Road Trip Number Five---Monterey and Marina

     Back to running the blacktop--there was a mudslide blocking Highway One north of San Simeon, so after we finished the tour at Hearst Castle, we had to backtrack to Cambria, billed as a “Quiet Little Drinking Town with a Tourist Problem”.  We ate wonderful fish tacos at Moonstone Bay, bought tee shirts for the grandchildren and moved over to Highway 101 to avoid the mudslide.  We stayed that night at a non-descript motel in a non-descript town, Salinas.   Early the next morning we left to get back to Highway One and continue our trip.



The bridge at Bixby Creek



    We detoured past Monterey and Carmel and moved south on Highway One over the graceful bridge at Bixby’s Creek on our way to Big Sur.  Wayne and I had breakfast in the redwood trees at a sort of mountain resort Bistro and re-crossed the lovely bridge on the way back to Monterey.  We had to do it that way to see Big Sur and the bridge because of the mudslide down south.  The drive was breathtakingly beautiful and I did not mind retracing our steps.  I have an emotional attachment to that bridge—someone I once cared for deeply had her ashes scattered there.

     We spent the day inspecting the Pebble Beach golf course and clubhouse, carefully traversing the seventeen mile loop, inspecting the Monterey Bay Aquarium and checking out Cannery Row.  Late in the afternoon, we walked out onto fisherman’s wharf and watched as the commercial fishing boats came in from the bay.  We were curious, because you never see anything like that in Lubbock.

A days work in the purse net

     The first boat we watched came in with only one person aboard.  He expertly eased the boat up to the dock and a worker lowered a purse net into his boat.  The captain loaded five fish—King Salmon, we were told—into the net and the worker hoisted them up to the dock.  The fish were dropped into a plastic bin and rolled into the building to be weighed and credited to the captain’s account.  The skipper took a receipt and eased away from the dock—his pay for the one hundred and twenty some-odd pounds of salmon was seven dollars a pound—tough job, fishing.  Of course, he was through for the day.

      As we watched, another boat came in to repeat the process, this one slightly larger and sporting a two man crew—one to do the work and, evidently, one to yell and cuss.  The loud one was the captain and the deck hand turned out to be his teenage son.  The deck hand unloaded seven big Salmon and came ashore to get the receipt.  The captain fumed, chewed the remnants of a cigar, sat on his big butt and cussed his son.   One of these days, he’ll wonder why that boy turned out the way he did.

     After our peek into the world of commercial fishing, we walked the half-mile pier back to the truck and made our way to Marina, a little town up the coast.  There was a decent looking motel on the main drag and it was past Miller time, so we pulled in.  A foreign-looking lady appeared behind the desk if you rang the bell long enough.  She was nice, but I had trouble understanding her.  I wondered about her nationality, and Wayne said, “I guess you didn’t notice that red dot on her forehead?”  I must have overlooked it.

     The lady was reserved and very businesslike until I mentioned the plants outside the office.  Then she came alive and started talking animatedly about all the plants around the grounds.  She took me outside and pointed out her favorites.  I could not understand everything she said, but her passion was obvious.  I had taken the trouble to find something we had in common—a love of plants—and was rewarded for it by gaining a new friend.  She asked where we lived and what kind of plants grew in Texas.  She had never seen a juniper bush.  I assured her that it was nothing special.

     There were interesting looking succulents—cactus-like plants with no thorns—in the beds outside the motel office.  When I commented on them, my new friend with the dot told me to take cuttings if I wanted.  At least, that’s what I think she said.  In the morning, we happened to have an empty half gallon plastic whiskey bottle, so I took some dirt from one of the beds and potted two cuttings from those plants in the cut-down bottle.  We nursed them all the way back to Texas and one of them is growing on my front porch now.  I tend it carefully and it reminds me that even people with strange customs have things in common---and a red dot does not necessarily signify a character flaw.