Abbie's Real Life Blog

This is Part One (of four) of a report of my recent trip to California.  I’ll write about the trip in stages because it was a very long trip.  I saw a lot and want to recall as much as possible for my own gratification in these entries.  Eventually I’ll add pictures and links, and it will be like a scrapbook!  (Actually, I may very well end up editing these entries and putting them together with the photos and printing up a photobook as a memento.)

Here’s

a customized Google Map with a general overview of where I was and where I went for each of these entries.  I’ve highlighted the route I took and marked my stops for food and hotel.  I have not even tried to mark all of the photo stops.

I started the journey of many thousands of miles at 5:00am on Monday, April 7, when the Mo-X shuttle picked me up at my house.  This is the shuttle system that runs between Columbia (in the center of the state of Missouri) to the two airports on either side of the state, which Columbians use based on practicality.  For instance, I love flying Midwest Airlines, but they only fly one flight per day direct from Kansas City to San Francisco so I convinced my boss that it was the best bet for this trip instead of American Airlines flights out of St. Louis.  (I hate American Airlines first of all, and then it was lucky we didn’t fly it because they had a bunch of trouble over the end of last week.)  Mo-X deposited me at my terminal at the Kansas City International Airport (which is one of the best airports in the world for nonstop flights, and one of the worst for connections), and Midwest Airlines deposited me at the San Francisco International Airport with little trouble.  I didn’t get to see anything of the city from the air, which was fine.  I knew I’d get my first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge later in the week, and there was plenty of time.  A little suspense would be good.

My rental car was the first stop, and I got a lovely surprise: the Hyundai Elantra was brand-new (only 983 miles on it), had a sunroof (the one thing I don’t have in my car that I miss about my old car), AND an aux-input jack for connecting an iPod into the stereo.  Fantastic!  Of course I had my iPod, and I had decided not to bring additional CDs, even though it’s kind of dangerous to drive around listening to music on headphones.  Glad I didn’t have to do that!  So then, not only did I load up all my luggage in the car (I never travel light, especially with camera equipment), but I spent a few minutes in the rental car garage, unpacking the necessary driving stuff, like the maps and guidebooks that were tucked into random pockets, the tripod that was packed into the bottom of my biggest suitcase, hiking boots and socks for just in case, and all the car chargers and wires for my phone and iPod.  I called Tracy to tell her I was safely landed in California, and I was off!

Well, it wasn’t quite so kinetic.  I had printed up directions to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in nearby San Mateo.  With nearly a week planned in the car, several days of which would be spent in a remote national park location, and since I am a picky veg*n, these were very necessary stops.  I loaded up on trail mix and nuts, Odwalla and Larabars, fruit leather, soy jerky, fruit and carrots, plastic utensils (made of corn resin!), tissues, bottled water and juice boxes, vegan cookies, organic PopTarts, and some ready-made sandwiches that I thought might last a couple of days without being refrigerated.  I obviously didn’t have a cooler with me, though I wished I did.

From there, I really started the trip.  Really really.  I headed south along 101 from San Mateo to Redwood City, and then I left the big highway behind.  I took Route 84 west towards the coastline.  I could see Silicon Valley in the distance, and someday I’d love to do a geek tour through there, but that wasn’t part of this trip.  You just have to make some choices. 

The highway began to climb through the Santa Cruz coastal mountains, and I encountered my first 180-degree twists and turns.  I also discovered what a ‘turnoff’ is, which was a valuable lesson that would be important throughout most of the driving portion of the trip.  In the mountains, on these twisty little roads, there isn’t usually much of a shoulder but once every few hundred feet there will be a little pulloff where you can get most of your car off the road without too much of a bump.  If you’re going slightly slower than the person behind you, whether because you’re hauling something or because you’re just a more cautious driver, it’s good etiquette to pull off and let them pass.  They like it because they can continue their breakneck speeds, and you like it because they no longer have their bumpers up your ass.  I didn’t know this until after the little red truck following me had beeped its horn when I failed to move into one of these turnoffs somewhere after La Honda, California.  I finally realized the issue and did my duty, and then he was gone.

I continued through the mountains and they eventually dwindled into the loveliest foothills, dotted with farms and grazing cattle and covered in short green grass.  They were so beautiful, and after I passed through them, Route 84 ended at Highway 1 near San Gregorio, and there was the Pacific Ocean.  I stopped at San Gregorio State Beach, got out of the car, and almost immediately stepped on a snake.  After I took the first photos of the trip, with the cliffs of the coastline and yellow flowers in the foreground, I went back to the car and nearly stepped on the snake again!  I think he was pretty pissed at me.  Either that, or it wasn’t the same snake.

Highway 1 runs right above the coastline almost continuously between San Gregorio and Santa Cruz, and I followed it, stopping here and there to take photos.  But my main concern for the day was getting south of Monterey to the Big Sur coastal highway, and taking late afternoon and sunset photos there.  I hit a little traffic going through Santa Cruz and around Monterey Bay, but it cleared out by the time I got to Monterey and Carmel.  I didn’t stop in Monterey or Carmel, didn’t see Pebble Beach or do the 17-mile drive on the Monterey peninsula because first of all, they charge you to drive it, and second of all, they’ve copyrighted the Lone Cypress Tree and other landmarks.  Take a photo there, and you can’t sell it.  Not that I’m selling photos, but it is just a good point.  So I just pressed on.  The only traffic on Highway 1 along to Big Sur was clearly other midweek tourists, which was nice because there was a lot of slow driving and pulling off for photos and that kind of thing.

It was gorgeous.  The Santa Lucia mountains rise directly from the Pacific and the road is cut into side of the hill.  A wrong move with the steering wheel, and you plummet hundreds of feet into the ocean.  The waves break over the rocks at the base of the mountains and it would be a dangerous move to get too close in a boat.  But it’s beautiful.  It’s always been a dream of mine to drive down Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles along the coastline over a period of days, and I still want to do that.  But it would take me days to cover all of it, especially for photos.  I think it took me three or four hours to get down to Andrew Molera State Park and back to Monterey, which is not that far.  But I shot a lot of photos, and stood with the wind in my hair while the sun set on the ocean, and that was a pretty nice way to end the first day of the trip.

I backtracked to Watsonville, where my hotel reservation was for the night as it is the easternmost point on Monterey Bay.  I had intended to go back to Santa Cruz and check out one of a couple vegetarian restaurants for dinner, but by the time I got checked into my hotel in Watsonville, I just wasn’t up for it.  I ate some of my grocery foods, downloaded pictures, and burned DVDs in my room, while repacking things and going over the route for the next day’s trip to Yosemite.

I got up the next day, checked out of the Red Roof Inn, and decided to head the few miles west toward Sunset State Beach for the sunrise and a breakfast of grocery store foods.  Then I turned around and went back the way I came, and passed through Watsonville and on via Route 152.  Watsonville is home to Driscoll strawberries and other big agriculture companies, and I passed many fields of crops and workers.  I went through the Hecker Pass in the Santa Cruz mountains, came out into Gilroy, California, and then started on the Pacheco Pass Highway through the Diablo Range.  I could not stop gaping out the windows at the mountains along this road- they seemed like something out of a fantasy movie.  The hills were rounded and scattered with lonely trees that had the most amazing contorted limbs.  Even though the Pacheco Pass is a fairly large highway, I still had to stop and take pictures out the car window.  Only a few times was I brave enough to get out of the car with the 18-wheelers rushing by.  Finally I stopped at the San Luis Reservoir on the eastern end of the range.  It was still beautiful even though the sun was getting too high to be very pretty.

Through Los Banos on the other side of the Diablo Range, and I entered the San Joaquin Valley, which runs north to south through a huge portion of California and is home to a lot of the nation’s food production.  I was pretty interested to see how many of the roadside signs were in Spanish as well as English, or even just in Spanish.

I continued east on Route 152 and eventually turned north to Merced, which is a gateway community for the Yosemite National Park.  In the summer, I’m sure that overflow of tourists fills even the hotels in Merced, which is at least two hours from Yosemite Valley.  But Merced is still a San Joaquin Valley town, and home to at least one vegetarian restaurant, New Stars Vegetarian, which is where I went for lunch, and it was pretty good.  I got a recommendation from the server for my order, and I think if I’d ignored his advice, it would have been a better meal.  He suggested a ginger rice dish served in a claypot, while I think the specialty of the house was the fried ‘chicken’.  I would have preferred the fried ‘chicken’.  But it was still good food, with little bits of fake ham in the rice, and it was nice to sit and eat.  I didn’t get another chance for a few more days.

And that’s the end of the first part.  The second part of the story deals with the four days and three nights in Yosemite National Park, and then the third part with the Marin Headlands, and the fourth after I ditched my car and stayed in San Francisco itself.  Look forward to those, coming up soon!