New In Pacific Grove

Pacific Grove is sporting some new stores along its main streets.  From one end of town to the other, along Lighthouse Avenue and up and down crossing streets, entrepreneurs are giving it a go, filling up once-empty storefronts and feeling optimistic.  

There is a fine new restaurant that's open from 4 PM to closing at the corner of Fountain and Lighthouse, occupying a corner location in the big Holman's building.  It's a French country-style place called Le Normandie whose sure hit is coq au vin, according to many.  The onion soup will send the chill right out of your bones.  This is not a place to find experimental high-priced or highfalutin Cal-Euro food. Instead long-loved classic French favorites are cooked to a delicious turn on a nightly basis.  During our currently cool and breezy weather conditions, you feel well-fortified after a meal, content, satisfied.  It opened very quietly a few months ago and is doing well by all accounts.  The owner will greet you with a smile and lovely hospitality when you go.

Further along Lighthouse Avenue, heading west toward the post office, you will notice a new venture called Carried Away that has only been open a week.  They feature ladies handbags, accessories and small items for the home.  The proprietress also owns, with her husband, Miss Trawick's Garden Shop, a popular garden and home gift shop found around and below the Red House Cafe.  Both shops are fun to browse around and chat with the owner.  Very friendly and both very pretty shops.  Guests who stay down at the Centrella Inn or at the Gosby House Inn - two popular B&Bs in town - enjoy a very short and easy stroll to find gift shops, book stores, cafes and beauty boutiques nearby.

On Forest Avenue, just down from Grove Market is a new baby supply boutique shop called Sprout Baby Boutique, filled with unusual and unique clothing and small items for people newly arrived on earth.  The shop is very small, but the owner carries a full array of hard-to-find special shoes for babies and toddlers as well as things you may only otherwise find at boutique websites online.

Forest Avenue is now lined from top to bottom with all sorts of browseable small shops, most oriented to families and locals who style themselves non-Target, small-town locals.

Pacific Grove, like the entire Monterey Peninsula is anticipating a vigorous influx of visitors who will be here for the US Open Golf Championship in June.  Trees along Lighthouse are to be lit with thousands of sparkling lights in the evening.  US flags will flutter from the lamp posts and merchants will be fully stocked.

Carmel will be impacted during the tournament with people who love to poke and wander around.  They will be rewarded with fine restaurants, cafes and enough art galleries to satisfy the most energetic and determined art collectors; there are over a hundred galleries.  However, the prices are high in Carmel and parking is at a premium.  

The new stores on Lighthouse are good signs of economic energy, and every store owner is ready to welcome you.  We may have cold air here in PG, but we have warm hearts.

Walk Like a Butterfly

Enticed by bright morning sun blazing in the eastern sky, we sprang into action and drank several cups of hot coffee.  That done, further springing into action got us out the front door where we were slapped bracing cold morning air.  Vigorous exclamations of doubt and surprise; whose idea was this anyway?  I was glad for the hot coffee.  Oh my, the frigid air that was penetrating my jacket.  But, it was just so pretty out... Ugh, why don't I live in Hawaii?

Off we tottered on a walk of uncertain destiny, but walk we did.  It would seem that our feet were determined to head due west.  We had the vague idea of finding the old railroad bed that wends its way through the forested reaches of The Grove.  After about a half mile, our stiff bodies gradually warmed and loosened up; and we hit a steady stride.  Walking a meandering route through the middle of town afforded us a tour of scores of well-kept homes, fine examples of fashionable home design in days gone by, ranging from very tiny one-story structures to enormous Victorian and Queen Anne mansions.  

Before we knew it, we were slowing down and looking skyward, not to see jets, but to search for  Monarch butterflies.  We'd reached the Monarch Sanctuary, a place of refuge for very small royal members of the insect world.

Pacific Grove calls itself "Butterfly Town, USA" because monarchs congregate in the tall trees at the west end of town, resting for a time before they flutter north or south on the migratory route.  There is a roped-off woods where you can spend any amount of time you wish rubbernecking and stumbling around, looking for them in the canopy overhead.  At peak migration, you'll see many thousands.  Then, the treetops seem to vibrate and shimmer with their jittering movements.

I looked at the hiccuping, doodley flight of a butterfly going by.  It looked about as purposeful as our walk had been; zig-zagging, undirected, meandering, rather drunken in its course.  Surely, it was as cold as we'd been.  I'll tell you, if a butterfly can migrate from mid-Mexico to Canada or Alaska, all other things are possible.

It was past 11 AM, nearly noon.  Finding food started to seem like an irrefutably important idea.  After approximately ten seconds of uncertainty, we set about getting over to the Red House Cafe post haste.  So much for doodling and meandering.  Off we strode.  You say "barn" to a cow in the evening, and away she goes.  You say "Red House Cafe" to us, and wild horses cannot keep us away.

By all accounts, it is nearly impossible to have a bad meal there.  It's a first-come-first-served cafe; getting a table at prime meal time requires a wait at times, especially on weekends. We arrived at the door just as they were opening up for the noon meal and got a table for two on the veranda, just before the rush.  We ordered and then watched the world go by, mostly small dogs leading their owners along the different sidewalks. Big, fat sandwiches, stuffed with as much as it is possible to stuff between two pieces of crusty slices of bread, disappeared as steadily as our appetites.  No complaints, by a mile.

Stuffed and content, we looked around for an oxcart to haul our carcasses back home, but, summoning some self-respect, we chugged under our own steam up to the Ketcham Barn -- on Laurel Street behind City Hall.  It houses the Pacific Grove Heritage Society's collection of photographs and memorabilia.  There's an impressive display of The Groove of yesteryear and a docent on hand every Saturday afternoon to answer questions.  We had a million, were satisfied with all the answers, and bought a slim book about the town.  

The cold wind, coming straight from the ice floes of the arctic north today carried songs of polar bears and seals.  We headed to the warm confines of home finally, but it had been a fine morning.  We'd seen more town residents out walking than we'd seen butterflies flying, but that will change later in the year.  Our walk had been serendipitous and very tasty, indeed.