At San Luis Obispo we said goodbye to the freeway and took the narrow coastal ribbon. Hearst Castle looked down from its distant hilltop as we cruised on by. I've never gone there and don't care if I ever do. Just another grasping mogul's overbuilt mansion turned into a state park because no one else could take it over. The West is filled with such places. Bill Gates' home will become one of those someday too.
By vehicle-mile Highway 1 must be a right expensive piece of road. The ever shifting coast pitches parts of it into the sea regularly. Sometimes cars go with it. Earth-moving equipment is parked here and there, permanently stored near their only job site. It is not heavily traveled -- not anyway on a Wednesday afternoon in February. So all that labor money to keep it open is really spent more for aesthetics than economics.
It is a work of art -- the coast, the road, the bridges. The bridges were mostly designed in the 1930s when the road was built. Prior, much of the coast was pretty much inaccessible. Engineers were paid to display their art in those days. The bridges are justly famous.
The mountains loom, the cows low, the mist rises, the sun sinks into the peaceful Pacific as the road winds along. No one who hasn't driven it quite knows what they've missed. It also has curious residents strung along: Driveways and gates here and there, sometimes odd fences, all else but part of an occasional rooftop obscured by the trees and plunging terrain. It is its own community, I imagine, a small town a hundred miles long and fifty yards wide, subject to fierce storms and winter solitude and slow summertime lines of oversized RVs.
Hard to take decent pictures when you're driving and the light is failing and the road resembles a goat track. But this straight and easy stretch gave the chance to capture sea and snow and open road. Yes, snow on the seaside mountaintops.
Just as the sun hit the edge of the world we hit a vista point famous for giving a view of the Big Creek Bridge.
It's here if you're curious and like to zoom around on maps awhile ...
9 comments:
Big Sur has always been an important touchstone in my world.Love it down there.
You solo drive a lot, huh?
No, this was with my 17 yr old. He plugged his iPod into the stereo and jammed the classics. It was pretty epic. (Classics = Beethoven, Pachelbel, etc)
No, no, no. You miss the whole point of Hearst Castle. It's the history, the going back to a different time and imagining what it was like.
It's a beautiful, rich, as in texture not money, kind of place. I seriously doubt Bill Gates' place will compare. I found it well worth the price of a tour (though that was 18 years ago). But then, I love touring old homes, big and small. I remember visiting a place in Detroit that showcased historical small town living. I'm pretty sure it was a replica, but it was supposed to be true to historical facts. Can't remember the name of the place. But what stands out in my mind is the house where the teacher lived. It was a one bedroom tiny little place where you had to walk single file to get around in it. I absolutely fell in love with it. I could imagine myself living quite comfortably there on my own. That was over 3 decades ago.
Hey, I want a personalized URL icon like you and gekko have. How do you do that? I remember reading about it a long time ago, but now I can't even remember what you call them, so I can't look it up.
favicon
You can probly look it up and learn how to do it better than I can explain here. But the blogger code for it is something like
[link href=full_url_of_image.ico' rel='shortcut icon']
[/link]
Changed your e-mail addy?
Thanks!
Regarding Hearst Castle, Dude, you really are getting ornery in your dotage. WR was a fascinating character, and the story of that place is interesting. For someone with as deep an interest in CA history as you, I'm shocked, SHOCKED! I tell you! at the gnarly attitude toward Hearst Castle. Go there sometime. It's cool. Very cool.
Having said all that, mostly just to be contrary, I think Highway 1 from Cambria to Carmel is the greatest highway in the world. I used to drive it alone a lot back in the dark years. I would stay at the Piedras Blancas Motor Inn, something right out of a Cain or Chandler novel, then drive north, stopping at the South Coast Inn in Lucia for pea soup and apple pie. With any luck the fog would be in the first part of the trip, then the sun would break through by the time I'd reached Esalen. I'd pull out and head down to a beach and sit and stare for an hour or two. I always felt oddly better, despite the dark moodiness of those times.
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