Jenny on the scary road…just in time for Halloween!

Coming Home Day 16  August 10, 2024, Pacific Grove to Cayucos, 139 miles (without the nowhere road)

A note: It has taken me so long to finish this, but now I must because the Bus will be the haunted Bus for Halloween, and I must get ready to post about that. In my defense, I offer Frank McCourt’s words (paraphrased): When Frank McCourt was asked why it took him so long to write his masterpiece, Angela’s Ashes, he had a simple reply: I was too busy teaching. For any teacher folks out there, may I recommend McCourt’s less well-known book, Teacher Man, for that is a book teachers will recognize and enjoy.

Back to the trip…We knew the forecasts for the interior were hot, hot, hot, and we didn’t want to take the Bus in the heat, so early that morning, seagulls calling at Borg’s, we headed out, determined to beat the heat. And we did! We made our way in the Bus through the places we had already bee, tipping our hat to Camp Roberts where my father had once been stationed as we passed, gassing up in King City, but nit stopping for fish tacos this time. I am a map person, and I had the road atlas for California on my lap when I saw the Santa Rosa Creek road, a thin, wiggly line that suggested we could get off the cut from Paso Robles to Cambria, the highway 46, a road where we had previously been tormented by biker gangs, Swedish or Norwegian, but not an experience I wanted to have again.

Come on, it will be fun,” I said, and Robert, game for the adventure and the lost road, turned the Bus off onto the Santa Rosa Creek Road into Cambria. Well. The road does in fact arrive in Cambria, I can say that much, and it is sort of a road, but as a longtime devotee of not a trail, taking folks onto coyote or deer trails, I can say this was, in capital letters, as my father preferred, Not A Road, or at least not a road you should drive in a 1966 VW Bus.

Robert all cool and relaxed in his Grateful Dead shirt on that road

                  The road went up, the road went down, the views were amazing if I hadn’t been thinking about imminent death. When I say up, I mean up, up, up, twisting and cracked ribbon of highway into the sky, and down, well, think first gear for those who drive stick shift. And was it bumpy? Yes. Was it narrow? Yes. But we drove our way across those crazy hills and valleys and creek beds and then yes, into Cambria. I may have made some faces riding on this road–see top of blog.

Maybe almost the top of the road?

Then we got lunch at the always familiar and lovely Four Corner Bakery in Cambria, but had time to kill. We headed for San Simeon State Park’s Day Use area, a place we knew had beach and a bathroom, and then Robert wanted a nap after getting up so early to beat the heat and surviving the Santa Rosa Creek Road, so we popped the top on the Bus and settled in. We didn’t get much of a nap, but it was lovely to be there all the same, the cool breath of the ocean through the Bus as I read.

Eventually we got up to take Squishy to the beach to see Turtle Head Rock, and we did, and we collected greenstones for our friend Christina, and then we were off to check in at the motel we had booked in Cayucos. The motel was cool in an overly overdone HG TV hipster way, but there was no food to be had in Cayucos at dinner time, where there are apparently only three restaurants at night, and many, many tourists, so we ordered Thai food from Morro Bay which was great, and then we sat in the motel bed and looked at all the pictures from the trip, trying to remember each moment. It was a sad moment, as the end of an epic trip always is, and doubly sad for this was the trip about losing my father, but it was an essential trip. We fell asleep in the nice motel sheets thinking of the next day, of our little house, of Harold the dog, of our turtles and tortoises, and of course of our dear friends and family, and I think we both felt a sort of “Mission Accomplished!” emotion, a sense of having done a thing and having done it well.

Robert and Squishy, Turtle Head rock in the distance, San Simeon State Park

If you read this far, thank you! Next stop: Halloween Haunted Bus!