Sunday, April 17, 2011

Half Moon Bay

Jill's Journal: Quick! What images does Half Moon Bay conjure up for you? Is it beautiful, panoramic ocean vistas? Golf courses and resorts? Horseback riding on the beach? Surfers? A charming community? Shopping and cuisine?

Not so much for us. We will forever associate Half Moon Bay with tin dinosaurs, welded together over rebar skeletons.

We’d heard such good things about Half Moon Bay, the vacation destination just a little down the coast from San Francisco. To be fair, it does look like it could be a cute/fun/touristy place to visit, but the fog was thick and the wind was biting on this particular day, making everything about Half Moon Bay feel very cold and most uninviting.

We spent a little time at Moss Beach’s Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in a hunt for some of the renowned tidepools, but we were a bit too early for low tide and it was too cold to wait. We intended to take the three-mile “Bluff Top Coastal” hike, but arrived in the parking lot only to veto that also (there’s not much point of taking a scenic hike when you can hardly see any scenery through the fog!).

The highlight of the day for the girls ended up being the tin dinosaurs, horses, giraffes, etc. at Spanish Town, an odd and massive conglomeration of shops selling all sorts of fountains and lawn ornaments. Somehow I don’t think this is what most people think of when Half Moon Bay is mentioned…


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