What’s black and white and bright all over? The freshly open (but still in the process of being built out) super-duper redo of The Inn at Mattei’s Tavern – thanks to interior designer/design team AvroKO, par excellence, who has not missed a detail from the bootjacks outside guest room doors to leather tabs on the […]
After the deluge, I took a quick, much-needed weekend jaunt up the coast. Our Central Coast hills, highways, and byways were verdant after the rains, making it hard to believe it’s still winter. Well, California winter. Tourism was evident (but not too crazy) and staffing issues are still difficult in the hospitality trade. Los Alamos […]
Recently Trending
More from Montecito
I was on an early morning beach run in Carpinteria, pink and orange hues melding across the eastern horizon. While weaving my way in soft sand past wintering killdeer and western snowy plovers, those hardy shorebirds thoroughly enjoyed the wrack lines of tattered giant bladder kelp left behind by the previous high tide. Later that […]
We hugged the crumbly west cliff face of Cuyler Harbor on San Miguel Island with no expectations from the seat of our kayaks. From afar, we couldn’t see any wildlife, but we could clearly hear first-year northern elephant seals snorting and bellowing on distant pocket beaches concealed along the rocky shoreline. I was paddling with […]
There was no denying the six-foot-tall dorsal fin cutting through the open ocean above the Soquel Canyon State Marine Conservation Area within the teeming waters of Monterey Bay, along the Central California Coast. Black and steeple-shaped, the dorsal fin belonging to a mature, male orca glistened in the morning sun. This apex predator is known […]
Descending San Miguel Hill at a feverish pace, I’d just left a freshly soddened Green Mountain to the west in my rearview mirror. San Miguel Island always delivering a diverse mix of unpredictable weather patterns. Green Mountain was cloaked in dewy fog and swept in 20 mph northwest winds. It felt like sideways rain as […]
Grab your cowboy hat and cowboy boots, throw your kids or grandkids (if it’s a weekend) in the car, or perhaps indulge in a midweek romantic getaway and head on up to historic Alisal Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley for a tootin’ good time. I’ve visited the downhome 10,500-acre Alisal Ranch several times over […]
The weather window was tight. It was one day, and we took advantage of it, circumnavigating the 27 coastal miles of San Miguel Island, the most northwesterly isle in the Channel Islands National Park. After several solo circumnavigations of this wave-battered, teeming islet, I was gratefully joined by four kayak guides who I work with […]
I rarely travel in the summer: too many tourists and, as the summer of 2022 proved, oodles of delayed flights, piles of lost luggage, and cases of COVID contracted. Plenty of friends can vouch for these annoyances, including Rachel Kaganoff Stern and her sister Tessa Kaganoff, who were separated from their luggage in London for […]
Read more...
The translucent, salty ocean droplets rolled off its velvety sheen feathers, glistening like crystal clear marbles as it streamed off the back of a wayward Pacific Loon. It was early summer 2022. Typically, not a time to catch a glimpse of a seabird that should’ve been well north, maybe even as far north as Alaska […]
It’s a secretive side canyon cloaked in unique island and California flora on the southeast fringe of Santa Cruz Island. However, this narrow, craggy draw needs to wait for the month of May to arrive before one can truly soak in all its island splendor. Over the years it’s proven to be one of the […]
First, it was their undeniable kyeer, kyeer. Then a blur of red and orange instantly diverted me toward their lofty refuge, 30 feet up the sturdy trunk of a Monterey cypress. Swooping to and from, the pair of northern flickers worked at a feverish pace readying their nest for their impending brood. This cypress stands […]
The prominent sandstone rock outcropping was riddled with gritty alcoves, clefts, lofty ledges, and shadowy caves. As I scanned with binoculars for any feathered occupants, I found five barn owls nesting in the upper reaches of this remote, sandstone cathedral. However, there was something else that caught my attention while attempting to conceal themselves 20 […]
Standing at the overlook of idyllic China Cove, located within the Point Lobos State Natural Reserve between the Big Sur Coast and Carmel, I could see why the 70-something-year-old gentleman had erected his easel where he did. It was midday and as the sun beamed down from overhead, it illuminated the tranquility of China Cove. […]
