The downturn of the economy has a lot of people re-thinking, well just about everything. While the luxury vacation is being put on hold, staycations are gaining in popularity. This week we’re giving you a peek at a beach house rental that was featured on the 2005 Santa Cruz Architect’s Tour.

This home has 4 bedrooms and 3 full baths. Entering on the ground floor you will find a large family room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a full bath. Upstairs has a great room, another kitchen, dining room, 2 bedrooms and 2 full baths. The balcony off the great room and dining area has the most amazing white water views. The amenities are abundant.

• Outdoor Fire-Pit
• Outdoor Shower for surfers
• Large Gas Grill
• Hot Tub
• Wireless Internet
• 2 Fireplaces
• TV/DVD in every bedroom
• Large Library of book, board games, puzzles and poker chips
• Crib Available
• Handicap Accessible

And one of the best amenities is the location — just steps to the West Cliff ocean-edge promenade. Imagine strolling down to the pier or The Boardwalk with the ocean breeze bringing you the all important negative ions!

To rent this fabulous beach house check out rates and availability here.

Warning: Sunscreen Advised

Related stories:
Aptos Beach House
Manderley Revisited in La Selva Beach

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"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Manderley is the exquisite estate by the sea made famous in the opening line of "Rebecca," a classic 1938 romantic thriller by British author Daphne Du Maurier. And when I first drove up the country lane toward La Selva Beach last weekend, through the eucalyptus groves and farm fields, and laid eyes on the gleaming white estate perched alone on a hilltop overlooking the sea, that famous line coursed through my brain.

Even the name of the lane _ Sanderling Hill _ has a Manderley ring to it. It might not look like Du Maurier’s Manderley, but to me it feels like it _ a house that was as much a character in the book as Rebecca herself. In the novel, Manderley holds dark secrets. On Sanderling Hill, the setting sun envelopes it in a golden glow, but it still has a sense of mystery around it. It’s a house that has the bearing of a building that has withstood the fog and the wind and the sun and the salt for generations. It is an 1872 Italianate Victorian and has stories of its own, including the fact that it was literally quartered and moved from its original site in Watsonville just a decade ago to its present location down the road from Seascape and closer to Santa Cruz.

In all its 136 years, it has only been owned by three families: the Palmtags who owned a Watsonville brewery and built the house, the Muzzios who held great parties there since the 1920s, and the Bowens who rescued it in 1998. And perhaps soon, a fourth family may own it. The house is for sale, along with the four acres of farmland and a newly-built carriage house.

My friend, Maria, first spotted the house returning from a camping trip to the beach. She grabbed a flier and, like me, has been obsessing ever since. It’s listed by Sotheby’s for nearly $2.7 million, a lower price than either of us expected, but still the stuff of fantasy.

"I want to have my family for Thanksgiving dinner in that dining room," she said.

Now I dream of it, too.

The house had been condemned after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. And as much as Marina Muzzio hated to leave the house she grew up in, the plaster was crumbling off the walls and the brick fireplaces had been reduced to rubble. The neighborhood along the banks of the Pajaro River had also deteriorated and investing hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to restore it didn’t seem to make sense. The city of Watsonville acquired it and offered it up for $1 to the family with the best proposal to relocate and restore it.

Julie and Dayle Bowen, who had two young sons and already restored a Victorian in Santa Cruz, were awarded the Palmtag-Muzzio Mansion.

They purchased four acres of farmland in La Selva beach, hired a house mover, and replanted it on the hilltop with its handsome balcony facing the lights of Santa Cruz across Monterey Bay. The kitchen and huge dining room look out to the ocean. The living room parlour looks down the sloping hillside over the organic row crops. The exterior of the house remains at is did in the 19th century, although the interior was relatively unadorned at the time. The Bowens assume the Palmtags might have run out of money to do the finishing touches. So when the Bowens stripped down the crumbling plaster walls to move the house, there was little ornamentation to preserve. When they put the house back together, they added picture rails and crown molding and widened the entrance to the living room. A fifth bedroom upstairs was converted to a bathroom, and the master bedroom was downsized a bit to include a master bath. The floors upstairs are original. Many of the windows still have the old wavy glass.

Julie Bowen restored the old house as a project. Now, she’s itching to do another one. Maybe she will look back and dream again of Sanderling Hill. Maybe the next family will buy it to live in for the next 100 years. No matter who comes to live here and what stories they will bring, this much is certain: this house has a character of its own.

(Photos by Marty Forsyth)

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As summer winds down, before the pencils are sharpened and textbooks covered, one last trip must be taken.  Our destination — the Yosemite High Sierra Camps.  This is one of Yosemite’s best-kept secrets. Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps are a truly unique experience.  A 53-mile loop connects 5 different camps.

The only way to get to these camps is by foot or mule pack. Trekking through Yosemite High Sierra Camps takes backpacking to a whole new level. In fact, the term “glamping” isn’t quite right. It’s more like “glam-packing”. While on the loop you can take your time, which I did.  Stop as often as you like, did that too. 
It’s not easy hiking 8 plus miles with a 30 lb pack and making elevation gains of almost 2 thousand feet.  But, there is a reward at the end.  You can see it off in the distance. It is an oasis.  Perfectly white-canvas tent cabins lined up and you know one of them is yours. It comes complete with a bed; plenty of warm blankets and a wood-burning stove to keep you cozy at night.

The staff at each of the camps is really great.  Our first night was at Glen Aulin where our cabin was right next to a gorgeous waterfall on the Tuolumne River. It was unbelievable.
We enjoyed the wine he hiked in_ trying to lighten our load for the next day. But then we panicked. We lightened too much.

What would we consume the next night? We heard a rumor that some entrepreneuring college students could help us out.   
They said they could hike out (they knew a short cut) buy your beverage of choice and then hike back.  People lined up to place their orders.  Our group ordered a six-pack of Coors light (they’re lighter right?) and a bottle of ($5) red wine.  The cost to us was only 50 bucks.  We were happy to contribute the advancement of academia.

The next day’s hike to May Lake was equally as beautiful.  I pictured the granite I was hiking on in some gourmet kitchen. It was gorgeous. 
The views were spectacular as well. Every time we came to the top of a switchback I thought WOW it can’t get any better than this, and then you come around the next switchback and you are in awe all over again. One of the hikers making the journey said “I really felt my age on that last hill”.  We had learned earlier that Barbara was 77.  I said to myself “I’m feeling your age too, Barbara”.

May Lake was my favorite destination and not only because I survived the hike.  Our camp host Brian was so welcoming.  Brian’s wife Jen was our chef, responsible for the best meal we had.  We started with a vegetable soup and salad of mixed greens.  The main dish, steak with a blue cheese crumble, served with sweet potato wedges and sautéed summer squash and zucchini. We finished it off with (yes there is more) a large fudge brownie.

The way to get reservations for this amazing trip is through a lottery. Last year there were 2000 applications for 800 spots and I can say I’m glad I won this lottery; although I hope it’s not the last lottery I ever win.

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To get to the Frost Cabin on the far side of Pinecrest Lake, you first have to load up your dufflebags, ice chests, kids and pets into an old motorboat. As it bounds over the wake, a spray of cold water invigorates you from the four-hour drive, and cools you off before the heady hike up the wooded and rocky hillside to the cabin.

A vodka tonic would often be waiting on a boulder halfway up for Dorothy Frost. Well into her 90s, she’d sit down, look out across the lake, and take a long, cool sip. This was the place just northwest of Yosemite, past Sonora on Highway 108, that she settled in 1944 with her husband, Monterey roofer Charles L. Frost. Dorothy Frost, who was on the Stanford diving team in 1917 and went on to coach the men’s diving team in the 1920s, taught her children and grandchildren to swim up here, dive for lures, and make Duggan’s famous buttermilk pancakes.

“They’d pay us a quarter to swim to the diving dock, ten cents to …

… dive in, a dollar _ or maybe it was ten _ to swim across the lake,” said Susan Frost Alfeld, Dorothy’s granddaughter, who still comes to the lake with her two children as well as her brothers, David and Charlie and their families.

The Frost cabin has been summer entertainment central for decades. The walls of the cabin are decorated with thank-you notes from friends who sketched into the margins views of the lake. Several of those friends went on to buy their own cabins nearby. The Daniels from Monterey are on their fourth generation at Pinecrest. And to this day, the Frosts will meander down the hillside to join in campfire songs or help each other up with replacement refrigerators or mattresses.

And like the Frost cabin, the universal interior decorating feature _ along with second-hand sofas and blackened pots hanging on the kitchen ceiling _ appears to be mantels covered in fishing lures. They are strung together and hung as colorful, spinning, light-catching mobiles.

“We’d dive for them when the water went low,” Alfeld said of the lures. “Some of the neighbors got hi-tech and bought scuba gear.”

In the Frost kitchen, the buttermilk pancake recipe _ called “Duggan’s” for Dorothy’s nickname _ is hand-painted on a board above the stove. Made with egg whites fluffed from the same old hand beater that’s been used since the 1940s, the pancakes are standard weekend fare on the picnic table overlooking the lake.

Days are spent hiking around the lake and swimming or sailing in the cold water. By night, teens come of age taking the motorboats by flashlight to watch movies at the Pinecrest Resort Amphitheater, skinny dipping at midnight. Parents sit on their decks and watch the trees turn to silhouettes as the sun sets.

Sometimes, from across the lake, a distant voice is heard calling “Elmer!” And as part of a Pinecrest tradition going back decades, anyone who hears it will call back with the same. As the story goes, a boy named Elmer was lost years ago and everyone called out his name to find him.

“They’ve been calling Elmer since my dad was a kid,” Alfeld said. “They must have found him by now.”

As night falls, wet towels are hung on the deck railings, and sleeping bags are set out under the stars.

Dorothy Frost lived in three centuries. Born in 1899 in Salinas, she died in 2001 at the age of 100. She carried firewood up the hillside and went swimming each day well into her 90s.

But her spirit lives on here, in the cocktails and the lures and the buttermilk pancakes.

—julia

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There was something quite liberating for Mark and Tammy De Mattei when it came to building their new Aptos beach house.  Unlike their home in San Jose’s Rose Garden neighborhood where they are raising their three school-age boys, the beach house needs no backback drop-zone, no big laundry room or computer hub.

“It’s about looks first and…

…function second,” said Mark De Mattei, of San Jose-based DeMattei Construction.

And boy does it have looks. The three-story wood, concrete and steel structure is built into a steep bluff, right at the edge of the sand. (The only problem is that darn crashing of the waves _ to a builder drifting off to sleep at night, it can sound like bursting water pipes. But he’s working through that.)

When it came to choosing a style for the family beach house, De Mattei, whose company has built four Sunset Idea Houses, departed from the traditional style of his Rose Garden home.

“I knew I wanted it to be contemporary, but not Jetsons contemporary,” De Mattei said.

What does that mean? It means warm contemporary. It means choosing a palette of honey, moss and sand.  It means less steel, and more cedar and mahogany. It means natural light streaming all the way to the bluffside of the house and Venetian plaster walls so smooth, they feel like silk to the touch. It means cabinets made of teak and zebra wood installed on a horizontal grain. It means radiant heat.

De Mattei hired Santa Cruz architect Tom Thacher to transform his vision into reality, including designing a two-story corner window of glass and steel built to withstand a landslide, wrap-around balconies and an elevator to cart weekend luggage to the third-floor bedrooms.

“It’s a bunker house. The back side is all concrete _it’s buried into the hillside,” said Peter Silva, associate architect on the project. “Our task was to enliven the structure using warm materials.”

With the help of Palo Alto interior designer Pamela Pennington, limestone floors were chosen that can be hard and loud for every day use, but are perfect for sandy feet.  Shallow sinks in the masterbath “really look cool,” De Mattei said, “but you wouldn’t do your laundry in them.”

To De Mattei, “everything is about the view. It’s more about the view and entertaining than practicality.”

The beach house has been a long time coming. De Mattei first spotted the property with a For Sale sign as he was jogging on the Rio Del Mar beach about eight years ago. The lot included 10 acres of bluff and beach, but had become embroiled in legal wrangling when the previous owner proposed building a number of houses on the site. To settle the issue, the lot was sold in 2004 when De Mattei promised to build just one. Construction began in June 2006 and last September, the family moved in their towels and surf boards.

This is the family’s first full summer at the new home. As De Mattei puts it, “It’s a 45-minute drive to paradise.”

—julia prodis sulek

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What is the best way to launch a new home voyeur site?  Go on vacation!  Okay, I’m not so stellar in the timing department, but when it comes to picking a place with some gorgeous, “green with envy” inducing homes I picked a winner!

I’m on the last day of a two-week respite on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, where the east coast elite have their “Sum-mah homes”.  I had grand plans to hit a few open houses, but when given the choice of that or the beach – the family chose to hit the waves.  Who brought them anyway? Instead here are few shots of the fantastic architecture I came across on a daily basis. I did do a bit of shopping, and found some interesting shops.  Check out some of my finds here.

While many of the homes on the island are summer havens, there are a fair amount of folks who live here year round. Operating on “island time” is a way of life and finding time to enjoy the great weather is key.  Private docks, enclosed patios and windows galore are all hallmarks of well appointed homes.  The picture above is of the newly renovated Corbin – Norton house.  Owned by the founder of Norton Utilities (I knew there would be a Silicon Valley connection to this island!) who lives there 10 weeks out of the year. As we walked by, the patio was all set up for a nice outdoor dinner, complete with a teak rectangular table for 10 set with large hurricane lamps and candles.  (Ah, the good life indeed!)

We also did alot of walking through downtown Edgartown, where ocean front homes range from $1.1 million for modest 10,0000 lots to over $4.5 million with a private beach and dock. It is was truly quintessential New England, with the hydrangeas planted in front of every home and white picket fences are the norm.

One of my favorite features of any home is the backyard.  To me, a summer home is only as good as the space it has for entertaining and enjoying the sun.
This morning as we kayaked on the Serngekontacket Pond, I ran across my ultimate backyard.   It had a little bit of private shore with calm waters, plenty of lawn chairs, a deck for hosting dinners and parties on the second floor and a living room/kitchen that had a view of it all – seems perfect!   I started to imagine the fantastic parties I would have with the music wafting through my outdoor speaker system and the mojitos flowing freely.  I was ready to park my kayak and move on in.  Instead, I headed back to the hotel to start the arduous task of packing for home.