Road trip

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."
-Henry Miller

In our continuing battle against winter ennui, complete in its depressing and stagnant garb, we decided to take a mini road trip this weekend. The weather was actually quite clear and pretty, not to be confused with warm, but clear and pretty, as we headed out of town to visit Half Moon Bay.

Half Moon Bay is just south of San Francisco about 25 miles, but feels truly worlds away. You get the sense of a small beach town, driven by fishing and surfing and, of course, tourism. The town fringes a beautifully calm, crescent shaped bay that is its namesake.

Maverick's, the world class and VERY dangerous surf spot, lies to the north of town and, in the fullest part of the circle, white and black expanses of beach are tidily lodged between breaking surf and the rocky embankment of Highway One. Heading north of town to Mavericks, you pass through the more broken down part of town, the part you could see the Cannery Row crew happily inhabiting.

I appreciated how closely the obvious tourist part of town and the more realistic parts coexisted. Being from a small fishing, surfing and tourist driven town in California, this suited my sensibilities; to see both so readily.

We ate at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. This place was pretty cool with a nice outdoor fire going and dog friendly patio. The inside was equally rustic and yet cozy with the fishing and surfing theme encoded in the dark woody interior complete with roaring fire, pictures of those braving mavericks gracing the walls, and a huge fish tank that kept Babou still for about five minutes!

We shared the fresh seafood appetizer; a succulent little (and I do mean little) selection of ceviche and ahi poki served with tortilla chips and fried won ton wrappers respectively. There was also a little dish of mango salsa served off to the side that was very refreshing and simple and sort of extraneous, I would have switched that for extra ceviche and ahi poki before you could say "Babou sit down!"

That said, it was very kid friendly and the food was tasty. We spent the rest of our visit playing on the beach. Loco O. liked it a lot and actually braved the waters!



And Babou kept us busy keeping her out of it!




The drive home was beautiful, the sun setting in a golden blue puddle to our west. We got back feeling good to be home and decidedly still hungry. So we made ourselves a huge batch of ceviche and fried up an indecent amount of corn chips and ate to our hearts content.

It was good to be home.