Hwy 101.....pathway through Montecito, Santa Barbara, the Gaviota Pass, Santa Ynez, Buellton, Santa Maria, Pismo, Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo, then on to Hwy 1 through Morro Bay, Cayucos, Harmony, Cambria and just beyond San Simeon to the Piedras Blancas lighthouse and the Elephant Seal Preserve.
I've been down this route many times in my life. I enjoyed it more than ever this weekend when Suzanne Aimee and I decided spontaneously to "take off" and chose to visit this part of California for a get-away trip. Re-Hab will make it difficult to leave town for the next few months (if I don't play hooky, anyway).
I don't think this country has ever struck me more with its sunlit natural beauty and serenity. The French
term..."en plein air"....means "in the open air". This expression is commonly used to describe a manner and style of painting characterised by the artist capturing his subject on canvas in the outdoors, in natural light. A "school" of Impressionist painters in the very late 1800's through the present have used the California landscape for inspiration. Much of the landscape featured in the paintings of the earlier artists no longer exists
as portrayed, having been subdivided or paved over since. These early paintings reveal a lost heritage, in a way......a California that can never be again. However, one need but drive a few hundred miles North on "101" to see the California so tantalizingly and romantically portrayed by the "Plein Air" artists of the past.
The rolling hills are no longer green like the felt on a new billiard table. This weekend they are a light camel in color, with blotches of dark green oak trees in the canyons and ravines, or, quite often, whole forests of the things covering the crown or the slope of a hill. Cattle graze in the open, or rest in the shade of the oaks. Farmhouses nestle in groves of huge eucalyptus trees planted decades ago. Watertanks on stilts, windmills turning in the breeze, haybales spread across fields or gathered in stacks, tractors parked outside barns, collapsing outbuildings and sheds....all these and more to let you know that you are in a different world.
Then, there are the thousands of acres devoted to vineyards. I don't remember that much land planted in grapevines along Hwy 101. It is astonishing. The vineyards extend miles inland. Amidst them are the
wineries, more often than not with tasting rooms and facilities that cost huge sums of money.
Our destination was Avila Beach. It is a charming beach town and we would go back again. We both noted
how pristine the beachfront walk and businesses were, as was our hotel. It turns out a section of Avila Beach was literally torn down and over 6500 truckloads of oil-contaminated ground was removed to remediate a pool of petroleum that had gathered below the beachfront property after years of leakage from petroleum pipes that coursed underground to a distant pier used to load tankers many years ago. The town had to be destroyed in order to save it.
I'll continue the account of the weekend tomorrow. I need to attend the first re-hab meeting at 7:00 a.m. and much later in the afternoon drive out to Cedars- and see Dr. Amersi for a followup visit.
SRH
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