Fruits & Veggies

One of the wonderful things about our California neighborhood is the variety of fresh fruit and vegetables available year round. We love using fresh ingredients for our breakfasts. Here it is the the middle of winter and there is quite a bounty at our local Moss Landing fruit stand. The fruit stand is only a few blocks walk from the Captain's Inn and always has unusual items. We brought home: banana, dragon fruit, guyabas, cilantro, papaya, and black apricots (real yum). There are some local area strawberries and artichokes too. The dragon fruit was originally from Vietnam, the photo of the dragon fruit cut in half, and dragon fruit feels like kiwi with a much milder taste. Dragon fruit tasting slices ended up at the B&B breakfast.

Tides In and Out

Guests at the Captain's In often relax by just sitting on the decks or in their waterfront rooms, and watch the tide change. Low Tide to High Tide can be quite different. Besides the mud being exposed and salt marsh plants covered until they disappear, the wildlife changes too. We get more sea otters at high tide and more shorebirds at low tide.

Outdoors in Fall

The weather this month is so wonderful. Crisp cool nights and clear sparkly days. The wildlife watching is focused on the birds with plenty from the Inn itself and from the nearby Elkhorn Slough environs. The migration of birds is well underway. The weather has been so fine we have been having picnics in the backyard. Here is an egret off our back deck and a red shoulder hawk silouette on our rooftop.

Corvettes

This group of pretty cars and real nice folks stopped by the bed and breakfast. They had cars of many different models and dates. One of the couples had been our guests during the US Open. With advance reservations, groups can come to the inn for a historic house tour followed by a brunch in our dining room.

Fall at the Inn

Your innkeeper was arranging our harvest season decor of huge pumpkins, pretty pumpkins, quirky gourds twisted squashes, and apricot colored roses. Around the corner popped her seven year old son, "You're pretty mom, can I take you picture?". He has a little ditigal camera and snapped me at work (this is his photo). We get these lovely pumpkins and gourds from a local family farm, Borchard's. Our guests visit this farm all season and enjoy the harvest plus a haunted barn and corn maze.

Tandem Bicycle Honeymoon

Newlyweds Pete and Kati stopped in for a few nites stay with us. When they registered they noted their vehicle was a bluegreen schwinn tandem bicycle! They were taking a tandem ride down the coast of California until they reach San Diego. Their love and affection brightened the entire bed and breakfast. While here they explored the beaches and went whale watching. One morning they were spotted doing tandem yoga moves in our backyard:

impressive and elegant to watch. We wish them a wonderful future and a wonderful peddle together. You can follow their honeymoon trek on their own blog at 'http://www.livesintandem.blogspot.com'.

BBC Stops By

This week we found Toby, from BBC television, and his video camera studio in one of our guest rooms. The BBC was in Moss Landing to interview scientists who have made recent discoveries of new animal species. The MBARI scientists had discovered all sorts of strange deep sea creatures. You can see the animals and listen to the scientists on BBC's new nature series "Decade of Discovery", watch for it . How Toby got all that gear in there and still had room to sleep ........ don't know.

Ladies at the Captain's Inn

A group of sisters and their daughters came to stay with us at the Captain's Inn last weekend. Besides chatting and giggling, they made themselves at home in Moss Landing. They explored our beaches, shopped the art galleries and antiques, and enjoyed the Elkhorn Slough Safari wildlife tour.
They also visitied many of our fine eateries and gave me this report:
At Mark's Moss Landing Cafe try the coconut prawns, steak and green fried tomatoes.
At Whole Enchilada have the chile rellenos and the MARGARITAS!
At Phil's Fish Market order the clam chowder and the linguini with clams.
At the Haute Enchilada do not miss the tres leche cake.
Their friendship and cheer will be welcomed back to the Inn anytime.

Science at the Inn

You never know who you are having breakfast with at the Captain's Inn at Moss Landing. You may be dining with a shark ichthyologist, salt marsh ecologist, or a submarine engineer. The bed and breakfast is located between two world reknown marine science field stations and their visitors often stay with us. There is MBARI dedicated to deep sea engineering, and Moss Landing Marine Labs part of the California State University system focused on marine science research and education. The folks from Sea Imagine (seaimagine.com) were in town last week with their brand new single person submarine. They were here to launch the sub with the expert crew at Moss Landing Marine Labs. One of the unique features of the sub is that it can be transported on a trailer. They parked it out front of the inn and guests looked it over.

Gentlemen Bikers on Harleys

Our convenient location near to Highway One, makes a stop in Moss Landing perfect for people who are traveling North and South on Highway One. As a result, we have had couples on getaway, tour groups, car clubs, and many others come to stay on their way from one place to the other. These gentlemen just dropped in on the their drive from Nevada, through Yosemite, across the valley and to the coast. Their good looking bikes graced the front the inn until they headed South on to their next destination: the Big Sur coastline.

Elkhorn Slough Safari

One of the most popular day trips is visiting the Elkhorn Slough. Many of our guests take the Elkhorn Slough Safari. The stable pontoon boat and its naturalist guide take you on an exploration of the calm backwaters of the second largest wetland in California. You will see sea otters, harbor seals, sea lions, and thousands of birds. This is one of the best ways to see the highest number of sea otters. At the bed and breakfast many of the professional and amatuer photographers charter the safari to go out for a very special wildlife photo session. Guests come back to the inn full of stories of wonderful wildlife watching. For example an otter cracking open a clam to eat, pelicans diving to get sardines, or the baby seal nursing.

Small and Elegant Wedding

This fine couple was recently married here by our Captain Yohn. They chose to have a small, intimate wedding to confirm their commitment to each other. They were able to have an elegant event followed by a dinner in a small, private banquet room in the Lemongrass restaurant just a few blocks from the Captain's Inn. They made many memories without draining their pocket book. Following the wedding, these avid geocachers placed a wedding cache here in Moss Landing to commerate their nuptials. If you find the cache, you will get to sign their wedding guest registry held inside. We wish them both a very happy and fufilling life together.

BLUES

The whale watching has really been wonderful this summer. If you like whales, you should get to the coast before the summer is out. They have been seeing blue whales and humpbacks plus other dolphins and porpoises too, killer whales even. We can help you get discounts on your adventure.
Quote from one of our guests', Brian, on our local trip: "We saw lots of humpbacks including a "family" of a big male, an adult female and a youngster. They did antics for us for close to 1/2 hour. Lots more humpbacks and we finally headed to a different location and saw 4 or 5 big blue whales although nothing really close, like the humpbacks. The young humpback crossed right in front of the bow a couple of times and right past the stern about 25 feet away at least once. The bay was calm. There was some light breeze with about 3-4 ft swells for awhile and then it calmed even more toward mid-day. I did not catch the names of the crew but they were really nice. The skipper is a retired Navy Master Chief "

This photo is of blue whales and was taken by a another guest G. Murphy, just this morning,

Electric Car

Look who came to stay at the Captain's Inn! This cute little car is 100% electric and you plug it into the outlet. This is a prototype model that this company is promoting for approval in the U.S. It can get about 100 miles on a charged. Check them out www.thinkev.com

Upkeep

It seems there is always something to maintain when you own a bed and breakfast inn. This month we painted entry doors, pulled weeds, washed walkways, repaired sprinklers and wrapped the big palm tree with new lights. These lights are the number one way new guests can find us at night and the innkeeper is just partial to pretty holiday lights, year round.