One Acre of Wild California: The Lester Rowntree Native Plant Garden
Hidden inside Carmel’s Mission Trail Nature Preserve, a volunteer-tended acre of manzanita, sage, and wildflowers honors Lester Rowntree — the self-taught botanist who remade American horticulture from a cottage in the Carmel Highlands.
The Shape of the Market: Carmel and Pebble Beach at Mid-2026
Our first standing market report: what the mid-2026 numbers say about how people choose to live between Carmel Point and the Del Monte Forest — read calmly, with sourced figures and full respect for how small this market’s sample really is.
A Slow Weekend in Paso Robles
Two and a half hours from Carmel, no flight, no schedule: a two-night itinerary built around one wine road, two historic inns, and the art of moving slowly.
The Farm Beneath the Wharf: Monterey’s Hidden Abalone Harvest
Beneath Monterey’s 1926 commercial wharf, some 250 cages hold more than a quarter-million red abalone, fed weekly with hand-harvested kelp. The most literal expression of “local” on any Peninsula menu.
The Stage in the Pines: A Century at Carmel’s Forest Theater
Founded in 1910 among the pines above the village, the Forest Theater is one of the oldest outdoor theaters in the American West — and after 116 years of firelight, fog, and Shakespeare, Carmel still shows up with its blankets.
The Whole Coast, Again: Driving Highway 1 from Carmel to Cambria
For the first time in nearly three years, the full Big Sur run is open. Ninety-five miles, one full day: the classic coast drive from Carmel to Cambria, finally whole again.
Built Into the Cliff: Post Ranch Inn and the Architecture of Disappearing
Twelve hundred feet above the Pacific, Mickey Muennig’s masterwork was designed from its first sketch to vanish into the ridge — sod roofs, treehouses on stilts, and the oldest luxury on this coast: the coast itself.
Before the Picking Begins: A Late-Summer Portrait of the Santa Lucia Highlands
In the weeks before harvest, the Santa Lucia Highlands reach their most beautiful moment — fog off Monterey Bay, wind through the benchlands, fruit hanging heavy. A drive up River Road, written as a standing invitation.
The Sculptor of Cannery Row: Steven Whyte and the Monument to Steinbeck’s People
The fifteen-foot bronze in Steinbeck Plaza — nine figures, thirteen hidden frogs, and the whole cast of a working street — began as clay in a Carmel studio whose door is still open to anyone who cares to watch.
An Adventure in Neighborliness: Seventy-Five Years of The Carmel Foundation
Founded in April 1950 by residents worried about their aging neighbors, The Carmel Foundation has quietly built one of California’s most complete models of aging in community — 2,500 members, dozens of weekly classes, and affordable homes hidden in plain sight in the village.