It transpired my Purple Nimbus is just a big tease - who'd have thought - displaying the warning sign the instant I'm at the farthest point from a petrol station. I was running on fumes for the last five miles into Lompoc the next morning, but made it all the same. The gent in the campsite shop had shown me where in town to find petrol. On the way I passed a sign to Buellton - home of the "Hitching Post" as made famous in the film Sideways. I'm finding it difficult to strike a balance between mid-term goals and short-term attractions. Paul Giamatti is one of my favourite actors, and the idea of tasting a glass of wine at the bar where he once portrayed that very art is quite appealing. But at the back of my mind is Yellowstone, a three-day drive from San Francisco if I were to go straight there, and that bypasses two whole states on my list: Oregon and Washington!
I decide that Buellton is close enough to LA that I could swing by at the end of the trip, time permitting. However, I also decide to spend another night at Jalama Beach. The scene in the morning, the fog having cleared, was quite the surprise. I had wound up in a camper site right alongside dunes and a secluded beach, bound by rocky cliffs; a mini-paradise. It would be such a waste to have driven there in the dark and fog, slept and then driven away again. So I spent the afternoon on the beach reading, writing, snoozing, sun-blocking, and continued north the following day. Next destination: Big Sur.
I think a lot of my choices on this trip are going to be swayed by things which resonate to some extent. I was chatting to a French girl in the Santa Monica hostel about accents and how I can distinguish American/English/Australian accents with some ease, but would struggle with differentiating even a Quebecois French accent from mainland French. She said she had no such trouble, naturellement. Everyone's a bloody comedian. My point was, in the UK we are - subjected is the wrong word - exposed to America so much, that a lot of it, a lot of what can be found here, is already very familiar. Having developed a liking for cinema and a chunk of American music, both contemporary and historically, there are a great many locations across these States that appeal to me, on top of the natural wonders which abound.
Why Big Sur then? Slightly embarrassingly, because of the first album by a band called The Thrills. A surf-tinged pop record, hardly a classic, which referenced the region and left something to resonate within me. I think, possibly, the climax of the Terence Stamp/Peter Fonda film The Limey took place in Big Sur too.
The drive from Lompoc continues on the PCH, winding through fields of beans with teams of workers out in force before, with about an hour to go, it hits the coast proper. This next section of the drive is wondrous. The road is dramatically cut into the sea cliffs, a hundred or more feet above the ocean. The guide books do their best to explain it, but there's nothing like actually being there, taking the bends yourself, as the Pacific stretches away to the horizon below. Condors swoop across the sun, casting wide shadows upon the road, waiting for their next dose of carrion. It is the sort of drive that would see Top Gear presenters implode in fits of vainglory. And, at its' end, you are met by the southern-most edge of one of this part of the world's greatest attractions: forests of giant redwoods.
Obviously I'm immensely privileged to be doing what I'm doing, but a part of me was slightly thankful to have gotten beyond the coastal road. We were stopped on it for about 20mins while workers cleared enough space for one line of traffic to pass - a rock slide had showered the road in boulders leaving a couple of sizeable craters in the tarmac. I can only assume it happened shortly before I got there, as I was only about ten or fifteen cars back in the queue. I'm reminded how close I am to the San Andreas fault. Santa Cruz, not far north from here, was levelled by an earthquake in 1989.
Hmm.
Rather than close on that optimistic note, I'll take this opportunity to point out I'm well-versed in in-vehicle earthquake survival. Stop the car, stay within the car. Unless I'm Margot Kidder, and Gene Hackman is trying to create a new American West Coast.
I'm not Margot Kidder.
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