during the years my wife and I lived away from the Monterey Peninsula while going to college and working as teachers in small fishing villages in Maine and north coast California in Humboldt County.

Resort development in Pebble Beach is tough to get through environmental impact reviews. Just recently a project to expand The Lodge at Pebble Beach, the Inn at Spanish Bay and a new build hotel resort for Cypress Point have made headway.

Read More…

My hotel stay mistakes are relatively infrequent in recent years. The dumbest mistake I ever made was on our 1989 honeymoon in London and thinking a hotel mini-bar was free. Somehow free booze on the Pan Am flight translated in my jet-lagged head to free booze in our London St. James Court hotel room. We drank over 100£ of mini-booze for a major buzz before I finally asked a housekeeper if there was a charge for drinking all those little bottles of alcohol.

Possibly an equally big mistake occurred this week when I was pitched a Hyatt Vacation Club timeshare presentation on Christmas Day after checking in at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn.  There was a call to our room about an hour after arrival and my wife was told that I had a coupon waiting for me in the lobby. There was no mention of Hyatt Vacation Club in the phone call, but I knew that is where the desk for HVC is located when Kelley told me where to go for the coupon.

Read More…

Yesterday was bird day afternoon along the Big Sur coast of Monterey County. The wind blown waves made whale spotting difficult. To compensate for lack of whale sightings was a marvelous display of birds, thousands of gulls, soaring along the coastline cliffs along 40 miles of coast from Carmel Highlands south.

Read More…

This has been a week of visitors and local sightseeing around the Monterey Peninsula for me. My sister wanted to see whales when she arrived in town. We drove to Point Pinos in Pacific Grove and saw spouts from at least six whales immediately upon arrival to the beach. I pulled out the binoculars and my sister and I watched gray whales heading south. The gray whale migration is in progress to Baja.

I’ll get back to regular posting on Loyalty Traveler by Wednesday, December 28. The weather is so gorgeous that I am spending all my waking hours out and about and unchained to my computer.

Brown pelican at Monterey Fisherman's Wharf.

Read More…