Guest Blog from Monterey, CA

This is a rare guest blog post from Hubby while away in Monterey, CA. I will not even attempt to write in the same style…because I can’t. Mrs. Farmer A.K.A. “wifey” was super generous in allowing me to leave last Friday night (3 nights earlier than when I should have left) for a work conference. While she knew that I would have a good time in Monterey, her main reason was to let me spend some quality time with my aunt who drove up from Templeton, CA to stay the weekend with me and hang out. I was able to get a fantastic room at the Naval Post Graduate School (NPS) Bachelor Officer’s Quarters (BOQ), a two room humongous suite for $45 a night, no tax, free internet, and a small kitchen. The NPS Herman Building which houses the BOQ has a lot of history. A view from the east side of the building.

This is the inside hallway of the east wing.

Here is the newly renovated east wing.

Before World War II one of the finest luxury hotels in North America, the Del Monte Hotel, occupied the present site of the Naval Postgraduate School. From its opening in July, 1880, it was an immediate success. The entire hotel was destroyed by fire in 1887, but the second Del Monte Hotel rose promptly at the same location and was more splendid than its predecessor. In the early morning of September 27, 1924, fire again devastated the central wooden structure of the hotel. Reconstruction was again immediate and the more modern building continued to make the Del Monte one of the showplaces of the world.

In 1942, the hotel was taken over by the U.S. Navy and was used as a pre-flight school for aviators. By the end of World War II, it had become apparent that the facilities of the Naval Postgraduate School at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, would be insufficient for the Navy’s future needs. Thus, in 1947, Congress authorized the purchase of the Del Monte property and the Postgraduate School was officially moved from Annapolis to Monterey in 1951.

On Saturday the weather was absolutely perfect so when we met at noon and couldn't decide to what to do until the 3pm check-in, so we opted to play tennis. My aunt used to be on the Cuesta Community College tennis team almost 30 years ago and I used to play pretty seriously as well about 20 years ago…I can’t believe it has been that long. The afternoon made for an exciting match. I am not going to tell you the score, but the important thing for you to know is that we had fun and got some exercise. After the tennis match we still couldn't check in, so we called Mrs. Farmer and asked her to tell us where the near Olive Garden was located.

Why Olive Garden you ask? 1) They were having their all you can eat pastas and salad for $8.99, what a deal. 2) They always show national ads in Hawaii for Olive Garden and we don’t have any in Hawaii. 3) My aunt had a $30 gift card that she needed to use. The nearest Olive Garden was in Salinas on Main Street. While looking for it on Main Street we found a major movie theaters. I slowly drove by and saw that a new movie was just out that I wanted to see, Body of Lies, a CIA anti-terrorist film Directed by Ridley Scott with Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, and Mark Strong.

It didn’t get the best of reviews, but I liked it except for the numerous F-bombs that were used throughout the movie. I guess it was fairly realistic language considering the circumstances, but I would have enjoyed more if DiCaprio used “What the heck” instead of the F-bomb.

After the movie we were good and hungry and got better directions to the Olive Garden from a worker at the movie theater, so off we went. It just turned 5pm, so it wasn’t too crowded yet. The all you can eat special ended last Sunday, so we just made it. We both had the all you can eat pasta but we tried to be healthy and order the all wheat pasta. We didn’t really get our money’s worth because we only ate our 1.2 bowls of pasta. If we really wanted to be thrifty, we should have ordered several more bowls and not eaten them. The server asked if we wanted to take home all of our uneaten pasta, but we declined, not knowing that we would have a microwave in the BOQ room. I am sorry to tell you that we didn’t take any food photos as you are accustomed to seeing on thefarmerfiles. I figured that most of you knew what the Olive Garden pasta looked like.

After leaving the restaurant, we saw my favorite store -- Marshalls, a nice new big one at that. I convinced my aunt that we had to stop and she said that we had no schedule, and was up for it. I always try to bring the boys and Mrs. Farmer back something when I travel. I first headed toward the toddler clearance racks and found a cool Nike soccer outfit complete with matching shorts. It was on clearance for $10. Since Mrs. Farmer and boys like to match, I had to find another one, so off to the young boy’s clearance section. As kismet would have it, I found another one in Son1’s size that was also $10. I searched through the men’s clearance section and found two golf shirts, both on clearance. While waiting in line, I saw a sign that Marshalls was having a 25% off sale on all clearance items…I really scored since everything I bought was on clearance. The kids shirts were only $7.50 a piece.
My aunt was a little worried that I didn’t find anything for Mrs. Farmer, but I told her not to worry, I still had a week in Monterey. My aunt found some Jockey underwear for $4.00 on clearance, which came to $3.00 for three pairs of underwear with the additional 25% off. She is going to die when she finds out I posted about her underwear purchase...shhhh...We both left feeling that we got some deals…remember the previous post that “the Farmers never pay full price.”

Sunday was a great day. After a late breakfast, we decided to rent some bikes and pedal down the scenic coast. Back in the day when I was 14-16 years old, I would frequently ride 20 miles on my touring bicycle. One hundred pounds and 20+ years later, I don’t know what came over me to think we could ride all the way down to Pebble Beach and back on mountain bikes.

About ½ way down we saw this garage sale sign off of the coastal scenic drive amongst these million dollar plus houses. Below is an entire beach area where folks stacked rocks up all along the beach...I thought it was so unique and cool I took a few photos.
My aunt, who is an avid yard sale queen, and garage sale mentor gave me the “look” so we doubled back a few yards and went one street up to find the garage sale. It was about 1:30pm on Sunday afternoon, which in Hawaii or in So. CA, all of the good stuff would be gone by 9am Saturday morning. Their sign said Saturday/Sunday 8-4pm. I wasn’t too hopefully we would find anything. The driveway was full of old antique looking items. The cute couple having the sale must have been in their 60s or 70s and they were enjoying meeting everyone who stopped by. The wife was looking up everyone’s place of residence on an atlas. She has no idea where Templeton, CA was. I was hoping my aunt wouldn’t pull one of her classic moves, “Will you take ten cents for it?”. I was walking back to the bike to get my wallet out of the bike pouch because I saw the item for Mrs. Farmer. While walking back to the bike, there were several other folks coming up the drive, some coming in on cars and others on bikes, just like us. Fearful someone else was going to score the item before me, I immediately told my aunt to procure the item and start the negotiation process. She said, “What do you think, $5?” They were asking $9 for it. It was definitely worth $9. However, the Farmers never pay full price. My aunt offered $5, and they countered with $7. We said sure. The nice woman even tossed in free gift wrapping, bubble wrap and all.

We were a little worried that it wouldn’t fit in the bike pouch, but it did. We knew that Mrs. Farmer would truly enjoy the gift, much more than an item from Marshalls. Mrs. Farmer is famous for finding silver plated tea items that are all tarnished and making them shine like new. Since this is a Surprise for Mrs. Farmer via the blog…here it is.

I hope you enjoy it Mrs. Farmer.

After 2 hours of riding, we finally made it down to Pebble Beach. We pulled into the valet hotel/golf shop area to try and buy some water since we were dying of thirst. There is a huge circular driveway with a row of high end car parked to the left (Porsche, Lexus, Ferrari, Aston Martins, Benz, etc..). We ride up and park our hoopty rental bikes right in front of the Aston Martin sport car.

I went into the gift shop and purchased three 20 oz drinks, surprisingly they only cost me $5.00 – well worth every penny. They asked if I was going to play a round or if I had just finished. I told them that I wasn’t going to be playing today…my thoughts were probably NEVER! The current price for a round of golf at the main course is $495. Well, at least I got the cool fancy bag with my drinks. The course looked beautiful, but with my golf game still in the low 90s, I don’t think I would enjoy it as much as if I were a single digit handicap player.

Well, finally, after many hours of peddling, we made it back to Monterey and we still had some time left on the bikes so we headed north to the nearby town of Seaside. For the most part the area has miles and miles of paved bike trails.

When we finally made it back to the bike shop I told him the back wheel needed to be straightened. He picked it up and gave the wheel a spin; it barely moved before hitting the brake pads. So, it turns out I got an extra workout given that my back wheel was constantly hitting the brake pad. So maybe it was as if I rode 30 miles instead of 20. Just a thought.

After going back to the room, we cleaned up and headed down to Carmel for dinner. We were both starting to get pretty sore from our long bike ride. We decided to go to the Mission Ranch Restaurant. Clint Eastwood bought the historic Mission Ranch property on the Carmel River in 1986. It wasn't just the threat that the old ranch would be torn down and replaced by condominiums. That was bad enough. But the possibility of losing the restaurant that had been a favorite local hangout for as long as some of them could remember made it doubly distressing. Here is a photo just outside the back deck of the restaurant.
The restaurant had very good food and was reasonably priced given the location, wait staff, and view. Their iced tea was excellent and their prime rib was very good. The service was fantastic given that it was completely full of patrons. Once again, I didn’t take any pictures of the food, but here is a photo of the view/sunset in the background.

Well, this concludes my guest blog post on thefarmerfiles. Now I can see how Mrs. Farmer spends so much time late in the evening writing lengthy posts. Luckily, this one only took about three hours. Below is a photo of the NPS Hall of Fame where I created this entry. Until next time…