A long time ago San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district yawned through a pastoral existence beyond even the outskirts of San Francisco. But its past life as a collection of isolated farms, and even its later incarnation as a residential suburb of quiet wealth made possible by the cable car, has been long forgotten in the aftermath of the 1960s social revolution.

The Haight, as Haight-Ashbury is often known, became a passport to free love, drugs, and a bohemian lifestyle that so many counterculture rebels craved. By 1967 Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead all lived within blocks of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets, from which the district derived its name.

Haight Street still retains the look, and the reputation, of all that made the ‘60s both wildly attractive and squeamishly unsanitary. But long before the Summer of Love came along, it was the Beat poets who really breathed counterculture into The Haight. They were the original anti-Leave it to Beaver lifestyle rebels. The beatniks epitomized the rejection of materialism and convention that hippies later ran, and often died, with. Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and the travel writing addict’s favorite Jack Kerouac are the best-known originators of Beat culture. Kerouac in fact introduced the phrase Beat Generation in 1948.

But hey, you’re not here for a history lesson.

My younger sister lives just a block off Haight Street, on what seems to be the windiest and coldest corner of a rather cold and windy city. (It was Mark Twain who famously said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.”) She and her boyfriend work long hours at three of San Francisco’s best and most popular restaurants, which meant that when my son woke up bright and energetic at 6:30 in the morning, I had to get him out of their apartment fast. So I got half-asleep directions to coffee, shushed John into the stroller, and bopped down the steps to do a little early-morning Haight exploring.

You might think that sounds inhospitable, but you try being woken up at that time by a little kid pulling your hair when you work 60 hours a week and don’t get to sleep before 2 a.m.

First stop in that situation is, of course, the coffee. My sister’s favorite spot is Coffee to the People, located a few doors up from Haight Street, and whose name absolutely epitomizes the vibe of San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury in particular. (The fabulous quality of their fair-trade mocha left me once again wondering why it is that East Coasters simply don’t understand good coffee. Is it the navel-gazing of New Yorkers? The long-suffering self-abasement of New Englanders? Whatever it is, it’s always a relief to go back West and get a damn good latte.)

And then we walked. For 2 ½ hours, waiting for someone to call and tell us it was safe to come in and whine over diaper changes and breakfast. You can see a lot of variety in 2 ½ hours when you’re tired, slightly hungover, still full from the previous night’s amazing dinner, trying to juggle a mocha and a stroller, and doing your best, just this once, not to get lost. Luckily, being a later-settled section of a later-settled New World city, The Haight’s streets conform to a fairly gridlike pattern.

I’d seen a bit of the more colorful sections the day before, when I got lost on Haight Street trying to pick up my sister’s dry cleaning. In late afternoon it was an obstacle course of homeless and hippies (some of which I mistook for the other), winos and weirdos, drugged-out young women and burnt-out elderly men. It was awesome.

Early the next morning, though, before any shops opened, when the streets were populated mostly by parents escorting their kids to school via bicycle (this is Northern California), it left me feeling wistful. As I trundled up and down the streets I wished I’d come here in my teens or early 20s, when Burroughs and Ginsberg and Hunter S. Thompson were my “this is the truth and I will follow it!” obsessions (along with Nabokov, of course, but he was a little early for Beat).

Something is lost when you’re looking with the eye of a travel writer, you have a kid in tow needing occasional attention, and your favorite “this is the truth and I will reach for it” writer is the incredible, but hardly drugged-out or a bit nuts, Colin Thubron. At this age I’m not willing to take drugs anymore, and my child precludes staying out all night smoking cigarettes and nodding vigorously to down-with-the-establishment poetry. Early morning on Haight Street made me miss that life.

I mean, sure I hadn’t showered yet that day, but I was walking around sipping a fair-trade mocha and idiotically humming “If You’re Going to San Francisco,” over and over, which must have really irritated the few conscious locals I saw. The feeling that I should have been sitting back in Coffee to the People, warding off a nic fit and writing furiously in a notebook, made the experience a little surreal. But maybe that was the mild hangover.

So instead of diving headfirst into a taste of the Beat generation experience I walked around taking notes on the architecture and chatting with early-morning responsible adults in the (rather muddy but filled with gorgeous, huge trees) park while my son watched their dogs chase balls. (Travel tip note: when desperate for something to entertain your toddler a little bit longer, find a dog-friendly park.)

Haight-Ashbury is being gentrified, bit by bit. The expensive looking Urban School is a quiet testament to slightly well-off families moving into the area, and the fixing up of many gorgeous San Francisco terrace houses even more so. The detail on them is fantastical, almost Moorish in the glee with which fillips and curlicues tumble all over houses in colors of daffodil and periwinkle. The gentrification speaks of a cheerfulness that the Beat Generation might have reviled, but which, tame thirty-something mother that I am, to me makes them look like mighty nice places to live.

And maybe Haight-Ashbury will, someday, once again be a center of protest against powers-that-be and a magnet for those seeking flower power and spiritual rebirth. Toward the end of the walk, just before my sister called to ask if I was ready for coffee (are you kidding?), I passed a gentrified house with steps leading graciously down to the sidewalk. One thick tuft of grass poked out of the paving just past their riotous plant pots. A sign on a small stick no more than the height of a toothbrush stuck out of it. “Please keep off the grass,” it said.

Maybe the seeds of the new Beats are sown with a little tongue-in-cheek.

The Haleakala National Park on Maui, Hawaii, holds a beautiful surprise that you might not expect to find in such stark, barren conditions.

It’s the gorgeous shiny ahinahina or Silversword plant.

Found only in Maui (there’s a slightly different species on the Big Island’s Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa) the Haleakala Silversword somehow grows in the volcanic cinder soil, but it is a threatened plant and its roots can be damaged if you walk too closely to it.

I was so absorbed in trying to photograph it that I missed the signs and got a park ranger shout for getting too close, so learn from my mistake. 

While in Maui on the “So Much More Hawaii” bloggers tour (my trip was sponsored and paid for by the state Hawaii Tourism Authority) I enjoyed a ride up to the volcano summit with my local host blogger,  Liza and her family from A Maui Blog.

There’s a lot more to write about Maui in future posts, but I love these plants so much I thought I’d get a couple of photos up as quickly as I could, because they are stunning.

Or you might call it eating in. Santa Cruz is the poster child for Northern California values and attitudes. With a population composed of university students going for an environmentalism-related degree at UC Santa Cruz, tech workers commuting to Silicon Valley, and a permanent itinerant population that in another generation might have classified as Deadheads, the city is both seriously laid-back, and serious about its organic and locally grown food sources. Not only that, but people there like to eat. Case in point: the first time I ever visited Santa Cruz, for my older sister’s wedding over ten years ago, a crowd of happy and hapless homeless young hippies on the sidewalk were happy to take leftover handmade cannolli in lieu of change I did not have. Another guy used to sit on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign saying, “Why lie? I need a beer.” I like honesty.

I also like to eat out — a lot, my scale tells me now I’m back home — when I visit my sisters in sunny Santa Cruz. And both they and the town are happy to accommodate. One of their favorite spots is Cafe Brasil for brunch, which serves fabulous Brazilian fare (obviously) and truly appalling Brazilian coffee. Really terrible coffee. Trust me, skip it. But don’t skimp on anything else. The most popular dish is hands-down the Açai Bowl, a blend of the “Amazonian power fruit” with strawberries, bananas, apples, and guarana syrup, topped with granola and more strawberries and bananas. It’s a healthy, great-tasting meal in itself, but I never stop there because the vegetarian Gallo Pinto served with fried plantains is just too fabulous for words. And filling.

The thing is, though, no matter how much I like to eat out, I do actually have family in Santa Cruz, so there’s a lot of home-cooked meals. And, boy, do they make me jealous. I mean, I live in a great farming region of New York State and have access to plenty of fresh produce — in the summer, when things grow here. Santa Cruz? They’ve got one of the best farmers’ markets in the country year-round.

The Santa Cruz Farmers’ Market is held in a parking lot off the main drag every Wednesday from 2:30 – 6:30 p.m. And it’s not the kind of thing we get in the Hudson Valley. Fresh-baked bread, a variety of produce, yeah, we’ve got that. But fresh, sustainably harvested seafood? A variety of street musicians? Farmers foisting cherries on you at every turn? A gelato stand? Fresh sauerkraut? I don’t think so.

That’s not to mention the fact that I can stand around scarfing freshly shucked oysters while my sisters shop for the tastiest local organic greens and ready-to-freeze pizza dough. They’re so damn spoiled.

Wandering around Santa Cruz gives you an appetite anyway, there’s so many good-quality sushi bars and taquerias and coffee shops just hanging out waiting for your attention. And it takes a long time to traverse the main street if you’re going to listen to all the good music, stare at the inventive requests for money in the form of cardboard signs, free belly dancing, or flower-arranging skill.

It’s a strange place, and you never need to leave Pacific Ave, the main drag, to get your full complement of Santa Cruz food and lifestyle. My favorite eatery by far, however, is the River Cafe and Cheese Shop located a few blocks off of Pacific. With a variety of cheeses, breads, sandwiches, soups, and homemade canned local fruits and veggies, you’d never go hungry, but I recommend the “daily toast,” which, the day I went, featured sharp Cowgirl Creamery cheese on toast topped with marinated apricots and served with a fresh salad. And the fruit/berry crisp is to die for.

It also leaves room for a quick stop at Aqua Bleu, which is where I always like to drop in after a long flight from the East Coast. Why? Because the Asian restaurant and sushi bar’s Long Life Soup feels like just the tonic needed after a life-force-sucking airplane ride, especially with a cranky toddler in tow. I’ve had the same post-flight ritual ever since the place first opened up and it was my younger sister’s first serious restaurant job. The Bleu Meany (pictured above) is one of their eclectic sushi dishes (you have to try it to believe it) and the Sake Bomb burger just kicks ass when what you really want is a burger and a beer. Me, I go for the Long Life Soup, some sashimi, and their fabulous horseradish-laced Bloody Marys.

Santa Cruz’s food, in the end, comes from its culture and its climate. Being part of liberal Northern California, its denizens scramble for the best local, fresh, and organic ingredients that sun and mild seasons can provide. I never go away hungry in either stomach, palate, or morals, even if my wallet is leaner. Ethical, local, sustainable, and great-tasting food, you can’t beat it.