Exploring the San Mateo Coast – Saturday in Pescadero

Yesterday my husband and I went out on a daytrip to Pescadero.  We haven’t really gone out on the weekends for a while so this was quite special.  We really enjoyed our time in this small historic town, and here is the story.

I got up quite early for a Saturday and the hubby followed soon after.  He charged his camera batteries and we headed out.  We drove through the mountains and ancient redwood forests on the extremly windy highway 84.  Along the way there were many bikers and I wondered how they got up there, and my husband was simply annoyed that some of them were hogging the entire road.  Once we hit highway 1 we turned left towards Pescadero.  We planned to stop at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse first.

I first saw the lighthouse from a distance when my company took us to a retreat.  I remembered the order of things a bit erroneously so I thought that Pigeon Point Lighthouse was north of Pescadero.  Once we already past Pescadero and still did not see the lighthouse my husband started to doubt my directions.  Pigeon Point is supposed to be one of the tallest lighthouses in North America, and he kept on asking me why we still do not see it.  I started to point behind a bunch of bushes and once we past it he laughed at me and said I was just pointing at a stick.  Then suddenly he saw the lighthouse perched at the edge of the ocean.  We turned in and found some parking in the dirt.

The lighthouse is currently not open to visitors because in 2001 two large pieces of its cornice fell to the ground, and so far San Mateo has not raised enough money to fix it.  However, the grounds are open and there was a surprisingly large number of visitors there including a lot of parents with kids.  I guessed that many of these visitors were trying to save a bit of money since the attraction is free.   The grounds were absolutely beautiful as flowers of all colors are currently blooming.  The normally brown cliffs were covered with dots of yellow and sea birds glided in the sky.  We then walked around a small path to the front of the lighthouse, and there was a flower patch with two giant pieces of whale bone.  One was a vertebrae and one was a humongous skull.  They looked quite eerie in a background of cheerful magenta and yellow flowers.

After visiting the lighthouse it was nearly 1pm, so we went to find some grub.  We planned to go to Duarte’s Tavern, a historic restaurant and bar in Pescadero that has been there since 1894.    It is famous for its artichoke dishes, olallieberry pie, and various seafood since Pescadero is supposed to be a fishing town.  Everything there is made locally and my company actually took us there during the retreat.  I just didn’t know how famous it was then.  I did remember the delicious artichoke soup and ollalieberry pie.   It was actually  on an episode of Food Network’s Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins and the host ate the house special cioppino.  I saw the picture of the cioppino online and salivated a bit over it.  So we drove a few miles north from the lighthouse and stopped at Duarte’s.  There was quite a crowd there and we were told that we had to wait for 10 to 15 minutes.  This wasn’t too bad so we waited and got a round table very close to the bathrooms.

After we got the menu I looked at the cioppino, and it was the most expensive dish there!  My husband encouraged me to get it since we really didn’t spend too much money eating out last month.  So I ordered it and he ordered a crab melt sandwhich.  The waitress gave us two sets of dishes, crab crackers, and a bib for the cioppino.  My husband thought it was funny that we were given bibs, and then the GIANT dish of crab legs, prawns, and clams came out.  I put my bib on because I knew that I was going to make a mess.  The hubby thought that was so funny that he took a picture.  We shared the crab sandwhich first just to get rid of a plate, and that was quite excellent.  It was pretty much all crab meat hugged by cheese and well toasted buttery bread.  There wasn’t much vegetable fillers in the crab like you would find  in other restaurants.  Then we started working on the cioppino, and it was seriously the longest meal we ever had in a restaurant, but it was a lot of fun to pull out all the crab meat and then drink a bit of the soup.

After eating everything we were quite full but I really wanted some ollallieberry pie and I have talked about it so much that my hubby really wanted to try it.  So we walked down about a block to a small market and bakery.  They had a collection of all types of pies and all kinds of local foods.  Some of the artisan breads with artichokes and cheese just smelled intoxicating.   We just bought a pie to go and went onto the next destination – Pebble Beach.

The 71 miles of the San Mateo coast is unusual in that it is very close to large centers of population, but very few people visit so the beaches are quite pristine. The hubby and I have been to Half Moon Bay multiple times to beach comb and walk, but we never drove as far south as Pescadero.  As we were driving there the hubby said that we will not find these  uncrowded clean beaches in Southern California.  Pescadero has several beaches including Pescadero State Beach, Bean Hollow Beanch, and Pebble Beach.    Pebble Beach is a very small beach that is unique in that instead of sand it is covered by pebbles of all colors.  The pebbles are polished by the tides so they glisten in the sun.  There is also a very large area of tidepools next to it where you can find small marine life.     We walked down to the pebbles section and took pictures of the holey sand formations and pebbles first, and then walked over to the tidepools.  There were small fish, hermit crabs, and tons of snails in the tidepools, but nothing extremely exciting.  The hubby was hoping to see some colorful anemones or starfish so he could take pictures and he was disappointed.  So we went back to the pebbles area and dug around.  A lot of the stones were quite pretty and some of them were laced agates like the ones my mom and I used to dig up in construction sand when I was a kid.  It is illegal to take the pebbles because they are natural  materials, but we found some tiny pieces of sea glass so we took those.  The entire beach just smelled so fresh and it felt so good to sit down on the omnipresent pebbles.  It was definitely more fun than walking on sand.

After hanging around for about an hour we decided to head home as the sky became overcast.   We stopped to buy some vanilla ice cream and then I warmed up a slice of olallieberry pie for each of us when we got home and topped them with the ice cream.  It certainly made my tastebuds happy.

We definitely had a lot of fun exploring this part of San Mateo County, and I think instead of major vacations we could definitely save money by going on more day trips of places near us.  The Bay Area definitely has a lot of interesting places to see and experience just within an one to two hour drive.  After going to Pescadero we found that there is a seal preserve near by where you can see thousands of seals from December to March.  We might go visit next year!

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