A Valentine's Day Drive in San Mateo County

In celebration of the Valentine’s holiday my husband & I went gunk holing in San Mateo County. He pointed out that we could easily walk to the county line, as it just over a mile from our doorstep but considering the weather, I opted for the shelter of a car. Today is one of those days when you’re in the pouring rain, blinding sunshine, dense fog, and misty clouds simultaneously. We’re loving every raindrop!


San Mateo’s County seat is Redwood City. It was established in 1856 and is formerly part of San Francisco County. In case you were wondering, Palo Alto is not in San Mateo County. The name is Spanish for Saint Matthew and the county has a population of 246,681 and is 3,304 square miles.

We drove south from San Francisco on Highway 101, turned west on Highway 92 and south on Highway 35 a.k.a. Skyline. The road is dubbed Skyline because it snakes along the ridge atop the hills dividing the rugged unpopulated coast and the more densely populated cities along the San Francisco Bay. As we wound along under a canopy of Redwoods we caught glimpses of snow dusted peaks in the East Bay. This is a rare occurrence in this area and I felt great sympathy for the couple ahead of us on a motorcycle as my dashboard temperature read a shivery 38 degrees. We finally dipped down from the hills into Pescadero. I had suggested that we stop by Duarte’s Tavern, a local institution since 1894 to pick up an olallieberry (a cross between a loganberry and young berry) pie for dinner. John thought that was a great idea but lobbied for their renowned artichoke soup and oysters for lunch. That sounded great to me and apparently hoards of others. I shouldered my way through the door and eventually was able to order a pie. We didn’t have the stamina to wait for lunch, at 1:30pm they were quoting a wait of 1 ½ hours for a table.

Back in the car we carefully stowed our still-warm pie and headed to San Gregorio. The general store was on our agenda because I needed to buy a new broom. Some women get diamonds or roses on Valentine’s Day. I got a broom. This wasn’t just any broom, mind you: it’s a fair trade, hand tied, hand dyed broom from the mountains of Thailand. I think it very cool and sincerely hope it will sweep the floor. The San Gregorio General Store was a perfect place to make this rather mundane purchase. There was a band setting up in the corner and the cashier/bar tender completely got it when I requested that he take our “American Gothic Broom” picture. I could become a regular here.

Hungry, we cut down to the coast to Highway One and went directly to Ketch Joanne at Pillar Point Harbor. Yum, fried oysters!!! We walked the docks to see if any of our friends were around but found no-one we knew, truthfully we found no-one at all. All the boats were securely moored at their docks and the red “gale warning” flags flapped in the wind.

So ends a fun day and a great visit to San Mateo County, my third visit to the 58 California counties chronicled to date.