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.

The Inn at Spanish Bay has a public access walkway between the beach and the golf course leading to the hotel. This is one of my favorite walks on the Monterey Peninsula with the ability to be in nature, see whales and waves, and find myself at a comfortable place for a nice cold beer when I reach the bars and restaurants at Spanish Bay.

The access path is off Sunset Road about 200 yards west of Asilomar Road past the Fishwife Restaurant.

My wife recalls living in Pebble Beach as a child and playing in the sand dunes where the golf course is now. The path turns west to the beach where the wooden walkway begins.

Asilomar State Beach is an area for tidepooling and surfing and general lounging about on the beach. This is a protected marine reserve and it is illegal to remove natural items from the beach.

The boardwalk is subject to winter storms and each year the boards become a little more uneven to walk. A couple years back the stairway from Asilomar Beach leading to Spanish Bay was completely washed out. The stairs have not yet been rebuilt.

The beach grass has been restored to some extent. The entire area off the beach sand has restricted access to allow plant restoration along the dunes.

This is a place to watch big waves, however, the spindrift created by crashing surf on the beach makes big wave days not so nice for photography.

Giant kelp can grow to over 100 feet long. Asilomar Beach is a place where the natural beauty of the sea and sand and wild grasses gives way to a luxury golf resort built on top of the dunes.

The path along the shoreline leads to the beach parking lot at Spanish Bay off the 17-Mile Drive. The path heading inland goes to the hotel Inn at Spanish Bay.

The wooden public access path to the Inn at Spanish Bay gives way to the golf course cart path for a little bit of shared space between pedestrians and machines.

The Inn at Spanish Bay has an outdoor patio for ocean view drinking and food. Fine dining is available inside too.

Rates for the Inn at Spanish Bay are typically $500 to $800 per night. This hotel by all standards is a luxury class hotel. I have never stayed here and I haven’t even ever tried to get inside a room for photos. TripAdvisor has dozens of guest photos and the rooms look spacious and comfortably furnished.

You do not need to be a guest to enjoy the luxury of Spanish Bay. You can simply walk or bike into Pebble Beach for free and sit on the patio for drinks and appetizers in winter sunshine or summer fog.

Insider Tip: The car entrance fee to Pebble Beach counts as a credit for food and beverage purchases for The Inn at Spanish Bay and The Lodge at Pebble Beach. Just give your payment receipt to the waiter for credit on your bill.

Sunset at The Inn at Spanish Bay Pebble Beach as a bagpiper plays tunes carried in the wind.

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.

I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge and I have been haunted by Christmas ghosts all week since my stay at the Carmel Highlands Inn. I wish it were all a dream and I could repeat Christmas Day at the Highlands Inn and turn down the Hyatt Vacation Club timeshare presentation offer that sullied the ending to what was otherwise a pleasant hotel stay. $150 was not worth over two hours of our limited family time together this Christmas week during my paid stay at the hotel. I deeply regret letting the HVC sales staff intrude on our family vacation getaway.

Carmel Highlands, California

Hyatt Stay Certificates for $249 nights at Hyatt Highlands Inn

There are some good tips in this post for getting a discount on the published rates at Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn and other high-priced Hyatt hotels and resorts.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn had a published rate of $399 per night for much of the Christmas week ($359.10 AAA rate). There is a $20 daily resort fee and 10.5% tax making the daily published rate about $420 to $460 all-in per night for the lowest rates.

A two-night Hyatt Stay Certificate Elite Level brought the rate down to $269 all-in per night. I published an article on Loyalty Traveler a few weeks ago on Hyatt Stay Certificates for big hotel rate savings.

I got that loyalty traveler buzz after I booked two nights for a total room cost of $269 per night compared to the otherwise lowest AAA rate at $417 per night with breakfast. The Hyatt Stay certificate saved nearly $300 on a two-night stay and I was able to handle the entire transaction online.

Hyatt Stay Certificates are paper certificates that must be mailed. I was concerned the certificate may not arrive in time when I ordered Monday morning, December 19 for a Sunday arrival on Christmas Day.

Hyatt Stay Certificates shipping cost:

• FedEx Express Saver shipping is $6 for a certificate order (not valid for Hawaii or Alaska).
• FedEx Two day = $14.
• FedEx overnight = $25.

I went with 2 day delivery on my Dec 19 Monday morning order and the FedEx delivery happened Tuesday night while I was out of the house. A signature was required so the envelope was not left on my doorstep, but FedEx returned Wednesday afternoon. My total Stay Certificate cost for two nights at Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn was $512.

Hyatt Stay Certificate

Unique Upgrade Opportunity

Even better was the message after making my reservation that I had a unique upgrade opportunity. E-upgrades are used by Hyatt as a means of upselling room reservations with the opportunity to get a room category upgrade for a small additional fee that generally results in a savings compared to the published rate for the room.

• Big Sur Suite = $39 extra per night.
• Ocean View Townhouse = $69 extra per night.

In my previous stays at Carmel Highlands Inn I have always received a complimentary upgrade to the Ocean View Townhouse. In 2010 I was upgraded to the Point Lobos Suite. I have never stayed in the Big Sur Suite and that is a corner room with loads of windows. I only selected the Big Sur Suite for my upgrade opportunity hoping for a chance to photograph the room.

Christmas Day at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn

On Christmas Day I checked in and received room 420 in the timeshare section of the hotel. This is the first time I have ever been given a room in the Hyatt Vacation Club section of the Highlands Inn. I was disappointed that I did not get the Big Sur Suite or an ocean view townhome.

The positive feature of the room is it probably has one of the best unobstructed ocean views of any room I have seen at Hyatt Highlands Inn. The balconies of the neighboring rooms are mostly not visible when standing out on the balcony of room 420.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Room 420 sunset view.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Room 420 daylight view.

The major negative of the room is it was the first room I’ve ever stayed in at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands without two bathrooms and the sitting room is basically shared with the bedroom. We had to move the dining table chair to partition off the bedroom from the sitting room.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn room 420.

This room is also the only room I have been in with just one TV. Once the partition between the sitting room and bedroom is closed there is no TV to view from the bed. The TV swivels and is viewable from the bed or the sitting room, but guests must choose which direction to face the TV and the bedroom partition must be open to see the TV from bed.

HVC sales teams took over Highlands Inn lobby in 2011.

Apparently I had not been to the Highlands Inn in 2011. My wife and I were surprised to see the lobby was reorganized to set up a series of timeshare presentation desks where there used to be large open space with beautiful black and white photographs.

2010 Carmel Highlands Inn lobby

Carmel Highlands Inn lobby 2010.

From the Mountains... To the Sea photo display.

2011 Carmel Highlands Inn lobby

2011 Carmel Highlands Inn features HVC sales desks on both walls of lobby.

Scenic nature photos replaced with a display of Hyatt Vacation Club properties.

There was a Christmas tree in the lobby when we arrived on Christmas Day. My family was surprised to see the tree being cut apart and removed on Monday morning. The lobby is usually a tranquil place to sit and relax and gaze out the wall-to-wall picture windows. On both mornings of our stay the seats by the windows were being used by the Hyatt Vacation Club sales force for meetings and the setting was anything but a tranquil place to relax while staying at the hotel.

Carmel Highlands Inn lobby seating by ocean view windows.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn lobby window seats.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn lobby south wall.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn north wall of lobby.

These are lovely seating arrangements, but the photos fail to show the HVC sales desks located off to the sides. From my observations during our stay there is a good chance there will be a timeshare sales pitch happening a few feet from these seats.

The largest pod of gray whales I have ever seen were spouting in probably ten or more places as I sat in the lobby gazing out the window. My sister tried to sit in the lobby and enjoy the scenery, but she went back to the room to get away from the three timeshare conversations happening simultaneously in three sets of window seats.

I had never even encountered the HVC sales staff in several previous stays at the Carmel Highlands Inn. In 2011 there was a major conversion of the hotel property with the former Hyatt Vacation Club offices being converted into the Fitness Room and the HVC offices being moved into the lobby. My sister wondered why they didn’t use one of the conference rooms on the floor below the lobby for the HVC desks? That is a good question.

Grand Piano in lobby.

The old Hyatt Vacation Club office was located in the timeshare section of the property and the small fitness room for the property was located beneath the lobby. The larger fitness room is now located in the former Hyatt Vacation Club office and is a great improvement, however and unfortunately, the HVC sales team has taken over the Hyatt Highlands Inn lobby.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn fitness room is former location of HVC office.

Upstairs bedroom in townhome unit.

Bedroom view from one-bedroom townhome unit.

Sitting room in HVC townhome.

Kitchen in HVC townhome.

Hyatt Carmel Highlands Pacific's Edge Restaurant.

Hyatt Highlands Inn is a beautiful place to stay. My past stays have always left me desiring more.

This Christmas week stay ended badly for me by participating in a Hyatt Vacation Club timeshare presentation. I sold out my family time for a $150 credit on the hotel bill.

Merry Christmas folks!

I scrooged you again for the Christmas holidays.

Related Loyalty Traveler posts:

In the Heart of the Hyatt Carmel Highlands Inn (January 5, 2009)

Why visit Monterey and Hyatt Carmel Highlands in December? (Dec 6, 2011)

Hurricane Point is a high spot of the Big Sur Highway 1 coast with views of Bixby Bridge.

Bixby Bridge, Big Sur, Monterey County, California.

When I stood out at Hurricane Point there were three huge birds soaring south and I think they were condors since their size relative to seagulls was immense. My photo indicates to me there was a wing tag which is attached to the endangered condor birds of the Big Sur coast.

My photographic evidence is inconclusive. Regardless I think the sighting was an auspicious “three condors of the day” for my family’s Big Sur drive.

The first photo of Bixby Bridge is from April 2010. Here is my photo yesterday with a tiny black blip over the water horizon that I think was one of three California condors.

Big Sur coast Dec 27, 2011

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.

The wharf was like a scene from Hitchcock’s film “The Birds” when I eyed one brown pelican on the railing. Within a few minutes there were nearly a dozen pelicans sitting on the dock on the bay.

Pelicans sitting on a dock at Monterey Fisherman's Wharf.

I was surprised how the pelicans did not appear intimidated as tourists approached within a few feet of the birds to snap photos. This is the closest I recall being to live pelicans. I adore watching them glide inches above the water over the ocean. They are graceful frequent flyers of the sea.

Sea lions were also enjoying the warm sun of Monterey on a December afternoon.

Sea lions sitting on a dock at Monterey Fisherman's Wharf.

Greetings from Monterey and wishing you happy holidays.

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.

The heyday of Cannery Row was during two decades from the 1920s to 1940s when over 3 million tons of sardines were caught in Monterey Bay and packed in the canneries of Monterey’s shoreline.

Sardine Industry Decline depicted in graphic at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The sardines were overfished and the annual harvest plummetted in the 1950s. The canneries shut down one by one with the last working cannery closing in 1973. Over the years the building structures were demolished leaving behind only concrete pillar remnants in the sea.

Cannery Row empty lot shows remnants of the old industrial days.

Cannery Row has seen improvements on the western portion of the road with the Monterey Bay Aquarium opening in 1984 and the InterContinental Hotel The Clement opening in 2008. These are the touristed sections of Cannery Row with restaurants, shops, bars and entertainment.

When I walk from my house down to Cannery Row I approach from the east. Cannery Row begins at San Carlos Beach park. The beach in this location is a popular scuba diving spot.

San Carlos Beach - Monterey, California

Sandy beach at San Carlos Beach Monterey shows remnants of old canneries.

San Carlos Beach looking east to Coast Guard pier and Mount Toro in distance.

John Steinbeck called the grasslands of Mount Toro “the pastures of heaven”. The Coast Guard pier is a California sea lion hangout. I hear the barking sea lions at night when the noises of the city subside and the call of the wild drifts up the hillside to my home.

June-July 2010 California sea lions "occupied" the Monterey beach by Fisherman's Wharf.

California Sea Lions on beach by Fisherman's Wharf Monterey June-July 2010.

Above San Carlos Beach is a Cannery Divers Memorial for the workers who maintained the underwater pipes used to transport sardines from ships to the canneries.

Cannery Divers Memorial - San Carlos Beach, Monterey

Cannery Row begins just past San Carlos Beach park past the whale mural in the photo.

San Carlos Beach and the east end of Cannery Row.

The eastern portion of Cannery Row is mostly unchanged over the past 30 years, except for the development of two hotels including the beautiful Monterey Plaza Hotel (Stash Hotel Rewards partner).

View from Monterey Plaza to San Carlos Beach.

Cannery Row east of Monterey Plaza Hotel.

Kayaks are a popular way for seeing sea life in Monterey.

Kayaks and Monterey Plaza Hotel on Cannery Row.

Monterey Plaza Hotel, Monterey, California.

The top floor of the Monterey Plaza Hotel has a spa tub on the deck with great ocean views.

Monterey Plaza Hotel view of bull kelp from spa tub deck.

Monterey Bay Aquarium has a bull kelp display in a two-story tank. If you have kids who like to mess around with seaweed you will learn why it is called bull kelp when one of the kids smacks the other with the slimy whips washed up on local beaches.

Kelp sculpture fountain by San Carlos Beach.

When I was a teenager in the 1970s the Monterey Coastline Path was unused railroad tracks from Fisherman’s Wharf to Cannery Row. The dirt path beside the tracks was rugged and dusty. The benches, paved bike path, tourist guide signs and info panels and art were all added in the past 25 years.

At home he feels like a tourist

He fills his head with culture.

Gang of Four – “At Home He’s a Tourist” (1979)

The Chart House restaurant has been there as long as I can remember. A landmark on Cannery Row. And nothing else beside it for as long as I can remember.

The Chart House restaurant Cannery Row.

The empty lots of Cannery Row have puzzled me most of my life as I wondered why a world-famous stretch of coastline by name had, for decades, so little to offer tourists.

Cannery Row vacant lot.

Historic Pacific Fish Company lot on Cannery Row.

The sign tells how the first cannery on Cannery Row was started in 1902 by Otosaburo Noda, a Japanese immigrant who moved his abalone canning operation from Point Lobos to Ocean View Boulevard, Monterey. He and partner Harry Malpas started the Monterey Fishing and Canning Company. The company was bought out in 1907 and renamed the Pacific Fish Company. In 1926 the name changed to the California Packing Corporation.

Cans were shuttled on overhead conveyors from the canneries to the rail cars on the tracks that are now the walking and cycling path. Overhead conveyors are now in use as pedestrian crossings across Cannery Row.

Modern pedestrian overhead conveyors are reminiscent of historic canning conveyors.

Old Cannery Row.

This post covers the lesser developed portion of Cannery Row. I’ll follow up with another post to show the tourist sections of Cannery Row and the beautiful sea views from the coastal path in Pacific Grove.

Related Posts:

Cannery Row in Monterey: Photo Walk of hotels and restaturants (December 22, 2011).

Why visit Monterey and Carmel Highlands in December? (December 6, 2011) – Point Lobos photo walk.

Please contribute $10 if you can.

Hyatt Gold Passport sponsored Loyalty Traveler this year with a prize of 110,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points. Top hotels in the Hyatt chain offer a free night for 22,000 points. There are also about 10% of Hyatt’s nearly 500 hotels globally in the category 1 rewards group for only 5,000 points per night.

My World in a Library

I grew up as a dependent child of a U.S. Army sergeant. Nearly every year our family moved to a new military base and I attended a different school. I had attended 12 schools by the end of 10th grade. Many of the details of those towns and military bases have been forgotten. My most vivid memories tend to be the home where I lived temporarily and the local library.

Books were my anchor.

In the desert of southern New Mexico on the White Sands Missile Range I read Mark Twain’s  Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels and developed the wanderlust motivating me and other middle school friends to hike into the Organ Mountains and explore mountain streams and valleys and old mines.

In Germany when I was 14 I scoured U.S. military base libraries around the country for the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hermann Hesse and Jack Kerouac. Occasionally I could raise the money to buy a colorfully covered English langauage novel from a German bookstore, but that was an infrequent event. Libraries kept my house filled with books and music I could not afford, but I could take books home and experience places and ages while reading books in my possession two weeks at a time.

Libraries gave me access to books and places and experiences I might never have dreamed otherwise.

I found my dreams in books. Words let me access the world and the ages, no matter where I was living.

Los Angeles Public Library with 'Library Tower' skyscraper in background.

“Books invite all, they constrain none.” is saying etched in stone above the Los Angeles Public Library door.

Related post: Win 110,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points with a $10 Purpose. (Nov 30)

I guess I should have talked up hotels more. Being in new places and seeing how people live and work in different environments and cultures is still my primary objective for travel. Nice hotels are a bonus.

My favorite question from Daraius was “What would your readers be surprised to know about you?”

Here is another thing I realized is characteristic of my travels. I spend a lot of time in grocery stores wherever I go. I buy most of my food at stores and prepare it myself when traveling. That keeps travel expenses way down.

While I generally can’t talk much about fine dining and hotel restaurants, I have extensive experience with grocery store shopping in many countries.

Grocery shopping in Australia.

Brother can you loan me a tray for my drink on this four hour flight?

Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Strange days indeed. - John Lennon

I had planned to write this up as a satirical piece.

Tip of the Hat to J.W. Marriott L.A. Live for promoting alcohol in the area of the city’s highest concentration of homeless people.

No need for satire since this practice is alive and well in Los Angeles where an 18-floor high Bud Light advertisement covers a large portion of one side of the J.W. Marriott. Here is a photo link from www.banbillboardblight.org showing the Bud Light billboard on the side of the J.W. Marriott L.A. Live. I wanted to snap my own photo, but I was entering the freeway in a rainstorm when I saw the Bud Light image.

Downtown Los Angeles – Homeless capital of the USA

I was in Downtown Los Angeles this past weekend for Blog World Expo 2011. This was the first time I have been in Downtown LA since 1977. Perhaps the centerpiece of the downtown revitalization plan is L.A. Live, a $2.5 billion entertainment complex with theaters, restaurants, music and sports venues and hotels including the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton situated next to the events center and Los Angeles Convention Center.

Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott at L.A. Live - Downtown Los Angeles

I stayed at the Sheraton Downtown, about six blocks north of the L.A. Live complex. My first night in Los Angeles I went walking randomly around the streets to see what downtown L.A. looked like these days. The architecture was striking.

Los Angeles Public Library 1925 - U.S. Bank Tower (Library Tower) 1989

Los Angeles Central Library was built in 1925 on the site of the 1898 California State Normal School (college for teacher education). The Central Library building was devastated April 29, 1986 in an arson fire that destroyed 370,000 books and documents. The city of Los Angeles allowed the tallest skscraper on the west coast to be erected as part of the funding for the Downtown Los Angeles library restoration.

Los Angeles Public Library 1925

Across from the library is Bunker Hill, the center of the Los Angeles financial industry.

Bunker Hill skyscrapers are center of financial district in downtown Los Angeles.

Library Tower is the local name for the U.S. Bank 73-story skyscraper. This is the tallest skyscraper on the west coast at 1,017 feet.

U.S. Bank Tower, aka Library Tower (1989)

There is a lovely fountain winding down between skyscrapers and a grand stairway or escalators for the steep climb up Bunker Hill. There was no running water in the fountain and apparently I didn’t even take a photo of the stairs. I was too busy looking skyward.

At this point I could have asked directions to the Walt Disney Concert Hall which is considered an architectural beauty designed by Frank Gehry. But I didn’t.

I am a wanderer and I didn’t pull out my phone to check directions. I just started walking and within a few blocks I had left the skyscrapers and found myself in the streets of no name people. I was kind of hoping to find Los Angeles City Hall and see what the LA Occupy movement looked like. There was no need to find an encampment of people around City Hall.

I walked across Main Street in downtown Los Angeles where the street addresses change from the urban upscale west side addresses loaded with fine dining restaurants, hotels, shops and banks to the east side addresses where the racial makeup of the people on the streets was predominantly black and the businesses are primarily liquor stores, corner markets, city public works services and food banks.

The activist saying “Occupy Every Street” is something that has obviously been happening around Los Angeles long before September 17, 2011 launched the Occupy Wall Street movement. Block after block I walked was filled with homeless men and women living on the sidewalks. There were literally thousands of people who were living in tents, blankets, plastic tarps and cardboard shelters.

A gesture of kindness and salvation appeared as a dinner meal on the sidewalk. A dozen people who had been resting alongside the walls of buildings converged on four large foil food containers. I happened to be walking past just as the first person was removing foil from one of the lids and I saw it filled with spaghetti. I wanted to take a photo, but thought I should let people get their meal with dignity and anonymity. Looking around I saw at least a dozen more people trying to cross the street in the middle of the block to get a portion before the food trays emptied.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. It never will." - Los Angeles Library fountain.

There are no photos to share of this walk down East 5th Street to South Central and back to the west side of downtown LA along East 6th Street. This probably ranked in my Top 10 for walks in places where keeping it real could have gone real bad.

Google Maps - Los Angeles Mission

I just have this innate desire to see how people live where ever I go and sometimes that compels me to go places where most locals will tell you to avoid.

Nobody bothered me and nobody asked me for a handout despite being surrounded by so many needy people. People were living their lives on the streets, socially interacting – or not. Many of the individuals on the streets were visibly wasted, many just looked sickly and hungry.

Mostly there were men on the streets, but probably about 10% to 20% women on some streets. Only a small proportion of people on these streets were non-black guys among the thousands of people on the sidewalks.

Outside the Los Angeles Mission were hundreds of people lined up for dinner service. The LA Mission website states 73,489 homeless people are living in the Los Angeles area. I estimate I saw a few thousand of them in the 20 or so blocks I walked.

The concierge at the Sheraton Club Lounge told me the downtown LA area is so much nicer without all the homeless people who used to be around a decade ago. Perhaps he hadn’t walked a few blocks east of the hotel in some years.

Los Angeles theater on South Los Angeles Street, Downtown LA.

Turns out that back on the west side of these numbered avenues are loads of nightclubs. On Saturday night when I met up with BoardingArea bloggers RoadWarriorette, The Wandering Aramean and AAdvantage Geek, we walked about ten blocks from a nightclub where there was the closing evening Blog World Expo party back to the Westin Bonaventure. We passed hundreds of young partiers, the majority being Asian, dressed for entertainment at clubs with $10 drinks and long entry lines where you might get in if you are part of the select crowd.

On my walk back to the Sheraton Hotel alone on a Saturday night at midnight I passed by three different groups where a nicely dressed young woman was getting sick on the sidewalk as her friends surrounded her trying to help.

The juxtaposition of young, apparently well-to-do women coming into downtown LA to party and have a good time to only find themselves out on the sidewalk unable to stand and sick on the streets while a few blocks to the east there are thousands of people struggling with life on the streets made an impression.

Downtown Los Angeles

Sunday morning I left downtown Los Angeles to drive home to Monterey.

The last image I saw of downtown LA was the J.W. Marriott at L.A. Live and an 18-story Bud Light billboard on the outside of the luxury hotel as I entered the 110 freeway.

Honestly, I was glad to be leaving downtown LA.

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 a 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