We’re coming to the home stretch: staying with my cousin Lucas in LA tonight; then back off the coast for one last night of camping at Joshua Tree; finally, rounding out Saturday and Sunday at my uncle’s in San Diego. And Monday, we fly back to reality in PA (a reality where Sarah has to get up 3 hours earlier than she’s now accustomed – luckily, I have until the start of school to adjust).
After leaving Yosemite Tuesday, we had been on the road for hours and had practically made it to the coast when it occurred to us that we didn’t really know where the hell we were camping. So around 7:00 we asked Cate Blanchett for some help locating a nearby Starbucks, a task she is now pretty used to. (At any given point, assuming we’re anywhere close to some sort of human civilization, there’s a usually a Starbucks within about 0.2 miles anyway.) Harnessing the power of free wi-fi from the parking lot, we then spent a few frantic minutes (more like a half hour) looking for campgrounds in the area. We were disheartened to find that there were a lot of RV parks that sounded suspiciously similar to the one we barely avoided resorting to outside of Portland last week (not the most pleasant scene, if you recall). As we made some phone calls, our choices became fewer and fewer and also moved farther and farther away from our present location. At the last moment, however, I spotted a park on the map that had previously evaded my notice: the Monterey Veterans Memorial State Park, which not only had available campsites, but – hooray! – showers as well. As an added bonus, the park was located about two miles away. So we found the site, picked a flat spot under some gnarled trees, and set up our tent (which by this point, we’ve got down to about 10 minutes). We then treated ourselves to sushi in town and retired back to our tent to read in bed for about two minutes before settling in for a cozy slumber.
Yesterday morning, we drove a few miles south to Point Lobos, a state reserve that had been recommended to Sarah by a regular customer at Healthy Alternatives (Thanks Mrs. Perambo!) It’s a basically a rocky outcrop of granite layered with sedimentary conglomerate, which has been eroded into a series of coves, where seals and other marine mammals come to bask in the sun. Although this was actually our first cloudy day on the entire trip, the place was beautiful, and we did spot some seals and a sea otter doing the backstroke, attempting to break his way into some shelled mollusk.
Point Lobos is also famous as a former whaling site and for its grove of Monterey Cyprus:
We spotted some other wildlife as well, including a couple fawns, who allowed us to approach quite close until the mother doe stepped out of the brush and eyed us threateningly, wordlessly conveying her will to kick our faces in if we took a few more steps. One of the last creatures we saw was a critter who was hanging out in the parking lot with the park visitors. Somewhere along the line, he’d figured out that tourists pose no threat and that approaching the humans here was more likely to get him fed that killed. That realization had turned him into the fattest squirrel I’ve ever seen:
…enough so that it took Sarah and I a couple of moments to verify that it was in fact a squirrel and not some sort of puff-tailed gopher.
Taking our leave from Point Lobos in the early afternoon, we headed down the Pacific Coast Highway. We had been going for about ten miles when the gas light came on, at which point Cate Blanchett informed us that the nearest gas station was the one I had passed coming out of Point Lobos. Taking a hint from our earlier gasoline-shortage experience, we turned ourselves around and addressed the situation, figuring the fossil fuel gods might not treat us as favorably the second time around.
We retraced our steps on Route 1 through Big Sur, which is basically a 20-mile stretch of treacherous, rocky coastline that zigs and zags enough to add more like 50 or so miles to the odometer. This meandering path seemed like an apt metaphor for our entire journey so far, but after an hour of fluctuating between 20 and 40 mph, we were starting to get antsy to make some real progress. Just about that time, the road pushed inland enough to straighten out to a 55 speed limit, and the clouds gave way to blue skies once again.
By 7:30, we had made it to Santa Barbara, where we were treated to grilled chicken and fresh, home-made pasta by recent Cambridge doctoral graduates, Lee Bassett and his wife Danni. We had a lovely evening and we were able to catch up on such topics as Jon Krakauer books, “biodynamic” wine, Penn State, and of course, quantum physics, Lee’s current topic of research. Great thanks to the Bassetts for their generous hospitality in sharing their digs for the night. Hopefully, next time we’ll have time to visit for more than one day.
We next came into Santa Barbara proper to walk around and get some food. It’s a really cute town with that Mediterranean style classic to southern California look: stucco facades with ceramic tile roofs.
The city was established as a Spanish colony in 1782, and some of the colonial buildings still survive, like this one which has since been cut in half by the street:
According to Lee, much of the city in several major wildfires in the 1900s, but was then rebuilt over the years to recreate the city as it had stood prior to the fires. The result is a mix of old and new: an old-looking city that is oddly modern and very clean. It is also filled to the brim with places to buy stuff – a lot of stuff. I was very proud of Sarah for managing to resist an Urban Outfitters, Free People, and Anthropologie, all within a couple blocks of each other. She was, however, almost taken in by another more subtle commercial enterprise:
I managed to pry her away from the Church of Scientology just in the nick of time! I could just feel the presence of her thetan as she was drawn into the highly scientific world of Dianetics. Another couple seconds and Katie Holmes would have been asking for donations to the L. Ron Hubbard estate while Tom Cruise chased after her with an E-meter to give her a good audit.
We got coffee and continued walking for a while, checking out the scene. It was quite a nice strip, but seemed a little overkill with the shopping. There were a million restaurants, and most of them looked pretty decent. We picked an Indian joint, and each got a really nice tandoori lunch platter with fresh-made naan bread. Seriously good.
Here’s one place that, in our book, wins the award for worst name ever for a sushi restaurant:
I suppose, perhaps the Japanese owner didn’t understand the English meaning of the word “fishy”. Is it just me, or does it translate roughly to one of the following: “Something Smells Nasty,” or slightly less assaulting on the sense, “Something’s Not Quite Right”? Either way…
We’re almost to Malibu now, coming through Topanga Canyon. Tonight, LA… then off to the desert.
-Josh
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