Air Travel Discount
Links of interest for your travel plans
Mill
Valley California
If there is a god or goddess of cool towns, he or she started with the
creation of places like Mill Valley, California.
That’s what I thought on December 27, 1977, when first
arriving in the state I began in Mill Valley, California.
While residents might now take for granted some of the sensory or other
details (though I doubt such proactive, progressive, conscientious folk
would) I will walk you through those that struck me and still return to
remind me of the starting point of what has been a fine life.
The eucalyptus wafts a mighty moody redolence throughout Mill Valley
California, where said trees line the crooked roads—many of
which are not city-maintained but taken care of by the residents on the
roads. (One weekend day a year—or more, for example, the
neighbors of Manor Drive tote shovels and tar mixtures, meeting to fill
in the cavernous pot holes, lesions, and dips of the thin pavement.
Further into town, along East Blithedale, which runs through Mill
Valley, California from the highway to the redwoods, more smells
emanate from cookeries, eateries, the ever-present flower bodega, and
the historic Sequoia Theatre on the slope of the Throckmorton and
Blithedale fork. Natural food shops and groceries but against
magic/head shops and chic clothing stores, amidst the great trees and
met by the Depot, where a double-doored, terra cotta-floored foyer
features a few drinks, a few books, and a few people waiting for the
busses that run on the hour or every twenty minutes.
Trees are further celebrities, as around the bend from shopping stops
are the great redwoods and other dark and darling flora and fauna of
Muir Woods, wherein rests the Mill Valley, California town library,
glassed on all sides for a remarkable library visit, interrupted only
by the occasional clearing of a throat or the flitting of a bird or
butterfly.
Less than a mile back through town in the other direction is the
infamous Tamalpais High, turning out new dramatists on the tails of
such stars as Robin Williams (who lived on the road to Mt. Tam) and
Kathleen Quinlin (who turned over the psych film genre with her
performance in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden). Also in
the area is a longstanding retirement community, called, appropriately,
The Redwoods, as well as classic lodging sites that skirt the byway.
And if you decide to settle among the culture and temperate Bay Area
climate, you will also be in for the best treats: the poetry readings,
the Mill Valley Film Festival, and the coolest of artists, performers,
philosophers, and stars. You may run into, as I did those
many years ago, the jovial Huey Lewis, the stoic Peter Seers, or celebs
of neighboring hamlets visiting not s center attractions but as just
another shopper, movie-goer, or tourist…Sean Penn might pop
in from San Anselmo/Kentwood; Don Novello might hit the coffee shop,
coming from his Marin home where he settled during/after his brilliant
stint as Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live.
And now, as spring returns and the first olfactory sensations of
eucalyptus strike me into wonderful, nostalgic recall, and as I stop to
pick up all the names I just dropped, I will excuse myself—to
hop in the car to visit the great place of my indoctrination of Mill
Valley California, where you can get your start, too, or get your
finish, retiring to the loveliness of warm people, wild woods, and
wonderful offerings besides.