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UNITED STATES | Monterey, California Travel Guide
Thursday, November 21, 2024
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Pebble Beach
Pebble Beach
Pebble Beach, famous the world over as the home of golf, lies largely between Pacific Grove and Carmel, in the 8,400-acre Del Monte Forest. Here is some of the priciest real estate on California’s central coast, home to multimillion-dollar residences and palatial estates, and seven world- class, championship golf courses, most in spectacular oceanfront settings. The scenery is of course marvelous throughout, with sandy as well as pebbly white-foam beaches , small, sheltered coves, cliff-top fairways, picturesque groves of gnarled Monterey Cypress, sea lion colonies, and wild, shore bird habitats. And there is a way to see it all: on the 17-Mile Drive, a scenic drive, billed as “the slowest way between Monterey and Carmel.” In fact, the 17-Mile Drive is the only way to see this privately-owned, exclusive enclave, which has gated entry at all three of its access points. And, yes, there is an entry fee, but with it you get a tour map pinpointing all the points of interest along the drive.
17-Mile Drive
There are several points of interest along the drive, among them the lovely Spanish Bay, overlooked by the luxury Spanish Bay resort and golf course; Point Joe and the “Restless Sea,” one of the few places in the world where ocean currents meet; the Monterey Peninsula Country club’s historic Dunes Course that dates from 1925; and the Bird Rock and Seal Rock, where you can view countless seagulls, black cormorants and other shoreline birds in their natural habitat, as well as herds of sealions, sea otters and the smaller leopard and harbor seals.
Also along the 17-Mile Drive are Spyglass Hill, which provided the setting for Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, Treasure Island; the crescent-shaped, sandy Fanshell Beach from where you can see the distant Point Sur lighthouse; the 1928-built Cypress Point Golf Course, where the 16th green can only be reached by driving across some 200 yards of open ocean; the Crocker Grove, a 13-acre reserve containing some of the largest and oldest Monterey Cypresses on the peninsula; the well- photographed Lone Cypress, one of the area’s most recognizable landmarks; and the famous Pebble Beach Lodge and golf course, built in 1919 and the site of several U.S. Open and PGA golf tournaments.
Last updated November 16, 2010
Posted in United States | Monterey
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