Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Aug 8, 2004

Friday - Gran’ Snarfari

Filed in Landmark-Hunting, Monterey 2004, Raven's Quest

Another early morning, and I was ready to depart two hours before I really needed to set out. I left just before nine and there was no traffic - the rush hour must be somewhere else in Santa Cruz!

It was foggier than yesterday - not so that I couldn’t see, but enough that I was damp and had to keep wiping the drops from my visor. Yet it went fast enough, and with the extra layer I was plenty warm.

I “lost” twenty minutes to a nasty accident coming into town; at least two cars were severely bent, and there were ambulances and police to control the traffic. But that worked out for me, since when I called LV and Lios they were just settling into their car and were with me in five minutes.

We arranged that Lios would drop us at the official “start” of the walking tour, saving us a long drag up a steep hill. As we snarfed the first of a great many landmarks, a cat came up and fluffed at us until we petted it.

I take notes, GPS readings and photogaphs; LV dictates into a tape recorder, so between us we had the whole thing covered. She brought some books to release as well.

The walking tour is very lengthy, and crammed with historic sites and markers. I had a pack full of books and leaked them out wherever I came across a state landmark - there are fourteen in Monterey and we arranged things so we’d hit lots early on.

The whole thing was both charming and overwhelming. Really, one cannot do it all justice in a day. But we tried, and got down Alvarado and round a bit before spotting the Mucky Duck British pub. That was our lunch place.

There are many gorgeous little walled gardens in Monterey, which I love. I have always loved that kind of thing. The architecture varies, but the Spanish style is so pretty. The old theatre was very interesting, and really evoked a simpler time. The Whaling House was not very politically correct, but had a unique feature: a pavement (sidewalk) made out of whalebone, perhaps the only one in the USA.

There were many, many adobes and I was much occupied trying to record everything. It will probably take me months to enter all the snarfs.

I had a ploughman’s lunch, very tasty, with odd green cheese and pickled onions that were just a bit too pickly, but they did very well. I brought some home for later.

Afterwards, Lios dropped us in a veritable thicket of historic sites to the extent where I ran completely out of steam in the Friendly Plaza and was thus out-snarfed. Really, one should take several days over the tour to visit museums where there are some and enjoy the sites more, but we were pushed for time.

At one place, a lady chatted with us and seemed intrigued by Markeroni, so we gave her a bookmark.

At the end, we met up with Lios and he drove us to the three remaining California landmarks. So I saw all fourteen, and released books at, or in honour of them all, save one which I still need to do, and all was well.

I had to go; it was 3 pm on Friday and I knew the traffic would be bad in Santa Cruz. So we said our farewells, and then I went home at a fairly cracking pace.

It probably took me about 45 minutes to get to Capitola, and an hour to ride the next five miles to home base. It was so bad that I thought that I might do some lane-splitting, but the gaps seemed too narrow and the traffic too erratic- lots of lane-changing going on. So I got into the lane for my exit and putted along at a tenth of a mile an hour and coped, though it wasn’t any fun.

Soquel Avenue was not any better, but I left it soon and made my way back over small and non-busy streets. So now I can say I have survived rush hour traffic, and not disgraced myself.

I had a quiet evening at home, writing and reading. Hubby will show up tomorrow sometime. I went through my 130-plus photos and deleted ones that my camera messed up - sometimes it aims at completely the wrong thing, and it’s had this fault since I got it. But with LV’s efforts I’m sure there will be a photograph of all the 45-plus snarfs we saw today. :-)