Pacific Grove Acres, Pacific Grove, CA

Pacific Grove Acres covers the western end of town, where Asilomar State Beach, the municipal golf course and the Point Pinos shoreline give it more open sky than any other part of Pacific Grove. Fog is a frequent visitor here, drifting in over the water through the night and early morning. Houses sit on the town's western flank, many of them older cottages and low bungalows, and the area is built at a moderate density, well below the downtown grid. Streets feel quieter and more spread out than the ones toward Lighthouse Avenue, and most days you hear gulls before traffic. Outdoors is the reason to live here. Asilomar State Beach sits inside the neighborhood, with a boardwalk crossing the dunes and rocky coves full of tidepool life. The historic conference grounds at the city's western edge are Julia Morgan's Arts and Crafts work. George Washington Park is the other green space in the neighborhood. Just past the edge, Point Pinos Lighthouse, also a small museum that opens a few afternoons a week, has been operating since 1855 and is the oldest continuously running one on the West Coast, and the city-owned golf links look out over the point. Fishwife on Sunset Drive is the local place to eat, a casual seafood and pasta kitchen with Caribbean touches and a grilled catch of the day. For a dressier dinner people head to Passionfish on Lighthouse Avenue, known for seafood and a reasonably priced wine list. Errands from Pacific Grove Acres are a drive. The two big grocers, Safeway and Trader Joe's, are about a mile east on the Forest Avenue side of town, and nothing in the neighborhood replaces them. On a clear evening, the dunes and the tidepools are right outside the door and the whole western edge of the peninsula goes quiet. For coastal trails, tidepools and open shoreline, this is Pacific Grove at its most outdoorsy.