Road Trip v.2 (Part 5): Big Sur and the California Coast

"Door to Nowhere"

The next morning we set sail for our excessively long drive from San Francisco down to Laguna Niguel, south of L.A., to Kim's house, in order for her to do a luggage swap and for me to do some laundry. There were some stops along the way--some planned, some unplanned. First, we hit up the early morning tour of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. The house is a winding, nonsensical labyrinth designed by a crazy old rich dame named Sarah Winchester (wife and widow of the Winchester gun dude) to appease spirits that were telling her to start building a house and never stop building it. She had no idea what she was doing, but she had tons of money. So nobody called her out for continuing to design and build onto an already giant house. Everyone involved was either scared of her, her money, or the spirits. Imagine doors that open to the wall and stairwells that double back on themselves. That's pretty much it. Other than our painfully annoying teenage tour guide who had memorized an even more painfully annoying script, the house was pretty cool to explore and I'm sure it's haunted as all get-out.

We headed down the 101 to Highway 1 along the coast through Big Sur. We passed through Monterey and its lovely industrial farmland before approaching amazing coastal and cliff views. Kim drove this leg of the trip, so I mostly just hung out of the window, taking pictures and screaming "woah" as we turned the bend on each S-curve in the road.

As close as we could get to the
Hearst castle.

At the south end of Highway 1, we approached the Hearst castle, which we hoped to tour. We were running a bit behind schedule, but thought we shouldn't pass up the opportunity to tour the painfully gaudy "castle" of a crazy, ego-maniacal magnate. As a former journalism major, you would think I would approach the dwelling of a newspaper giant with some intellectual awe. Really, I think Hearst was kind of a tool and I just like gawking at big houses. The "castle"--seriously what jerk builds a giant house in California and has the balls to make it sound like a royal palace--was perched on top of a huge hill that you could only approach via a scheduled bus and guided tour. We had no choice in the matter of whether we would take the tour and get further behind schedule. The tours for the day were sold out. Oh well, "next time," I said, which would become a common refrain on the trip. There were a lot of "next times." I have no idea how I'm going to find enough free time (i.e. unemployment) for the number of "next times" I scheduled each time I didn't have the chance to do something interesting. Outside of the visitors center, we refueled ourselves with the cheese we had bought in Oregon that was lasting a shockingly long time...the remaining few pieces of sausage were showing signs of distress.

More Big Sur beauty

Pismo Beach

As we continued south, we approached a sign for sand dunes at Pismo Beach. Being newly self-appointed "#1 Fans of Sand Dunes," we chose to make a quick stop to play on some dunes. I don't know much about Pismo Beach. I believe it is a geriatric-heavy population. Or maybe it just sounds like a place I heard mentioned a lot on Golden Girls. In any event, their sand dunes are lovely.

Enjoying the Santa Barbara harbor

Our night more or less ended with dinner in Santa Barbara at Brophy Brothers on the water. It was dark, so we couldn't take in much of a view, but the lights on the harbor were pleasant. The food was pretty awesome; great clam chowder and fantastic garlic breaded clams. I hate to admit the food was good because of the unpleasant people at the bar downstairs where we had to order to avoid a two hour wait in the main room upstairs. I discovered later that we could have eaten standing on the outdoor balcony at the bar window upstairs. To compensate for my godawful bloody mary, which I had left untouched downstairs, we enjoyed the friendlier upstairs bar area with an after-dinner drink. Then, we trolled up and down State Street, the main street in Santa Barbara. Kim lives in Orange County, so she had already seen much of the day's stops (except Pismo Beach). So to indulge me, she drove the whole day so that I could hang out the window taking pictures (which I also did on State Street) and admire the scenery of Big Sur and the cuteness of Santa Barbara.

While I watched Blade Trinity on her Ipod, Kim drove the remaining few hours to her house in Laguna Niguel. We were up late doing laundry and gathering ourselves after a week and a half of living out of my car. We didn't get quite the rest we probably needed for our big day of adventures in LA the next day...though I suppose that could be said of any night on the trip. So many adventures.