Shelter Island is about a mile from end to end, and the space between is mostly marinas, restaurants, hotels and the long, grassy Shelter Island Shoreline Park \u2014 a great place for a walk, run or a picnic with grilling. Also, there\u2019s a handy playground for little kids next to the little Shelter Island Pier. <\/p>\n
Perhaps best of all, on that little fishing pier often half hidden by anglers and eager diners, stands Fathom Bistro, Bait and Tackle<\/a>. Fathom has a far more ambitious menu that your average bait merchant, including lots of craft bees and sausages, kimchi and beignets made in house. I loved my Baja Dog there (onions and pico de gallo are involved), but bolder eaters may opt for the Explodo Dog, which brings a Vienna Beef hot dog, bacon, pepper jack cheese, kimchi and mustard together at last.<\/p>\n Given all these assets, I\u2019m ready to forgive Shelter Island for not really being an island. This mini-peninsula is connected to the mainland by Shelter Island Drive. It was created in the 1950s, when the San Diego Port District dredged the bay, built up a peninsula and zoned it for tourist businesses with a tiki\/Polynesian theme. <\/p>\n From the Bali Hai <\/a>restaurant (since 1954) at the north end of the mile-long isthmus to the Kona Kai resort at the other end, that theme survives.<\/a> The hotels include Humphrey\u2019s Half Moon Inn, whose annual summer Concerts by the Bay<\/a> series runs from April into November and brings acts like Tower of Power, Pat Metheny, Judy Collins, Robert Plant and Rodrigo y Gabriela to an amphitheater at water\u2019s edge. Savvy kayakers paddle up nearby and listen for free. <\/p>\n Also found on Shelter Island: several yacht brokers and boat repair operations, a Tunaman\u2019s Memorial Sculpture,<\/a> a Friendship Bell from Yokohama, a longstanding osprey nest atop a light pole by the friendship bell, a boat ramp and the kid-friendly Grace Beach (which gets no waves). <\/p>\n By the way, back when San Diego\u2019s Port District was creating almost-islands (and the California Coastal Commission didn\u2019t exist), it also made nearby Harbor Island, which has a few more marinas and hotels, along with a closely grouped trio of restaurants with perhaps the best downtown skyline views in the city: Coasterra<\/a> (modern Mexican), Island Prime<\/a> (steakhouse) and C Level<\/a> (seafood). <\/p>\n If you have a first-time California visitor on your hands, take them to one of those. Suddenly, our real estate prices will make a little more sense. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shelter Island is about a mile from end to end, and the space between is mostly marinas, restaurants,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[599,58616,177646,8504,418,177645,482,3101,12258,3365,177644,74,163004,76,75,85651,177643,72],"class_list":["post-448749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-area","tag-cabrillo","tag-commercial-sportfishing-vessel","tag-del-mar","tag-history","tag-many-san-diego-visitor","tag-north","tag-ocean-beach","tag-pacific-beach","tag-point-loma","tag-port-san-miguel","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-beach","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-several-mile","tag-spanish-visitor","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}