We went on our quasi-weekly date yesterday. It was supposed to be very cold [mid-60s!] but ended up warmer, we went to Half Moon Bay, which is across the bay and over the hills of the San Francisco Peninsula.
Half Moon Bay is the local pumpkin capital, this weekend is the annual Pumpkin Festival. I haven’t actually been to that one, it’s enough of a nightmare driving down that one little road that goes over there on a normal weekend without adding in tens of thousands of families who want to see record-breakingly large pumpkins.
It is perfectly fine going over there on a Thursday in early October. There are enough people doing the same that the numerous pumpkin patches and all the corn mazes are open but you are not spending an hour in traffic to go three miles.
Once in Half Moon Bay, we stopped at my favorite bakery for a carrot cake mini-bundt then headed further south to Arata’s Pumpkin Farm where we wandered around the corn fields and admired pumpkins and took photos. I picked out a Cinderella-style flattish green-blueish pumpkin and Chad got some mini-gourds and Indian corn. The owner told us we can put it in a bag when we’re done and stick it in the microwave and it’ll pop.
Next stop was Pescadero for the Arcangeli market’s amazing artichoke garlic bread [note to self for next time: buy a couple of the par-baked loaves to bring home because HOLY CHEESE, THAT IS SOME GOOD BREAD] and a little salami, then we popped over to Harley Farms to gorge ourselves on samples and buy some goat cheese to go with the bread. It was the end of the day for them and we were the only ones there, the owner and another woman were happily chatting in the back the whole time we were snacking then popped out exactly when we were ready to go.
I wanted to go sit in the cemetery but Chad has a thing about that so instead we continued driving down that little road that goes the other way from the highway, thinking we’d find a little place to sit down, but it quickly turned into shoulderless hillside and we drove all the way over to San Gregorio and the beach was right there, so that’s where we ate.
Then we sat admiring the ocean, which was that perfect silvery-blue with the sunlight reflecting a huge swath of gold down the middle, until Chad had to head back for his tennis class.
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