Pacific Coast Highway 1 southbound from Anchor Bay. Photos By Tiffany Edwards Hunt. All rights reserved. Use with permission only.
Aloha, Big Island Chronicle readers: So sorry I didn’t get around to writing you any postcards while I was away. I really was trying to be subtle about it, but those who read every comment posted on the site know that I have been off-island for two weeks. I had posts scheduled for while I was away, and I also did some blogging while I was away. For posts that required a photo or drawing, I relied on Bruce Albrecht to assist me. Let’s give Bruce a hand for being the one and only person at the present time that I can count on as an administrator.
For those interested, my family and I spent our vacation in California. We ventured from San Diego to Point Arena in Mendocino County, mostly on Highways 1 or 101. We rented a Chevy Astro Van from Lost Campers and had grand plans to spend a lot of nights in it. Suffice it to say, at 22 weeks pregnant, I vetoed that plan after spending one night in the van in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. I was way too cramped and claustrophobic. For the nights we didn’t stay with family and friends, I used hotwire.com to find us cheap deals in towns along the way.
My husband Jeff surfed in several spots on our way up the coast, despite the fact that Hawaiian Airlines damaged his board going to and coming from the mainland.
Courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines
That’s something I’ll never forget — waking up to him whisper-screaming profanities at about 5 a.m. the morning after our flight into Los Angeles International Airport, as he pulled his surfboard out of the board bag to go surfing. Clearly, despite the $100 fee, Hawaiian Airlines treated the board like baggage rather than the obvious, a surfboard. The entire half of our first full day in San Diego was spent trying to find someone to do an emergency ding repair. If you can believe this, we found a shaper to fix his board in 24 hours, who is actually a friend of a friend who lives here.
Among the breaks Jeff surfed was at Jalama Beach, which is not too far away from where the 19-year-old University of California-Santa Barbara chemical engineering student was fatally attacked by a shark. If you can believe this, he surfed Jalama the same day that 18-foot great white shark attacked the bodyboarder! That definitely gave me the heebie-jeebies, hearing there was a shark attack not too far away from where my husband had been surfing.
Dennis the Menace Playground, Monterey, Calif.
For my daughter, among the highlights of our trip was the constant discoveries of playgrounds. When we stayed at the Moonlight Beach Motel, we were a stone’s throw from a deluxe playground right on the beach. While we waited for Jeff to have his session at Jalama, Coco enjoyed the playground there. In Monterey, she got to play at three different playgrounds, including the Dennis the Menace Playground, which is definitely one of the most impressive playgrounds I have ever seen. In Santa Cruz, she enjoyed the playground at a county park near Pleasure Point and all the rides for keiki her size at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. I realized, more so than ever, the value of providing recreational activities for our children here. Not only does it satisfy the children, it satisfies the parents and caretakers as well. The playgrounds are community gathering spots, they are so important and so worth their expense.
Being that this is election season, I really got a kick out of all the campaigns underway in the various communities that we passed through. The TV commercials, the radio ads, the yard signs, the bumper stickers, they were all intriguing to me, being the political junkie that I can be. I have to wonder how many pages the California ballots are, with all the propositions statewide and in the various towns and cities. Of course, the most compelling race in California is the governor’s. I thought the Charles Djou -versus-Colleen Hanabusa ad campaign was getting pretty negative, then I heard some of the ads between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown! Let’s see, what did I keep hearing? “Jerry Brown, he’s just a dead end!” Then there was that sign in Santa Cruz that made me laugh out loud, “She lied. How can we trust her?! Paid for by the Campaign for Disappointed Republicans.”
Of all the signs that I saw on the roadsides, my favorite, I don’t know why, was in Lompoc. ”Stay on target with Steve Straight for School Board!” I don’t think there was an exclamation point, but that is how I remember reading it and how I’ve been repeating it ever since. It cracked me up laughing, and made me come up with my own slogan for 2016: “The Hunt is over. Tiffany Edwards Hunt for County Council!” Of course, you have to say it in the tone of voice that they use for all the television and radio ads, all dramatic-like and important.
I really enjoyed exploring all the cities and towns, particularly the historic downtowns. I really appreciated the ones that had maps and booklets highlighting the businesses. It became really clear to me what I personally can and should do in the Puna community and islandwide to encourage folks to dine and shop locally. It really is important for people to realize that locally owned restaurants, boutiques, and shops cannot survive and keep historic downtowns thriving without the support of patrons. It is actually the responsibility of citizenship to buy and eat local. I know some of you will appreciate this, in Pacific Grove, the historic downtown includes a number of small parks and open spaces. One city-block-sized-park had an archway entrance with a sign reading, “Open Space.” Another city-block-sized park had a sign reading, “Native Plants of Monterey County.”
For our road trip, we had a cooler provided to us by Lost Campers, so we shopped at grocery stores, Mexican markets, and roadside fruit and veggie stands. I forgot, living in the Hawaiian Islands, how inexpensive food can be! The gasoline prices were about the same as here — actually it was between $3.15 per gallon and $3.45 per gallon, depending upon the town and the neighborhood. But food, it was, on the average, half the amount we pay here. Cheese, milk, juice boxes, honey, coffee, tea, fruits, vegetables, you name it, it was all cheaper than what we pay here, substantially cheaper. Eggs were $1.99 a carton. Boxes of crackers and bags of chips were less than $2. I bought a huge basket of plums on the roadside for $2. I bought a plump and juicy tomato for .64 cents. I bought a small container of honey for $2.50. One night in Santa Cruz, I spent an hour and a half in the grocery store, going down every aisle, studying in amazement all the prices and slowly filling my cart with goods for the trip and to bring back home.
We did eat out sometimes. As a young girl, I ate fish and chips at the Old Fisherman’s Grotto in Monterey. When we arrived in the Peninsula, I was intent on my family having dinner there. I’ll never forget the moment, sitting in that restaurant, our table lit by candelight, looking out at the boats anchored in the water, a few bites into my meal, realizing how much cod pales in comparison to ono, ahi and mahi mahi and how I’ve had better fish and chips in Hawaii.
That was the start of a growing desire to come back home. I reached the point in which I fully appreciated my life back here and how much I value my home, business, and friends on the island. Yes, we pay a lot for food, and, for the sake of budgeting, I have to figure out how to spend less per month on food. But, overall, life is good here in so many ways. I actually got to the point where I longed to be home, I longed to sleep in my only bed, a real bed, and a comfy one at that, not the futon in the back of the Chevy Astro Van, not someone’s couch, not someone’s guest bed. I guess that is the point of going on vacation. You can’t wait to leave and, if everything goes the way it is supposed to, you can’t wait to get back home. I can’t emphasize enough, it is so good to be home.
