The Pacific Coast

The Pacific Coast hasn’t been very pacific with its strong winds and high seas making for a cold California experience along the coast. All this wind was of course great for the thousands of wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Mountain Pass, creating 300-600 mega Watt of electrical power, enough for Palm Springs and the whole valley.

Palm Springs appeared to be a grander version of Naples, Florida with all of the upscale stores, fancy dwellings, and hundreds of restaurants. It was a great contrast to the poverty seen in the adjacent Mojave Desert.


Coming out of the desert and crossing the Santa Rosa mountain pass on Route 74, I had an opportunity to hike for a few miles on the Pacific Crest Trail which runs from Mexico to Canada. It was surprisingly busy with back packers and in full bloom with a great variety of flowers.


In San Diego I visited with Steve and his lovely wife, Sue in their downtown home. The house is built across a small gulch and the gulch is an unbelievably beautiful and productive garden with orange, plum, avocado, loquat, banana, and other trees, myriad flowers and orchids and many birds including an expatriate Baltimore Oriole who kept tweeting something like “San Diego beats Baltimore almost any time of the year”. Steve and his wife and another old high school and Boy Scout friend, Daryl, all joined for a local Cinco de Mayo meal.

In Hemet, I visited Aunt Püppi whom I hadn’t seen in over 50 years. She’s 94 years old and has retired from work and horseback riding to the internet and e-mail.

From Hemet it takes about !120 miles! of freeway and development to get out of greater Los Angeles to the much more serene coastal route. In both Santa Barbara and Monterrey I had the opportunity to explore the waterfronts by bicycle on their excellent path systems. In several locations such as Watsonville, one can see the truck farms growing lettuce, strawberries, artichokes, etc. with the largely Latino workers bent over picking or planting. The worker’s small towns are largely hovels of temporary lodging and Spanish signs. Think of them sometime as you enjoy your California fruits and greens.

Of course, I had to spend some time in the Big Sur area of the coastal route, famous from the hippie days of yore. The area still has hippies, though somewhat more aged. It also has a Henry Miller Library containing all those banned books from the 50s, such as Tropic of Cancer, which one had to obtain in Europe. Camping among the Redwoods in the valley is cold. It was 37 degrees one morning and it stayed cold most of the day even though when I went hiking in the desert-like adjacent 3000 ft Mt. Manuel, it was hot and dry. Interestingly, when the light rain comes at night, it never hits the ground below the trees, keeping tents dry.

I arrived in San Francisco on a beautiful clear day and just had to join the hundreds of bikers and walkers crossing the Golden Gate Bridge to take in the sights and enjoy the day. Advisory signs were periodically present to protect us from ourselves.

Going back to the coastal route I revisited Stinson Beach where Susan and I had slept in the Dunes in our 1972 Tour d'Ouest. It hasn’t changed! It even still has the Redwood House B&B with its German sign “Zimmer mit Frühstück”.

Driving the coastal route requires lots of patience, a strong upper body for serpentine driving, and an appreciation for beauty. There are great vistas around nearly every curve and there are happy cows feasting on luscious greens on ocean front meadows. There are also a lot of bicyclists and hikers trekking the Coastal Route in a southern direction to take advantage of dominant winds and to be better seen by motorists. The coastal communities are small and have not yet been invaded by outside development money. They are mostly plain with seemingly contended residents in the fishing, oystering, or lumber business.

In Oregon I visited former APLer, Don Duncan, who has landed his dream job in the liberal outpost of Portland. It is a busy and livable city with many great restaurants and pubs and bumper stickers saying “Keep Portland Weird”. Don has a great view of downtown from his office window and he can ride on a modern alpine-style aerial tram from his waterfront campus to his hill campus. Portland has a nice park with Japanese Garden, Zoo, Arboretum, and many hiking trails plus great views of snow topped mountains.

Continuing the travels on coastal route 101, takes one to the Olympic Peninsula known for its northern rain forests. Driving there was my second rainy day on this trip. And the following day the promised sun also did not appear and it rained yet more making the rain forest seem truly genuine.

Finally on the third day on the ferry ride to Victoria, British Columbia, the sky turned a lovely and warm blue making it possible to explore this beautiful Capital of BC by bicycle and sit outside for a delicious lunch and a Stella draft. I finished the beautiful day back in the US with a drive up to Hurricane Ridge to get a great panoramic view of the snow capped Olympic Mountains.