California Dreaming

Coming in to land!

Normally when I point my camera in the air I get a picture of the sky, despite my best efforts at trying to photograph birds flying or planes cruising overhead. This time it worked! These are Brown Pelicans which are in abundance on the Californian coast. Amazingly graceful in flight but clumsy on the ground - we saw them plunge diving into the sea to catch their supper.

First to arrive - all a flutter!

A couple of hours south of San Francisco is the old city of Monterey, we stayed in the quiet suburb of Pacific Grove and looked for butterflies. There's a stand of trees there that is one of the overwintering sites for Monarch Butterflies - these lovely things have been in decline for years and this particular overwintering sites is being carefully managed. From the end of October to March every year thousands of them descend on these few trees and sit out the winter in suspended animation. So we sauntered up to the park and looked and looked - and so did lots of other people and despite scanning all the branches of the tall trees no-one could see anything - not even me with my super duper binoculars. Clearly they were all leaving the big migration until November and this was October 30th. Just as we we about to leave we had a tip off from a local - 'Just over there in tree number 69!' she said. And sure enough about a third of the way up there was a cluster of butterflies attached to a branch - here's the photo!

Let the ale flow!

I'm doing something a little bit cheaty here - this beautiful poster advertises a Californian pub that I went to many years ago, but not this time! Nevertheless I like the poster so much that I just had to include it here. On this visit to the San Francisco region and beyond we visited (not all on the same night) the longstanding Magnolia Brewpub in Haight Ashbury, the Barrel Head Brewhouse, the Highway One Brewing Company, the Fieldwork Brewing company, the Alvarado Street Brewery (best beer!), the pioneering Half Moon Bay Brewery (best pub!) and the Hop Dogma Brewing Company. All very good but unfortunately the only beers below around 5% tend to be their versions of lager, pilsner and kolsch - and they're all pricey! The one major disappointment was the Cannery Row Brewing Company in Monterey. We should have done our homework here but we were so taken by the idea of visiting Steinbeck's Cannery Row that we failed to realise that it's a real tourist trap - Cannery Row Brewing Co brews no beer of it's own - they serve a wide range of pleasant enough beers but they were very pricey and the service was one step away from appalling.

They're both mine now!

Our last night on the West Coast saw us in Barbara's Fishtrap, a rickety restaurant that looks as if it's about to fall into the sea at Half Moon Bay. The service here was great (Vicky exchanged e-mails with the server who sneaked us out some free Key Lime pie as a takeaway dessert) and the fish was wonderful. You might also take note of the Ballast Point and North Coast Brewing Company beer bottles, just two of a fine selection available here.


To finish on a positive note some of the scenery in California is stunning - this was taken from high up on some cliffs south of San Francisco - Vicky was getting a bit worried that I was too close to the edge!

Nice beach - how do we get down?