Walkabout

Currently on a walkabout ... will report back to the hive when we return on Saturday. It was a wonderful time. The walkabout turned out to be primarily along the coast from home base to San Luis and back, temps in the 70s and away from the near triple-digits inland.

In Cambria we met Jim the surfer dude turned father and husband turned chiropractor turned world traveler turned innkeeper. He entertained us with great stories of traveling in Turkey for rugs and of his oldest son who bought a round-the-world ticket after he graduated from UC Santa Barbara and met the girl of his dreams in Australia and settled there with a computer engineering firm. We lived in a room in this 19th century inn overlooking a little street of shops and restaurants and had a Cinderella Lladro on a sitting room table. We dined at the Sea Chest, in a dark and business-card-stapled low ceiling of a restaurant just steps from the beach that was bursting with locals and fresh catch items on the menu.

Hearst Castle was a great stop and we met a couple from Scotland who were melting in the mountaintop summer heat. We walked on murano glass tiles inlaid with 24 carat gold that encased the covered swimming pool, and walked through beautiful libraries, kitchens and guest rooms with marble bathrooms that could have been built in the last 10 years instead of almost a century ago.

San Luis Obispo was a great stop and dinner with friends was long and leisurely after a nice stop in Harmony (population 18) and their broad and intricate pottery shop.

Big Sur was breathtaking with Steve & Barb and we knocked around in the moderate temperatures before heading up the coastal highway to Carmel and Pacific Grove and Monterey ~ and those beautiful, incredibly expensive shops to learn more about art and imagine a life full of money. Sealions littered the rocks and we smelled the beauty of life along multi-million dollar homes. We drove by Cannery Row and The Green Gables Inn and all of those familiar places of the past.

Santa Cruz was as far removed from the Monterey peninsula as possible. Santa Cruz is wholly itself, unapologetic and earthy and locked in the 60s. We enjoyed a robust lunch at Phil's fish market in Moss Landing with over 100 menu items, and one of the few places where the owner beat out the great Bobby Flay during a Throwdown. Phil's mother sat nearby at a napkin table, keeping busy, visiting with the waiters and snacking on salad and a bowl of famous clam chowder, obviously enjoying her boy's success.

Is there anywhere better than the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with its faded carnival games, foot long hotdogs, striped awnings and rides? We rode the Giant Dipper which drew us as kids and still as adults, with the clunk clunk clunk of the gears as the ride ratchets up the first hill of one of the oldest and last wooden roller coasters in the US. It suspends us there for just a moment as we try to decide if our hands should be up or down, and hurls the cars down and around and through a 2 minute thrill. It is exactly the same as when we were kids and when our folks were kids, and everyone remembers the last big dip just before the ride ends.

How many places can you say that about? Except for the cost: it was 50 cents then and $5 now, except during midweek when unlimited ride summer wristbands are $10.95. The Hurricane is still there, and the bumper cars, and the merry go round with the metal rings to toss in the clown's mouth for its eyes to light up for good luck.

Evening fell and we dug our feet in the sand with the boardwalk behind us, listening to the 80s band The Tubes and their goofy songs and outlandish costumes, none of us kids anymore but letting the nostalgia make it wonderful and timeless. We watched a little bitty girl at the bowling alley with her grandpa, with bumper guards and a big dish of vanilla ice cream, helping her bowl an 87.

There was no rush home, nowhere to be, and so we had nice long visits with family before taking to the empty road against traffic on a holiday weekend. The best part is the last few miles when our little nest is waiting and our very own bed, don't you think?