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| For wildlife photos you need a long telephoto lens... |
By motomynd
[Sequel to “Mountain meander around Santa Margarita”]
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| ...or maybe not |
If you read Central Coast Part 2, you know we are not fans of Oxnard. Well, we despise Atascadero, and it seems to despise us right back.
We sit on one of several benches in the park, enjoying the huge, sloshing fountain while we eat a snack.
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| Fountain in Atascadero park |
“I wish Smokie and Spookie were with us,” I tell Anissa. “They would eat that dog.” Smokie and Spookie are our huge Maine Coon cats. Each is a lanky 20 pounds and can stretch 42 inches from front claws to back. For them the Shih Tzu would be an appetizer. If you are going to walk a dog and glare at people, at least get a real dog, will you? And if you are going to wear a jogging suit in public, get in shape.
In Atascadero, we for the first time this trip hear car horns blowing—not at us, but at someone near us who didn’t floor it when the light turned green. And at someone else, who dares to slow traffic while making a completely legal left turn. The fountain and park are quite nice, the rest of Atascadero seems an architectural plan very possibly stolen from Walmart. And it seems populated by people who very well may work at Walmart.
We walk into a small restaurant—everyone stares at us like, well, like we are “High Plains Drifter” sort of people. We are not—we are way too short. We turn, walk out, jump in the car, and get out of town. Fast. Atascadero is at the absolute bottom of our list of likely places to live in California.
North of Atascadero we take a left and head west toward Lockwood and Jolon to drive by several parcels of land for sale. Someone is apparently splitting up a farm that may be half the size of Texas. As we drive out a rough, twisting two-lane road, it occurs to us the property is a long, long way from anything. Just as I’m thinking no one else ever comes all the way out here, several riders on Harley-Davidson motorcycles catch up with us. They blast past like we are barely moving. For the second time this trip I wish I was on my Kawasaki Ninja instead of in a rental car.
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| Harleys...where is my Ninja when I need it? |
As we drive back to the main road we notice movement in a grove of trees on our left. Elk? Smallish ones, but yes, they seem to be elk.
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| Tule elk herd near San Lucas |
Leaving the elk and risking a right turn onto a side road because the road we are on seems to be forever going straight to nowhere, we wind up in an area apparently known as San Lucas. It suits our taste. Not as ideal as the ranchettes near Santa Margarita, but not bad.
After a circuitous drive through what we hoped were roads but may have been someone’s field, we find our way back to Highway 1/101. We have seen more than enough of this area, so instead of heading north to King City, we turn back toward Pismo Beach.
Near Atascadero we take an entertaining and very scenic detour down Route 41 (Morro Road) to Morro Bay. The housing and architecture may be uninspired and unimaginative compared to just about any beach community in the East—much less in California—but the setting is spectacular! Having a view over an ocean harbor is always nice. Having such a view accented by Morro Rock is incredible.
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| Morro Rock accents the scenery of Morro Bay |
Leaving Morro Bay we drive through San Luis Obispo—and we absolutely love it! Historical architecture, bustling downtown, nice scenery, and a sort of hip feel to spice the history—this is the cool sort of California town we want to live near. And it is only a 30-minute drive from the ranchettes near Santa Margarita Lake: a plan is hatching.
We drive past Pismo in search of a local eatery for us—and a fill-up for the car. In nearby Grover Beach we buy gas at a place that also sells booze and I note that my favorite Scotch costs $5 more per bottle here than back home. I will gladly pay that premium to be able to drink it here. At Sister Kitchen, also in Grover Beach, we have a Thai meal that we both agree is the best we have ever had. Better than anything in Washington, DC, San Francisco, LA, NYC. Hands down, the best. We have a great conversation with a guy driving an old Volvo 240 that is almost like a 410,000-mile keepsake I still own. We find out he is originally from North Carolina, works in nuclear power, and is driving the car as a “beater” to save mileage on his big, fancy truck. We tell him he will probably meet nicer people driving the Volvo—he laughs and offers to share his sampler platter with us.
Back at the hotel, watching a full moon rise over palm trees and listening to the waves of the Pacific bounce off the rocky shore, we again feel like we are in Hawaii. We have a drink on the balcony and agree Santa Margarita is our favorite place so far, and our likely future home—unless it really is hot as blazes in summer. There may be a dark horse out there, but it will really have to get up and run to overtake the early leader.
Next Saturday: Pismo to LAX
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Copyright © 2013 by motomynd
| Please comment |
"Having such a view accented by Morro Rock is incredible." And not even a castle or mansion on the rock's top!
ReplyDeleteFor an Easterner used to driving along beachfront roads where one can't see the ocean due to all the factories, malls and houses, it is wondrous to visit a place like California and drive miles of open highway with a clear view of wild and scenic coastline. If Morro Rock was just about anyplace in the East, by now some developer would have packed enough hand-picked board members on a zoning committee to get a condominium project approved.
DeleteOr if on an island off France, some feudal lord would have built a castle or a Holy Roman Prelate a church....
Delete"There is only one tree per 50 acres, but since I’m pondering setting up a training center for mountain bikes (the kind you have to pedal) and dirt bikes (the kind with motors), not having trees to hit is actually preferable." I'm having a really, really hard time trying to picture you happy on property with so few trees. For real?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is because I grew up in the overt greenery of the Southeast, and have spent much time in similar lush landscape in Upstate New York, but there is something about the golden grass and rock outcroppings on the fringe of "Steinbeck country" that greatly appeal to me. And since I had a few trees run out in front of me in my younger days of mountain bike racing and off-road motorcycle riding, I can say there is nothing about that which appeals to me - especially now that I am older and more brittle.
DeleteThat said, just northwest of the San Lucas area I saw something which intrigued me and begs further research. I had always assumed the sparse landscape wrapped in golden grass was a product of the climate, however on a back road of such terrain we suddenly came upon several acres of smallish trees that looked to be less than 20 years old, with a thick carpet of long, green grass growing beneath them. This area was fenced away from the surrounding area of dryish looking grass already turning golden brown the last week of February.
Based on that it seems it might be possible to have the best of both worlds? A few trees to rest under - by choice, not from bouncing off them thanks to too much two-wheel speed - would be a nice touch. Do you, or anyone else following this, happen to know if the lack of trees is a natural situation, or did settlers, farmers and ranchers create an environment that is artificially treeless? And is reclaiming areas by planting and raising trees something that is happening in other places beyond the effort near San Lucas?
I bet William Silveira can shed accurate light on this, and I will forward my email notification of your comment on to him.
DeleteW.S. replied: "I am sure climate has something to do with it. The area around San Lucas tends to be more arid than further north and to the south of Paso Robles. But I'm sure there are other factors--oak tree disease, harvesting of trees for firewood or to make charcoal, and clearing of land to raise grain. This is all speculation. Once 19th century Americans moved onto land, they began to change it. The green grass and small patch of trees indicates to me the presence of water--perhaps a spring?"
DeleteThe fact that the area was fenced tickled an old memory. These were probably young Valley Oaks or Coastal Live Oaks. The former are some of the largest diciduous trees in America - and they are endangered. There are a lot of them, but they are mostly very old. Cattle trample the seedlings into oblivion. The fact that the grass was long and green under the trees begs explanation, but I've observed the same thing in the oak woodlands of the Sierra foothills. The giant oaks are one of the few beautiful things about the Central Valley.
DeleteThanks to all of you for the enlightenment. The trees had the look of the live oaks we have in the Southeast, and I would guess the area with grass covered 10 or more acres on an east-facing slope west of the Salinas River and Route 101. That puts them maybe 30 miles from the coast and less than five miles from San Lucas, so they are in the last bit of elevation before the flat of the valley.
DeleteIn addition to the notable difference they brought to the landscape, a reason my wife and I remembered them is they reminded us of a similar situation we saw in Iceland - where people are trying to bring back forests that were cut off nearly a thousand years ago. In driving around that island we thought the stark landscape was caused by nature - same as we assumed for California - but the few areas where trees have been replanted in Iceland also have a lush growth of grasses and other plants beneath them.
Global warming may be thought of as a mostly modern problem caused by burning fossil fuels, but when one looks at treeless expanses that were once forest, it is difficult to believe all that cutting and burning of trees didn't exert its own impact on the environment.
Wikipedia on tule: "Schoenoplectus acutus (syn. Scirpus acutus, Schoenoplectus lacustris, Scirpus lacustris subsp. acutus), called tule (pron.: /ˈtuːliː/), common tule, hardstem tule, tule rush, hardstem bulrush, or viscid bulrush, is a giant species of sedge in the plant family Cyperaceae, native to freshwater marshes all over North America. The common name derives from the Nāhuatl word tōllin ['toːlːin], and was first applied by the early settlers from New Spain who recognized the marsh plants in the Central Valley of California as similar to those in the marshes around Mexico City."
ReplyDeleteAn early feature of Tulare, where Jim Rix, William Silveira, Tom Lowe, Sharon Stoner, James Knudsen, Morissa Knudsen, Chuck Smythe, and my wife and I went to high school, was Tulare Lake. From Wikipedia: "Tulare Lake, named Laguna de Tache by the Spanish, is a freshwater dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes in southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. Until the late 19th century, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River and the second largest freshwater lake entirely in the United States, based upon surface area. The lake dried up after its tributary rivers were diverted for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses.
"The lake was named for the tule rush (Schoenoplectus acutus) that lined the marshes and sloughs of its shores. The lake was part of a 13,670-square-mile (35,400 km2) partially endorheic basin, at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, where it received water from the Kern, Tule and Kaweah Rivers, as well as from southern distributaries of the Kings. It was separated from the rest of the San Joaquin Valley by tectonic subsidence and alluvial fans extending out from Los Gatos Creek in the Coast Ranges and the Kings River in the Sierra Nevada. Above a threshold elevation of 207 to 210 feet, it overflowed into the San Joaquin River. This happened in 19 of 29 years from 1850 to 1878. No overflows occurred after 1878 due to increasing diversions of tributary waters for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses, and by 1899, the lake was dry except for residual wetlands and occasional floods."
In researching about the tule elk I came upon the sad saga of Tulare Lake. I envy that all of you got to see it before it went dry. Did you enjoy picnicking there, or was is pretty much a place to park the Model A, pull out the accordion, and party? From Tulare Lake to the near extirpation of the California condor, to the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, California has a surprising history of man-made environmental disasters - considering its role as a leader in green circles today.
DeleteAbout this tule pronounciation situation: How did you actually say it where you grew up? Tool? Tool-ee? Too-lee? Tool-i? Two-lie? We tried to ask the tule elk, but they weren't helpful. Neither were the Californians - some gave us various pronunciations, most said "you must mean deer, there aren't any elk around here."
None of us got to see the lake, so no envy there.
DeleteMuch of the story of environmental depredation in California is about the diversion of water to the lawns of L.A. and the agricultural crops of the state's thereafter fertile valleys.
Once several years ago, when I was foolish enough to visit Tulare in the summer, I actually explored the remains of the lake. It was a maze of ponds and swamps, heavily cut up by dikes and irrigation canals, but still rich in bird life. It was 110 in the shade, and made me me wonder again how I survived my childhood. Public swimming pools, I think.
DeleteJohn Muir wrote a wonderful book, full of photographs, about the pioneering days in the Central Valley. He spoke of the first farmers ploughing and planting thousands of acres of virgin grassland at a time. He also mentioned gunmen in the Sacramento Delta shooting thousands of birds a day, just because they could. The birds are much diminished now, victims of such slaughter, and of irrigation diversions for rice paddies, and of selenium poisoning from the irrigation. Man-made environmental disasters, indeed.
Chuck, your post pushed me to do some research about Tulare Lake, and here is a link to an intriguing piece from the LA Times in 1997 - http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-13/news/mn-28291_1_tulare-lake. (Sorry, but I'm not sure how to set it active, so you may have to highlight and click.)
DeleteThe article explains that those ponds and swamps you explored are at times flooded beyond the stringent control of even the Boswell company - reportedly the world's largest privately owned farm. In the 1997 account, Tulare Lake reclaimed 90 square miles of its former expanse, so maybe there is the possibility it will again be the largest U.S. freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. People like to believe they have dominion over nature, but if Lake Tulare could catch the West Coast equivalent of Hurricane Sandy, followed by heavy winter snows in the mountains that feed it, the landscape might change in a hurry.
It happened in 1956 (I think). I have lively childhood memories of driving around the flooded streets of Visalia in my cousin's Model A. The lake reclaimed a good fraction of Tulare County that time.
DeleteThanks for the link. That's entertainment!
For more about all this:
Cadillac Desert - Reisner. A history of water development in the west, including a great deal about Tulare Lake, and about the Owens Valley (the subject of Chinatown).
Garden of the Sun - Smith. As far as I can tell, the only history of the San Joaquin ever written.
Hmm, I think I read "Cadillac Desert." I remember about the Owens Valley, but not about Tulare Lake. I'll take another look at the book. (Another listen, actually.)
DeleteChuck, is this you at Visalia? http://www.kustomrama.com/images/2/26/Orvel-reichert-a-v8-ford-1950.jpg
DeleteYou guys win: I will either read or listen to the book, and will set aside two hours to finally watch Chinatown - now that I know there is an educational aspect.
Nope, that Model A is a big touring car, lovingly restored. And still extant!
DeleteThe most interesting things I learned about the Owens Valley caper from Reisner:
- The thing was mostly engineered by the Chandlers (of LA Times fame).
- Los Angeles didn't need the water at the time. It was, instead, used to turn the San Fernando Valley from farmland into a sea of rooftops. To the great profit of the Chandlers and their accomplices.
Chuck, a restored Model A? Seriously? Dare I ask what it would cost to have it available as a photo prop on my next trip west?
DeleteHopefully the denizens of the "valley of angels" remember their history, so they aren't condemned to repeat it.
It belongs to my cousin Jerry, the climate change denier. He lives in Los Angeles somewhere; I could find out just where if you're serious. He's relatively rich, so you could probably do it for free. I'd make sure it's really restored. We didn't talk about it at length.
DeleteNow that I have seen most of the southern part of the state, I have to wonder how much of that water is used for agriculture, and how much for lawns. It seems idolatry of the "green desert" in the suburbs may be the black eye of Cali's otherwise notable efforts to save the environment.
ReplyDeleteAbout tule: seriously, since you and your friends grew up there, how do you pronounce it correctly?
Ah, I meant to include a paragraph about how I pronounce "tule"; I pronounce it "too-lee," with equal stress on both syllables (or no particular stress on either), except that "too" lasts a bit longer than "lee."
DeleteAnd not only do I pronounce it that way, but that seems to be the official, correct pronunciation. From Merrian-Webster: "tu·le noun \ˈtü-lē\" (which includes a link to hear it pronounced, although I'm not sure it'll work from here; click it and listen to see).
By the way, if you've never seen Roman Polanski's film, Chinatown (1974, with Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston), you might want to see it now. As IMDb's entry says, "it has something to do with water."
DeleteAnd the link to hear pronunciation does work! So cool; I've never included such a link before, anywhere, either in a regular post or in a comment.
DeleteA whole lot is used for agriculture. The Central Valley is one of the richest stretches of irrigated farmland in the world. Los Angeles covets their water for bluegrass, but as far as I know has had to settle mostly for destroying the Owens Valley and sucking down a big fraction of the Colorado.
DeleteAmazing that even in allegedly environmentally aware California, people are so addicted to their "green desert" they will do immense ecological damage to get their fix.
DeleteA funny story about the Tule Elk. They moved a hard into Lake County also--very large when I left. Across from my liquor was the Firehouse. All good customers. They had come back from a fire and I brought them a case of beer(priming the pump). As we stood outside shooting the bull and drinking a cold one. Two guys from LA, who had come up to hunt deer, stopped to ask where the Game Warden office could be found. They had shot a big deer and wanted to turn in their tag.
ReplyDeleteWe all had to take a look at the deer---don't ask me why, it's one those non-explainable things men do. In the back of their brand new pick-up truck was a full grown Tule Elk, which they believed to be a deer. The Game Warden pulled up about that time. They lost their truck, guns, a fine of $5000.00 ea. and 3 months in jail. I'll never forget the look on their faces when we told them it was not a deer.
Konotahe, sorry for the elk being killed, but that is indeed a very funny story. I am reminded of an archer from New York who went west to hunt elk and black bear with a bow. He spotted what he thought were three record-book "cinnamon-phase" black bears and began a stalk. He quickly discovered that trying to sneak up on a mother grizzly and her two nearly full-grown cubs was not the best plan. In this story no animals were harmed, and the hunter eventually got out of the hospital.
DeleteIt's good that there can be an allegedly funny story involved with all this....
DeleteAs a former hunter I can relate to the grim humor that arises from so many "nimrods" going afield with little knowledge of what they are doing. In lighter cases they do indeed mistake elk for really, really big deer, and stalk grizzly bears armed with only a bow. In the worst case scenario they shoot each other: my grandfather was killed because someone thought he was a deer, and I once met a professional guide who actually admitted he shot someone because he thought they were a turkey. The fact that more people aren't killed while hunting is testimony to the power of really bad shooting.
DeleteI have one more. It too took place in Cali, strange isn't it. I was in the Army stationed at Fort Ord, but we were playing war games down by King City. The government owns thousands of acres around that area. There is or was a store and bar on the property. A lot of deer(small)roam everywhere; we hit at least three. Anyway, we are having a cold beer at the store, when a guy comes bragging about the big buck he shot. You know how it is we had to go see the deer. The man opened the truck of his car, with about five of us standing behind him. The next thing we knew a monster came flying out of the back of that car. As the deer landed on the guy, putting him on the ground, and beating the hell out of him. We ran for our lives. The last anyone saw of the deer, was a white tail going the hill. I'm sure Moto, being an ex-hunter you know what the guy forgot to do.
ReplyDeleteYour story reminds me of a classic. It is with some trepidation I suggest this search criteria on a PG website such as this, but try "deer attack 911" or "deer in Cadillac." If you hit the right link you can actually listen to the original 911 call.
ReplyDeleteFor a follow-up, search "deer beats up fat guy YouTube."
If deer had thumbs, hunters would really be in trouble...
Motomynd, I was going to use your "deer attack" comment as a fish, but after listening to the 911 call (and reading its transcript) at http://www.hark.com/clips/vfpktbmdpj-deer-attack-911-call, I decided to go with your PG instinct.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNice try, Konotahe, but the blog already emailed me your comment, so go ahead and email me the joke. Based on the topic, you probably better not post it, or Blogger may douse Moristotle with hemlock tea.
ReplyDeleteSometimes things sound better in your head, than on paper.
ReplyDeleteI did go to the site, I think I remember hearing it before and I believe that is where the one I was going to tell about came from. It was along the same line. They used to play these tapes on Rock 103 in Memphis. Not sure how they got away with it, but they did.