A feast for the eyes - and the palate

It took me a while to find the tiny burg of Bolinas. Minneapolis transplant and now famed meat producer Bill Niman had warned me about that. "As soon as the state would put up a Bolinas sign on the highway [Hwy. 1], someone removed it," he had said. "They finally gave up."

But I hugged the California coastline north of San Francisco and finally found the town, where wary residents lollygagged outside clapboard buildings but didn't have time for interlopers. About all that seemed to have changed since the 1960s was the hairline on these aging hippies.

Rather than arouse their suspicions further, I strolled until finding the Coast Café, where the staff was gracious, their smiles as fresh as the crab, dill and corn in the enchiladas.

I would find this quintessentially Californian dichotomy throughout the Marin coastlands. Its people are cool and warm, hip and earnest, laid-back yet fiercely protective of their alluring turf.

And who can blame them for being so territorial? To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, they found paradise and are not about to let anyone pave it and put up a parking lot.

This 60-mile stretch, from Muir Beach to Dillon, is wind-swept and truly temperate, rarely veering outside the 30- to 70-degree range. The well preserved, rolling terrain is so green and lush that "verdant" seems an inadequate descriptor.

While driving along Hwy. 1, I found it almost unfathomable that I was in a county with a quarter-million people, thanks to the jammed megalopolis a few miles to the east.

Sir Frances Drake must have felt right at home when he landed here in 1579.

California to the core

As we drove along the two-lane highway named after Drake -- toward yet another ridge that looked like Ireland without the stone walls, pubs or leprechauns -- my friend Brian aptly noted that "golf-course designers must come out here and want to commit suicide."

The terrain could indeed play host to a course that rivaled any on either side of the Atlantic, but this area has been protected from development for more than a century.

Small wonder that this seascaped sliver lures bikers, hikers, kayakers, whale-watchers and other outdoor enthusiasts, not to mention a few hundred species of birds.

Inverness is California to the core. One of the prime realtors is named Autumn Monday. Even the houses are literal tree-huggers, clinging to trunks on steep slopes. The local handymen are prone to such descriptions of their gentrified clientele as "she has dark energy" and "he has an IQ of like 180 but couldn't tie his own shoes."

But Inverness also can be a bit snooty. During our visit, a haughty gentlemen twice made "slow down" motions at us -- we might have been pushing 15 miles per hour -- as he imperiously walked his Pekingese smack dab down the middle of a pine-lined street.

Food with a view

At the wondrous local eateries, as in Bolinas, the people are decidedly more congenial.

At Whale of a Deli in Point Reyes Station, home to out-of-this-world tacos and perhaps California's worst wine selection, several locals spoke to us. The vendors at the nearby Tomales Bay Foods, home to the sublime Cowgirl Creamery, were downright affable; the purveyors of the nearby, not-to-be missed Bovine Bakery lived down to their curmudgeonly reputation.

As are the local oysters, millions of which are raised in Tomales Bay. With visions of kumamotos dancing on our palates, we headed north on Hwy. 1, on the mainland side of the bay. The drive there was every bit as scenic, if not quite as tranquil, as the excursion out on the peninsula.

Flocks of pelicans, looking more like missiles than their rather goofy earthbound countenance, sped over estuaries laden with oyster beds to the west. Sheep and cows grazed languidly on the hills to the east. As we curved through a stand of eucalyptus trees, their unmistakable ambrosial scent pervaded the car.

We pulled into Nick's Cove, a newish restaurant whose nautical décor is a few years from acquiring that lived-in look. The waiter said the oysters had been in their beds that morning. We ordered a couple dozen and, being on vacation, got him to do the shucking. They tasted, as promised, as briny as the waters they had recently exited.

Slurping away and gazing at the emerald isle across the bay, I was reminded of what an L.A. friend had said about this swath of her home state: "great scenery, great eats, astronomical real estate and no cell-phone service."

That might not be everyone's definition of heaven on Earth, but it's pretty close to mine.