Adventure #25 - Day Two - Carmel to Atascadero, CA

Adventure #25 - Road Trip to LA and Martin Wheeler Systema Seminar
Planned By - Both Heather and Marty

DAY TWO - From Carmel to Atascadero, CA

Description:  Wherein Heather and Marty continue their VERY LONG road trip to LA (it takes 6 hours to drive LA, they are going to do it in 5 days!  Leaving their tiny RV AirBnB stop and heading down the long winding SR-1, stopping by to eat at Coast Gallery,  taking a walk to see McWay Falls/Cove, stopping to see elephant seals, sort of looking at Hearst Castle and arriving in Atascadero for their next little AirBnB experience.

(Marty's Report):

Another late-ish rising, around 10a, and I rousted Heather and started the packing process, and then cleaning our trailer-of-the-night.  We said goodbye to the lamas in the only language they understood (from the feed bag), and to the kittens (although they were in the neighbors yard), and texted Martin thank you, heading down the road.  We found a local café for tea and a mocha, then started down Highway 1, with Heather up for this leg of driving.  We passed a couple markers of our history with Marc Gafni, from a time where (we think) we attended a board meeting of the Center for World Spirituality (as it was called then), and another where we were touring an eating disorder clinic created by Marc’s girlfriend, called Monarch Grove (I can’t remember her name).  Then down into Big Sur, which seemed particularly overrun by wealthy and foreign travelers.  We stopped for lunch at Coast Gallery, which I seemed to have been at before, eating out on the café terrace.  The counter guy was wearing a Parisian chef’s jacket, which struck me as fairly pretentious for a place that trucked overly-priced half-assed art and sculpture, and was built out of old water tanks, and served slightly upscale café food.  (Interesting guy, too, big body, blustery, with a kind of “jowl-liness” of the soul.)

The people that accumulated as we ate were those wine culture characters that are tolerable in the singular, but in the excessively plural stop being funny.  They became that plural, and as I began feeling like I’d gotten too many small gulps of greasy sea water, and they added up, my skin wanted to crawl off towards the car, carrying me with it.  Heather tried to distract me by asking about the inner lives of migrating whales, but my Buddhist calm had eroded.  We soon left.



We blew past Eselan and blew it a psychic kiss—I hadn’t been there since the EMDR training years ago—and continued on down the road, traveling further south than I’d ever been on Highway 1.

Heather points out the way.

We went to McWay Waterfall, at Julius Pfiefer State Park, one of our desired stopping points.  It was packed with travelers, so we parked on the highway and walked in to the cove, a gorgeous example of California coastline, and then checked out the remains of the house that was owned by wealthy early 20th century folk, who had deeded the land to the State to create the park.

People.  Lots of people.  Lots of foreign travelers.  At one point I got a deja vu experience of being in India.  There’s something painful about humans trying to find something meaningful out of the bold-face tourist attractions, with their density of exposure, but their paucity of symbology.  A trickle of water falling off a cliff onto a beach, and the foundations and steps of a rich person’s house, and none of us who had to stop there know what it really means, or maybe more deeply, are aware of its semiotic thinness and go through this ritual to avoid the truth of the emptiness of the place and phenomenon.  Meaning as created by herd movement, rather than by substance of experience.

Ok, so that done, we headed down the road, having our first and cross fingers only fight on the trip.  In a relationship somewhat aged like ours, all the dirt is scooped away from the core of metal, such that when we hit something, it’s clear what it is, and that it’s old, and that it’s not going to move by bashing it hard with our heads.  Like a couple of balloons stoked upwards by a quickly heating fire, we ascended, and then, the result of seven years of psychotherapy and 15 years of steeping in each other, were able to draw in some cool air and come back to homeostasis.  Heather cried out some of the underlying energy, the result of her being more sensitive than she knows what to do with, and then we were back on the road.  Being safety conscious, we pulled off the road at the emergence of tears.

Randomly, a place along the windy coast, where were stopped to fortify with coffee and tea, and watch a band playing.


 

"Puppy" pile!

Tiny battle.

On from there, we stumbled upon an elephant seal haul-out, Piedras Blancas, where hundreds of the floppy beach worms lazed about, occasionally snuggling or mock-fighting each other, but mostly just scratching and sleeping.  It’s a beautiful stretch of coast there, flattening out and drying after the windy and hilly Big Sur area.  Frankly, I’m more attracted to this area than the Magestic Big Sur… wow, I’m having a hard time not being snarky.  It’s the overly saturated quality that makes my soul cringe and look for the exit, especially when it’s of the tourist version.  I feel suffocated easily, apparently, and this area (a few miles north of Cambria) has an openness and unpretentiousness in its unobstructed ocean and pastureland that my soul, like a prairie dog, can come out into.

Then a little further on is San Simeon, home of Hearst Castle, built by the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst in the first half of the 20th century.  He was the son of George Hearst, the mining magnate that David Milch’s “Deadwood” savaged.  It sits up on the hill line, while the visitor center is down on the plane, just off the highway.  It was too late to go on a tour, but neither of us was much interested.  We mused a bit, walking through the huge building, on the confused purpose of the place.  What was being memorialized?   Or preserved?  Or lauded?  Or meant?



Was it about an architectural production by a famed California architect (Julia Morgan)?  Or a symbol of crass wealth?  Or a deification of a symbol of capitalism's successes and rewards?  Or a protection of a part of California history?  Or a monument kept alive because it, for liminal, watery reasons, draws millions of visitors a year?  Like McWay Falls, it’s a place of confused meanings, and odd discordant semiotics, like a modern atonal piece of music.  From a fat man with a melancholy tinted strength, I bought a chocolate muffin, tea, and for Heather a pretzel, and fortified, we continued.

Morro Bay, with its impressive lump of rock just offshore, seemed a quiet and open little town.  Four young surfers ran across the road in front of us, while we stopped at a light, blond young gods with their worlds filled with waves and challenge, like lives in beautiful, ocean-themed snow globes.

Chai, the cat.

The road from there to Atascadero took maybe 25 minutes, to get to our next AirBnB, another little trailer on private property.  Kim has just started hosting guests, feeling it out, but seemed to like us and was warm and welcoming in showing us the place and her other camper.  We met and fell for Chai, the cat that her daughter tried to take with her when they moved out a while back, and who ran across the freeway to get back here.  (He’s on my lap right now as I write and reminds me that, as rich as my life is, with work, wife and birds, he reminds me that companion mammals are one of the great deficits in my life.)

We went down the road about 15 minutes to San Luis Obispo, the home of California Polytechnic, and had dinner at a natural foods restaurant on the main drag.  The place has a slightly edgy feel to it, at least as the night got later, and after the meal we went to a candy story so Heather could load up on pop rocks, fortifying her for our stay at Peets Coffee, where we sat for a few hours and wrote these entries.  Our fellow patrons were introverts like us, except for a young collegiate man with a couple the age of his parents, but seemingly friends of.  He seemed like one of those self-assured young men, somehow secure in himself and his place in the world without being either arrogant or neurotic.  It’s always very strange to encounter the securely attached.

Now we’re back at the trailer, sitting for an hour around the fire that Heather is pilfering unsecured energy resources (i.e., the bark and leaves from the driveway) to feed the burning of a huge chunk of wood.  We decided on and were granted stay at an RV in Ventura, on a flower farm, for tomorrow and Monday, and then Tuesday we’ll take the boat out to Catalina Island.


(Heather’s Report):

Sleeping in!  But we got up in time to “check-out”, cleaning up the place carefully (it’s one of my things, leaving our AirBnB places spotless; I mean they are reviewing us as well!!).  We got coffee and tea on Carmel Valley Road and headed out again onto Highway 1.  My turn to drive this leg.  And whew, I got the serious twisty bits.  But I am a hardened mountain driver (no joke!) and I took it in stride.  But after almost 6 hours, I was getting a little weary.  Sure we stopped along the way, but still, it’s hard kind of driving.



So where did we stop?  We stopped at a weird little gallery/cafe place called the Coast Gallery in Big Sur.  Apparently made out of old wood water barrels (the really big kind), it is a fine art gallery with a “fancy” cafe.  We had lunch, during which Marty was getting more and more irritable at the “Wine People” which I’m sure he’ll talk about more in his report.  I tried to distract him from his Napa Valley Rage by asking him what he thought whales might be thinking as they move up and down the coastline.  It didn’t work all that well and so I hurried my lunch and off we went.

McWay Falls and Cove

More coastline, more coastline….. it IS beautiful, very iconic.  I couldn’t really look further for whales or other things since I was driving!  Our next stop was McWay Falls/Cove at uhm… a Park with a long name.  I think Marty named it above.  Many peoples going in and out of this little area to view the cove and the little waterfall.  Plus apparently there used to be a cool house with a funicular and one hell of a view at the end of the trail owned by the woman who wanted the park named after her friend.  It's an odd thing, these sorts of historical areas, but I love them in some strange way.  I've always loved "ruins" or historical sites.  It's our history, you know?  One day, I bet there will be ruins and historical sites from my own time that future people, humans or aliens, will look upon and wonder "What was life like here?"  Yar.

Then winding down past Esalen (which we did not stop at although there had been an initial idea to spend a night here but whoof, how pricey!) and past areas of single road passage because the other lane of Highway 1 fell off the cliff.  It must be so super expensive to keep this road maintained.  And yet, they do.  Not THAT much commerce on this road, or even that many people living here, but, well, iconic in its existence, I suppose.  Yar.  We had a brief spat along a plateau (haha!!) and it worked itself out pretty quickly, like many of our fights do these days.  Lords, used to be that we wouldn't talk for hours after that and even not want to be near each other for days!  But... much smoother in our decrepit years.

Napping on the beach.

Yoga Pose:  Upward Seal.

Finally out of the mountains, whew!  I could see the flatness of the highway from way above and just kept wondering if we'd ever get there.  But lo, we did and as we closed in with the ocean again, flying by right next to the beach, I saw a sign for elephant seal viewing but no place to turn, but as we crested a smallish hill, there they were, stretched out along the beach.  I'd never seen elephant seals, only harbor seals in Point Reyes and Bolinas and of course the sea lions at Pier 39 in SF.  But you kinda get to know what a haul out looks like even from far away and sure enough.  Elephant seals are more social than harbor seals (I helped count them for the Point Reyes monitoring program) and tend more touching touching but still less on the spectrum from sea lions who will flop all over each other.  The elephant seals were mostly touching, side by side, a few heads laying over on flippers or the occasional juvenile males "jousting" and posturing at each other.  We learned that at this stage it's not so serious and is more "fun" (or maybe practice!) but later in the season when they return to establish "alpha" maleness and hold beach territory for a harem of females, well, that's when it turns towards a more serious nature of "battle".

Hearst Castle from afar.

  After the "floppy beach worms" as Marty always calls seals, pretty much of any sort, we stopped by Hearst Castle.  It's way high up the hill and as we arrived somewhat late in the day and must buy a tour ticket to take a bus up there, we declined and instead talked about capitalism and the nature of, well, money and having money to build and preserve such a place.

Then in Morro Bay, turning inland to head up to Atascadero, CA for our next AirBnB stop

Our next little home.

with Kim and her little vintage trailers and Chai, the cat for some "Glamping amongst the oaks" (her listing).  Apparently people have been doing the whole "moveable small homes" for a long while.  I kinda thought it was a contemporary or at least somewhat recent phenomenon  but it goes back for a long while!  So this AirBnB hostess had two vintage RVs that she pulls behind a large pick up truck.  I guess we were charmed enough by the last stay that we looked up John's (our Subaru Forester) towing capabilities but he couldn't take anything more than 1000 pounds without brakes and 2300 pounds with a braking system.  And it seems everything is heavier than that.  Or we'd need to get a beefier car.  Which made us sad.  Because we like John and don't want to trade him.  Never mind where we would actually park the thing in San Francisco anyway!!!

After a jaunt out to San Luis Obispo, home of Cal Polytech, and definitely a college town, writing in a cafe for a while, we returned to our newest little RV and made a fire in the provided fire pit.  And I played with the fire, oh yes.  My preciousssss!!!!!