As someone who needs to get my bearings, I don’t usually like to arrive after dark. But driving from the coast up Carmel Valley Road, tracking the outline of the Santa Lucia Mountains beneath the bright starlight, I can already sense the rustic beauty all around. In the morning, I peer out from our digs at Bernardus Lodge (bernardus.com) and see that I’m right. Across the long, narrow valley loom the most unsullied mountains imaginable. Thinking of the day ahead—a long hike in the hills, then a tasting-menu dinner at the lodge’s Marinus restaurant—gets me charged up. And we haven’t even had our first espresso.

Just across the valley from the lodge, Garland Ranch Regional Park serves a Tildenesque role for Carmel residents, but once you climb to the ridges at 2,000 feet, you’re very alone at the northern edge of the vast, pristine Santa Lucias. We ascend the Waterfall Trail through oaks and maples, transfixed by wisps of languid lichen hanging from branches, then head up the quad-stinging Vasquez Trail to the big views: 3,000-foot peaks and the hazy Pacific to the west. We eat on the grass near some dilapidated corral fencing and, like the Tin Man, overcome by the poppies, drift off. The 90-minute walk back feels like a rubdown compared with the ascent, and our thoughts start to fix on what comes next: the meal.

If I could take my 10 best friends anywhere—and I mean anywhere—for dinner, I would treat them to Chef Cal Stamenov’s tasting menu at Marinus. (If you haven’t had the pleasure, picture a less ballyhooed version of the French Laundry.) Served either in the kitchen or at one of 17 tables in the dining room, the meal is always enthralling and seems to last as long as the afternoon trek. Sitting by the restaurant’s castle-worthy fireplace, we surrender our humdrum everyday personas as Stamenov, who has cooked with Alain Ducasse, Jean-Louis Palladin, and Masa Koboiashi, sweeps us away. We happen to arrive during truffle season, and for each of the three fungi-focused courses, wine director Mark Jensen picks the perfect dance partner: a crisp white burgundy does the foxtrot with dayboat scallops and black truffles, while an earthy barbaresco swings with a nonpareil white-truffle risotto, our favorite. As I glimpse the next course, I no longer need my bearings—I’m exactly where I want to be.

Bernardus Lodge: 415 Carmel Valley Rd., Carmel Valley, 888-648-9463, bernardus.com, from $415; Garland Ranch Regional Park: mprpd.org/parks/garland.htm