A tour of California's Central Coast (Part 5)

One last view from the balcony

Pismo to LAX: Wishing we could spend another day...or another lifetime

By motomynd

[Sequel to “Atascadero and beyond”]

outside our room, what seems
to be a domestic rabbit

We begrudgingly leave Pismo Beach on a beautiful, sunny, palm-tree-adorned morning, and drive south toward LA. We drove as close to the coast as possible coming north, and have firmly established we will not be buying acreage near the beach unless we win the lottery, so we are exploring a bit further inland on the way back.
    A waitress at our new favorite Thai restaurant in Grover Beach raved about growing up in Nipomo, and a guy who bought some motorcycle stuff from me online likewise praised Santa Maria. The local temperate micro-climate supposedly softens the weather for both of them, so they are on our list.
    Nipomo is small, has a great view of the mountains, and much new but historically based construction with terra cotta roofs and such. We like all that, but it also seems very agricultural, so we aren’t sure about it.
    Santa Maria has the same population as my hometown in Virginia—100,000—but seems much smaller. We like that, but aren’t great fans of the Walmart and mall look we see from the highway. Let’s wait until next trip and see how hot it is in summer before investing research time.

We head south on Highway 101 then veer southeast on Route 154 toward Los Olivos. The scenery is appealing. The road is winding and lightly trafficked. Yes, we could live just about anywhere along here—let’s come back in summer.
    A friend suggested we detour to Solvang. Even as much as we like Scandinavia, we fairly quickly talked ourselves out of the idea of moving to California to live in a Danish-motif village.

    We instead head for Lake Cachuma and surroundings, hoping for something to rival Santa Margarita and its little lake. We find a much bigger lake, but no town at all, unless you count the great campground.

Lake Cachuma boat landing

They even have yurts—only in California…and Mongolia, I guess. Lake Cachuma appeals so much we back-track a mile or so to eat lunch at the Bradbury Dam overlook.

Lake Cachuma and Bradbury Dam

    Signs tell us a mountain lion—also known as a cougar or panther—has been spotted nearby and gives us a list of warnings and recommended actions should we encounter it. The best approach seems to be to be lucky and not be attacked. Peeling a six-foot, 150-pound cat off of you—or anyone else—seems a tricky and dire business.

How bad can a nice kitty really be?

Leaving Lake Cachuma we drive up a mountain like we haven’t seen anywhere else this trip—or in quite a while back in Virginia or North Carolina—cross a bridge over a chasm that apparently goes on forever, and begin the descent toward Santa Barbara—I write that just like they say it in an airplane because it is fitting. In California they apparently call this 60 mph spiraling drop down a cliff a highway. Back East we would call it an amusement ride and sell tickets. I am used to riding motorcycles well upwards of 100 mph yet here I am almost white-knuckled nervously eyeing the gigantic tour bus looming two vehicles back when I finally get the chance to safely pull off at an overlook.
    Anissa and I grimly note that if one had brake failure at this overlook the next stop on the way to eternity might be the Pacific. We are still rattling on about the steep descent, the lunatics that build roads on cliffs, and so on, when we see movement coming up the other side of the highway. It is someone pedaling a unicycle up the mountain—and it is a woman! She is wearing a wild-looking mask, her long brown hair waves behind her.

This must be California

    Knowing my younger-day penchant for “warrior women” as she calls them, Anissa says “well, are you going to try to catch her and take photos?”

The warrior woman heads up the mountain

I ponder the sprint up the grade, think about the two acceptable photos I snapped as she came by, and decide against it. “Not that I would ever get the chance,” I tell Anissa, “but there is a woman that would make a guy think twice before having a fling with her.” Smiling sweetly, she says, “Don’t worry. You would never get the chance.” Even after 10 years, isn’t being in love wonderful?

When I spotted Foothill Road (Route 192) on the map, I thought it would be the perfect back-country road from which to see the mountain side of Santa Barbara, as opposed to the Highway 1/101 route we took going north. At least I got the mountain part right.

Overlooking Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands

Instead of driving a secluded road we are driving by the back yards, and in some cases the front yards, of high-dollar homes perched in seemingly impossible places. Was there a reality TV show called “Santa Barbara Build Off” or something like that? Our rental car doesn’t have a sunroof, so in many cases I can only see the front gates of these estates—the mansions themselves are way up the mountain. Way up.
    Foothill Road throws a wicked left that I miss, so I have to turn around in front of a gate sporting an array of surveillance cameras. I half expect a laser to vaporize us before we get out of there. In places the road has a 50 mph speed limit, but I am struggling to make 35—and I used to race cars at places like Watkins Glen. At one point we pace a female bicyclist flying down a hill on what looks to be a fat-tire beach cruiser. If she can actually pedal that thing back up this mountain, there is another woman a guy would want to think twice about before having an encounter. It would be easier to keep up if we were in a Porsche—every third car seems to be a Porsche—or preferably something more racy and exotic.
    As we leave the elite communities of Santa Barbara cliff dwellers, we see a group of sport bikers heading the opposite direction, their motorcycles already revving with excitement about the ride that awaits. (Footnote: Back home we see a news report online—“Motorcyclists Killed on Foothill Road”—and we are not surprised.) From there we return to the less populous backwoods—such as California has them—pass through the seemingly cool and upscale little town of Montecito, and drop through the Toro Canyon area. We then drive through the easternmost suburbs of Carpinteria, and head on toward Lake Casitas.

Lake Casitas seemed rugged but appealing

    The Lake Casitas region looks appealing, in a tough sort of way—not unlike Lake Cachuma and Santa Margarita Lake. As we drive through Ojai a bit later, we decide it is very much the sort of cool town we would like to live near. We put checking out its summer weather as third on our list of next-trip priorities.

Ojai definitely makes our list

At this point things unravel a bit. We get lost in Santa Paula—the “Citrus Capital of the World”—take a shortcut on a route called Balcom Canyon Road but could be named mountain-from-hell road—the canyon being the distant place way down there where you will die if you drop off any of the plentiful cliffs—yet manage to find our way around Simi Valley and onto Highway 101 in Thousand Oaks.
    By now Anissa is worrying about when we have to get to the airport and wants to take 101 to Interstate 5 so we can head straight in. Meanwhile I am assessing the burgeoning traffic, thinking of the few miles down through Topanga Canyon, and lobbying hard: “It’s 11 miles, how bad can it be?” She relents, we are briefly on Mulholland Drive, pass under a road sign that says Spielberg, and then we are doing another amusement park ride, this time down through the bohemian realm of Topanga Canyon to Highway 1. After the other routes, this is easy—I again wish I was on a motorcycle.

Full moon over Santa Monica, without a tripod

    Just when it can’t get any better, we see a full moon rising over Santa Monica—and Anissa has to admit I’m a genius for taking this route. Even if the rest had been a disaster, that would make the trip worthwhile.

Famous Route 66 ends
at Santa Monica Pier

    We stop to take photos of the moon over Santa Monica, make a bunch of wrong turns, yet still have time to stop at Santa Monica Pier and take more photos. And buy trinkets for folks back home. We actually get to the rental car return and the airport ahead of schedule. I am indeed a genius, and I finally get Anissa to say so one more time.

Our trip ended here too

The last time I flew red-eyed out of LAX I had already traveled something like 36 hours to get there—from Yemen or Somalia or someplace like that—and I was so exhausted the late-night flight didn’t bother me. My thrashing and dreaming about people with machetes threatening to lop off my head probably kept others wide-eyed and wide awake, but at least I slept through it. This time I am unfortunately wide awake.
    We finally land in Atlanta the next morning—it is 34 degrees and raining: Charming. Every time I return to the Southeast, especially in winter—and in summer—I ask myself the same question: Why?
    We land in Raleigh and discover it is the opposite hell from when we flew back from Iceland. That time we left 60 degrees and sunshine—in June—and landed in thunder storms and 103-degree swelter. This time we left 60 degrees and sunshine and flew back into 38-degree rain. Yes, charming.

Epilogue, or maybe epitaph: Many of you seem to find it difficult to understand why we are so eager to move to California. “It is the worst-run state in the country,” you say. “The taxes are so high. And now even the Lakers suck.”
    Let me attempt to explain: Here we have the Charlotte Bobcats—who just set an NBA record for futility and apparently plan to always suck. And we have the Carolina Panthers. No, you folks in LA don’t have an NFL team, but neither do we—not a real one anyway—yet we are helping pay for one, thanks to our new all-Republican alleged political leadership.
    And as I am writing this on March 25—one month after we had sun and temperatures in the 60s and 70s in California—I have just returned from our house in Virginia, where it was 33 degrees, and there were six inches of snow. At least we only had rain here in North Carolina, and it warmed all the way to 45. Now do you understand?
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Copyright © 2013 by motomynd

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