Down on the West Coast
Four Weeks in California, a Scrapbook
One of the most surefire ways to humble yourself is to travel to a place you’ve never been to. Typically, you don’t even need to go that far. In Western Washington State, drive a couple of hours east, past the Cascade Mountains, and you’ll find yourself in a completely different state - topographically and culturally. Distant views of Mount Rainier and the Puget Sound are exchanged for golden grain fields and apple orchards. The damp Western Red Cedar becomes sparse and resilient varieties of pine become more abundant. Seattle - with its humble teriyaki spots, shiny Amazon spheres, rainbow flags, and expensive coffee - becomes a distant memory as you’re bombarded with Trump flags and Blue Lives Matter stickers. Large parking lots at rest stops are filled with Ford F-150s. Get far enough and you might even see a Confederate flag hanging outside someone’s house and people talking with a cowboy twang (Washington is probably the furthest state possible from the original Confederacy states).
During my last couple of years living on the East Coast, I often felt compelled to write and talk about Washington State - my home state - because so few Easterners have been, or have even paid the state that much mind. Something I like about East Coasters is their boisterous pride in where they’re from - a New Yorker won’t hesitate to tell you all about New York, as will a Bostonian or Philly resident about their respective home cities. East Coasters have quite cohesive identities - tightly bound existences, threaded together with distinct accents, city-specific foods, loud sports team pride, and a history more firmly embedded in America’s founding than many West Coast cities, at least in perception.
On the other side of the coin (she writes gently), East Coasters - particularly New Yorkers - are self-obsessed, in a way that’s undoubtedly endearing and, at times, nauseating for outsiders. In season one of Sex and the City, Miranda briefly dates a man who Carrie dubs “Manhattan guy” - a guy who refuses to leave the isle of Manhattan because he has everything he needs there. Miranda, a Manhattanite herself, finds this to be a fatal flaw. His whole world when compared to the rest of the world exists on the head of a pin - a fingernail clipping. Granted it’s quite an amazing pinhead - New York City is perhaps one of the greatest cities in the world, definitely one of the greatest in the United States. And there’s also, somehow, whole worlds outside of it.
Four weeks ago, I relocated - rather abruptly - from New York City to San Francisco. A transition back to the West Coast was inevitable, though I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I had fallen in love with New York City and was frankly beginning to become “Manhattan guy” myself. Though I’m not from California, as I packed my bags and boxes, I thought about the move as a homecoming of sorts. I had visited San Francisco several times on vacation and had assumed it to be similar enough to Seattle - my home city - that it wouldn’t be a period of discovery, as New York City had been.
However, this assumption was challenged, kickstarted with a ten-hour drive up California 1.
California State Route 1 (SR 1 or CA 1) is a major north-south state highway that runs along most of the California coastline. It’s 656 miles long - the longest state route in California and the second-longest in the U.S. after Montana Highway 200. CA 1 has several designated portions - the Cabrillo Highway, Shoreline Highway, and Coast Highway, for instance - but “Pacific Coast Highway (PCH)” is often used as a catch-all for the entire route. It’s one of thirty-seven national scenic byways dubbed “All-American Roads,” which is “the highest distinction a roadway can claim” in the United States (is there anything more American than honoring a highway?). The highway begins near Dana Point in Orange County and ends near Leggett in Mendocino County, running concurrently with Highway 101 and passing through the Greater Los Angeles Area, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, Big Sur and San Luis Obispo, Monterey, all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge through the San Francisco Bay Area.
My boyfriend and I flew down to Los Angeles our second weekend in California to pick up a car, to see friends, and in large part, to drive the length of this highway. A straight shot from LA to SF typically takes five to six hours if you stay on I-5. Driving on CA 1 the whole time adds a couple more hours, not including stops taken to eat and take in the views. Several parts of the coveted highway were also closed, requiring us to merge from the 101 back to the 1 and so on - a price to pay for keeping the Pacific Ocean in sight for as long as possible.
Fueled by an Urth Caffe breakfast, we set off early. Outside Los Angeles, one of the first major sites along CA 1 is Malibu, a beach city nestled along the Santa Monica Mountains with an identity that precedes it. Malibu has retained a glossy veneer in the eyes of locals and non-locals alike ever since it transformed from a working-class horse town to the primary site of movie stars’ second and third homes. A lack of fresh water supply kept the region rural until the city supplied pipelines in 1960. Pepperdine University opened its Malibu campus in 1972 and by 1990, the likes of Streisand, Nicholson, and Madonna were moving in.
Many non-West Coasters might not realize that the Pacific Ocean is quite cold. As Joan Didion writes in “Quiet Days in Malibu” (1979), despite its utopian characterization, Malibu doesn't contain crystal clear, bathtub water. The beaches aren’t so wide, the hills are “scrubby and barren,” and the main residential street is a major interstate highway. Yet, the region - after which a Chevrolet and a rum are named - possesses an undeniable magic. Much like Los Angeles, Malibu’s mystique is erected out of a mix of natural beauty and, largely, public wonder, as well as the reputations of the glamorous people who traverse it. It’s delightful because the people have made it so. Didion sums it up well writing:
“…Malibu tends to astonish and disappoint those who have never before seen it, and yet its very name remains, in the imagination of people all over the world, a kind of shorthand for the easy life.”
We stopped for smoothies in Santa Barbara - certainly the type of place to stop for a smoothie. Tucked along the Santa Ynez Mountains, Santa Barbara has been nicknamed “The American Riviera,” as it’s a popular vacation spot with a Mediterranean-like climate for much of the year. The first permanent European residents in the city - and much of California - were Spanish missionaries and soldiers. This history endures through much of the city’s architecture - smooth adobe walls, stucco facades, and clay roof tiles. The street signs are all written in a whimsical, bubbly font called “Mission.” Delicious and expensive breakfast restaurants abound in the main town center. On cross streets, there’s often a view of the bright blue Pacific - somehow much brighter here than in Malibu.
I visited Santa Barbara over the past Fourth of July weekend while staying in Summerland, an unincorporated community of less than 2,000 just six miles south. The region is flush with natural oil - in 1896, the world’s first offshore oil drilling began off the coast. To this day, giant oil rigs ominously sit in the distance off Summerland’s shore, boring their eyes into beachgoers. In July, I awoke in the night a couple of times thinking the rigs were giant ships heading for us. After days on the beach, we wiped the tar off our feet with baby wipes before driving north into Santa Barbara for dinner.
We stopped briefly in San Luis Obispo, the halfway point between LA and SF. This region is perhaps best known for being home to Cal Poly SLO - a university many of my Seattlite classmates flocked to after high school, eager to escape Western Washington’s gloom and rain. The city’s downtown landscape mirrored Santa Barbara’s slightly - touristy and bougie with a local California touch. William Sonoma-type home stores intermixed with family-owned taquerias. But SLO has a more youthful feel - we saw plenty of sunkissed college kids walking around with running shorts and tote bags as we ate our tacos.
Our last glimpse of water for a while was in Cambria, where we popped out to take in the smell of the salt and snap a few photographs. After that, we made our way inland due to closures, passing through golden, rolling hills that looked like velvet play sets - every barn and tree like a prop to a dollhouse. Everything in its place. This gorgeous expanse soon melted into a much more average American highway - four lanes, drab shrubbery on the sides, the sky a scary grey. During this long stretch, my mind felt as though it was corroding, as it often did on an hour-long commute home from high school, sitting at a standstill on I-405 South. An hour-long commute feels much faster on public transit than in a car - your mind more vigilant, your body in more motion. Since moving to California, a return to more car time has afforded its own delights - the joy of a road trip, privacy, and singing songs at full volume - but during these lengthy, monotonous stretches, one can feel quite confined.
Refuge was found in Monterey, by way of seeing sailboats neatly lined up along the ocean - everything in its place once again. Amazing how an appealing visual can offer so much clear-headedness - and so quickly. Like rebooting a computer.
To calm our frantic heads, we listened to Solange’s A Seat at the Table and When I Get Home back to back, pivoting to Grateful Dead as we approached San Francisco. The sky turned a deeper orange as we drove with the windows down, smelling the ocean and clear air. A lungful of air in the Northwest is the most effective aid. We finally wound our way up SF’s Embarcadero.
The best way to live in California is to live as the Californians live (imagine that). Over the past four weeks, I’ve been dusting off my Merrell boots and wearing less mascara. Strolls through parks have become hikes up mountains. Late nights are now early mornings. Bagels are now burritos. A weekend spent on Metro-North is now a drive on CA 1. Great water is exchanged for great air. A pinhead, a fingernail - whole worlds upon it and outside of it.
Love the overview of Highway 1. Always on my bucket list but somehow I suspect I won't get it done until retirement.
SF and NYC, perhaps so different for those with a lot of free time, but I suspect not so different 9-5 then back home to the kids. (Not a critique, just a little jealous!)
Taking me back to my trip this past summer up the coast!