Travels with T

August 3-7, 2023: Central California Coast

The Train and the Trip

If you live in Los Angeles and you haven’t taken the train north to Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo, you are missing out. It is a quintessentially Angeleno experience because you depart from Union Station with all the pomp and circumstance and history and beauty that involves, and then you travel North slowly, seeing parts of the city you have never seen, rolling down the tracks that people in the past rolled down. Also, I just love Amtrak! The people who work on the trains and in the ticket booths are so amazingly awesome, and it is also worth noting that trains are a huge part of the LA story for it was the Pullman Porters that helped build the vital Black community in this city.

I had the opportunity to take the train recently to revisit my trip last year with my Beast friend, Tirian (see older “My Beast Friend” post for details). My adoptive mother (better than stepmother, I think), Paula, has been part of this incredible women’s group that meets each summer going back to the 70’s, and in seeing the pictures, videos, hearing the stories, and knowing some of these amazing women, I was always so jealous. I have wonderful female friends, but we do not have an annual group hang out, but now I have a Women’s Group of two tradition with Tirian, and I hope it continues as long as I live.

But, before the trip, back to the train! The amazing space of Union Station was a pleasure to wait in and then I walked down the long hall and waited to board the train. I had a great window seat, and plenty of things to occupy me in my backpack (and a large Sea Turtle), but then I just sat and watched. I watched the passengers board, the train conductors, and then we were rolling. Taking the train you see that backsides of the world, the fences and graffiti and yes, encampments, and I was lulled into the meditative train trance once again. Yes, I could try to read the New Yorker (managed 1 and ½ stories, mostly in stops), or crochet, or write, photograph, or draw—but it was so much nicer to just watch the scenery unfurl.

There are things you see on that train that you never see on the highway, like the beach north of Gaviota into Vandenburg territory, the tiny, hidden beaches, the pelicans, pelicans, pelicans, the oak forests, the campers waving from Jalama (and farther north, the prisoners waving at Atascadero), and the miracle of the ocean, sky, and sea, the way the sea and weather change when you reach Point Conception. Truly, if you have never traveled by train here or anywhere else, it is soul cleansing. And the Sea Turtle had an ocean view seat the whole way!

The Actual Trip: SLO and heading north

But I was a little blissed out from the fabulous train and sleep deprived when I arrived, but there was Tirian to meet with her trusty steed, Blueberry (Blue Subaru), and off we went to our place T had arranged for the night, a lovely French hotel in…San Luis Obispo. This seemed incongruous to me, but Petit Soliel exists and is real, and as they welcomed us with talk of wine and food in the courtyard and breakfast in the morning, I knew it wouldn’t be Sutter Home and little cardboard boxes of Frosted Flakes.

We hucked the giant Suitcase-O-Jenny (gotta bring craft shit) up the stairs, set up the room and then ventured out for a walk. I was starving, so we stopped at the first place we saw with food, SLO Provisions, and had a lovely veggie sandwich with fresh potato chips. Then we walked the downtown, setting up for the street fair, barbeque in the air, past a million cool shops and lots of clothing I am likely too old to wear, and who knew there was a creek running through the town with a walk alongside? Not me. We also encountered the Mission. I have a hard time with Missions as I teach a Literary LA class and have learned much history in doing so, so we just walked calmly by while Tirian told me the annual Mission Building part of the California curriculum was no more…but still? Do they build Slave quarters in the South? Perhaps a question best not asked.

Cambria and Points North: Still Traveling

After a lovely breakfast on the patio, we set forth for points North, both of us excited to be there and to be together. We were headed for Ocean Point Ranch slightly north of Cambria because we had stayed there before and we wanted to watch the sun go down on Moonstone beach. And, yes, after gathering provisions at my favorite market in Cambria (Sotos/True Earth), we did head down to the beach to watch the foggy sunset.

The next day we were eating the bagels I flew in from Ashland and froze for this very moment, and then we were off to the vacation races. We headed to Morro Bay, first, so we could get beads at my favorite store and eat at Shine, the best way to recreate the food we ate as hippie kids in Oregon in the 70’s (Shine is a Vegan café but wait—it is awesome—you should eat there). The attached store, Sunshine Foods, had my favorite Barbara’s Cheetos, and then…well…then there was a period of capitalism and antiquing. First the bookstore, where I bought a book about the Oregon Trail and Tirian showed me they had a garden in the back for weddings, something I had never notice in my many years visiting this place, but Coalesce Bookstore is a real place with a fabulous mixture of new and used books, and yes, a lovely garden in back. But oh, the antiques.

There are many antique stores in the area, and we visited many of them. There was something soothing about walking through the displays, seeing the past, deciding on the trinkets to buy . My scores?: Tiny tea set for T’s daughter Elizabeth, fabulous sewing box with many threads, buttons, and weird patches, and a hook for lifting hay bales…and oh, yes, enamel wear, but about that more a different time. The antique stores have a rhythm, too: many, many sets of Franciscan wear, much Depression glass, and just old, odd stuff. The light and sea breeze when we would emerge from a shop was refreshing, and then we would go on to shop some more. We also went to the lovely store Made in Morro and I made plans to return and buy Harold a collar.

And then our walk to the sunset, then bath for T, writing postcards (some purchased in the antique stores) and opening the fabulous bags of clothes Tirian collects for me during the year to unveil on this trip, making me the best dressed tourist on the coast. But about the bath…

One of the reasons I keep staying at Ocean Point Ranch, besides the fact that you can walk to Moonstone beach and watch sunsets, and there are fireplaces (although we have never used them) is the bath. The room has a giant, freestanding, clawfoot bathtub in it. Really. If you are a bath person, and I am, this must be the place. And we had sea salts for mermaid folk and a candle and bubble bath…and so there were baths. Epic baths.

Shoes, Coyote Jaw, Hearst Beach, Last Dinner, and Trip Book

We woke to another beach morning, and I stepped out to the poorly named (yes, this is really the name of the café there) Cow Tipper to get coffee and then later T for T, and then T told me about her feet, which had apparently been hurting. “Shoes, “ I cried, and we sped in Blueberry to an REI I didn’t know existed in SLO, for REI is always the shoe place because you can return them, and then we wound our way back down the coast, stopping at Shine for lunch again.

there again and an obscure spot on the headlands below Harmony that I call “Coyote Jaw Beach.”

FYI there is an enormous REI on Madonna Road in SLO, and no, we didn’t go to the Madonna Inn because it is important to leave experiences for next times, and Tirian got the coolest shoes, and then we had Shine again and more antique stores and a great sunset.

We also stopped at what I call Coyote Jaw (because once during a beach clean-up we found one there), a beach on the headlands near Harmony, Harmony, Harmony of the great ice cream by the Buddha in the shade and the stained glass sea turtle) and we walked the paths, forded the tiny stream, and made our way down to my favorite shell and pebble beach, and there we did find glorious shells and pebbles. Returning to the road we met a man with a Golden Retriever, and he was curious about our visit and why people were there. “You’re local? “ he said, and I said no, just a 20 year visitor, and he said “ I thought only locals knew about this place.”

But the next day after bath and the Cow Tipper, we knew where we were headed: Hearst State Beach. It’s a weird beach, really. The only way I know about it was a long ago visit to the dog park in Cambria with my Jack Russell, Pebbles, and a man telling us about the dog places in the area. “You can totally have dogs there,” he said, when all of the beaches we had found were closed to dogs to protect the Snowy Plover. “Just go past the pilings from the old pier, and it is cool,” he said, and so it was.

Tirian had visited this beach before with me, and so we headed out again, Squishy the sea turtle in my backpack, after stopping to get some excellent sandwiches at the French Corner Bakery in Cambria. We also got a great beach umbrella from the hardware store and mercantile in Cambria. And then we walked by the beach in the perfect temperature, hot feet cooled by the cool Pacific. And yes, we had a picnic and although our new beach umbrella earned the name “Houdini” for his escape movements in the wind, we were shaded and sated. And yes, Squishy the turtle removed his clothing to bask in the beach and bond with me, and yes, there were many, many pelicans, more than I have ever seen, but none followed us home (long story there).

We stopped at my favorite liquor store on the coast, San Simeon Liquor, to throw money at them, and then back to the room, the bath, and dinner. I took my first and wondrous bath, and then we set out to eat dinner at a restaurant down the beach. We waited a long time for a table, and the food was like you might expect—(Tirian said while we were waiting g, “Do you think they will have “clam chowder in a bread bowl?”, and it was the first thing on the menu), but it was a lovely meal with the suddenly cleared sky (Thanks, Squishy) setting in glorious color behind us as we ate. And then we took the wooden path home into the sunset colors, like a calendar, and a bat swooped out and guided us home.

Wow.

After that wonderful trip, I raced to finish the incredible trip book we had made together, watercolors and stories, and Tirian’s consummate writing, and postcards and horoscopes and stories and pictures of our childhood in Ashland, Oregon, and everything, but I was so excited about the next day, for then Robert and Harold would arrive and take me to the next part of the trip.