MORE: Carmel Valley travel planner
Ther first glimpse of Carmel Valley will leave you sighing for more. You drive a few miles inland from the central California coast, following a two-lane country road that carries you up a small rise. Suddenly the view opens up below: tidy farms; broad, grassy horse pastures; and spring green, oak-covered hills, unfolding in layers to both sides. Add a crisp, gray-blue sky and bright yellow mustard to the mix, and you've got a palette worthy of Monet.
It's a view too many visitors to this part of the Monterey Peninsula miss, drawn instead to the coast's bustle and much-ballyhooed Carmel-by-the-Sea. Carmel Valley is another experience altogether — a place where the march of the seasons is
so integrated into the lifestyle that the morning buzz at the coffee shop is "So, what are you planting this year?" Head there now, in the prime of spring, for a laid-back outdoor lover's tour that leaves plenty of time for wine tasting, hiking, and browsing in the valley's many nurseries and garden shops.
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| Emily Nathan |
| Will's Fargo serves steaks in an 80-year-old building that started life as a tearoom. |
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An intoxicating natural charisma
One could easily stake a claim that there's not a more beautifully sited valley in all of California. The 25 rugged miles of the Carmel Valley run east, due inland from Monterey Bay. They're surrounded on three sides by the Santa Lucia Mountains, whose ridges — dark green in spring — somehow seem both forbidding and protective.
This landscape sustains not only some very lucky residents — a few of them famous, some very wealthy — but also an incredible variety of living things: wisteria and roses, wine grapes and coast live oaks, quail, boar, and mountain lions. It's an area of contrasts: A farmstand and gardens run by Earthbound Farm, the country's largest producer of organic produce, lie just down the road from a tiny pick-your-own daffodil farm that thrives on the honor system (alas, you’re a bit late — the blooms are best in January and February). Despite the influx of new money, the area's cowboys, winemakers, and back-to-the-land types still cross paths in the Will's Fargo saloon, where pretty much everybody does know everybody's name. And locals pay $7 to swim in the Los Laureles Lodge pool.
In Carmel Valley, people talk a lot about smells. Says Forest Aldrich, a contractor who grew up in the valley: "When I smell the sage, it puts me back in the hills." Gary Ibsen, founder of the Carmel TomatoFest, explains, "April comes right after our rains. It's an onslaught of color and flowers; that's when we lose our chill and everything really hits. The smells are particularly rich: the blossoming combined with a soft, subtle saltiness over everything."
Carmel Valley's soil is legendary — it's
a bit like the cartoon in which the farmer spits a seed and the very next day is harvesting fat watermelons. At Ibsen's house, a single climbing 'Cécile Brunner' rose covers a garden wall more than 20 feet tall and then wraps one side of the house. Thriving rows of spinach, kale, and potatoes stretch to the hills at Earthbound Farm. The vegetables are bookended by
a wide band of flowers at the end of each row — a home for beneficial insects, including several species of ladybugs. "These here are good bug plots," boasts Earthbound head farmer Mark Marino, pointing to the colorful plots. "This is where I would hang out if I were a bug."
A laid-back, easy cadence
It's easy to fall into the intoxicating rhythm of spring here. Spend an hour with coffee and the paper in the morning before heading off to breathe in spring on a leg stretcher at Garland Ranch Regional Park. Here, if you keep your eyes open, you might spot a deer chowing down on the choicest young grasses, or one of the many species of native hawks hunting ground squirrels. On your way back west, stop at a standout pair of traditional nurseries, both originally started by the Griggs family and still owned by brothers Rick Richardson and Ken Griggs. Or pick up an organic bouquet at Earthbound Farm’s stand, smell the chocolate-scented plants in the children's garden, and wander the meditation aromatherapy labyrinth. A small sign suggests you take off your shoes to follow the labyrinth's path; chamomile is planted underfoot and releases its soft aroma as you walk.
Leave your car behind and spend the next few hours browsing compact Carmel Valley Village, about 10 miles east from the mouth of the valley. It seems like half the valley makes a lunch out of the excellent wood-fired pizzas at Café Rustica, and you should too. Nearby is another highlight of any garden lover's visit, the small nursery and gift shop called FezQ, run by two sisters who are dedicated to Mediterranean gardens.
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| Emily Nathan |
| Weathered eucalyptus line some valley roads. |
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Where’s his flatbed truck?
Late in the afternoon, find your most beautiful perch yet in the brick courtyard of Georis Winery, sipping a springlike Sauvignon Blanc underneath a huge old cork tree surrounded by purple wisteria. The sound of birds chirping is no random fly-through but the winery owner's large family of lovebirds in an outdoor aviary at one end of the courtyard — no joke.
Sitting there, sipping wine, listening to lovebirds, it will come to you: You don't want to leave anytime soon. Nobody ever wants to. You'll dream about moving in, settling down, planting gardens, growing some grapes.
Which creates a dilemma, for the valley's very popularity is changing it, as its hippie, cowboy past gives way to the wealthier present, with more big houses, more wineries, more resorts. "It's a different kind of wealth here now," says Forest Aldrich. "I remember the first time I saw a guy in a tucked-in white shirt in town. I was like, 'Where's his flatbed truck and his flannel?'?"
Still, for now, Carmel Valley's unique mix of the refined and the rough-edged continues to work. Longtime locals vow
to never let go of their rich land. "It's literally paradise," explains nursery owner
Rick Richardson. "Very few people I know have ever left Carmel Valley. That's the truth of it."
Carmel Valley travel planner: Where to eat, shop, stay and more »
