Before leaving Eureka, I went to Harp's for some last minute items. I had bought several units of various canned fish products earlier at another store, and was looking or something a little more meat like. While cruising canned goods, I got to talking to a guy who was stocking items. He talked about how much he liked Spam, and I saw that, in a marketing move, Spam had added several flavors to the basic stuff, which I hadn't eaten since Boy Scout days. On impulse, I picked up a can of Jalapeno Spam, God help me.
So this morning I celebrated my start on the PCH with sauteed Spam, onions, tomatoes, and jalapenos. It was quite tasty in the morning chill, and I ate while waiting for the sun to crest the mountains to the east of the highway and dry the tent. I was still the only person in sight stirring, and there was time to reflect on the giant RV dwellers around me.
There were three in close-ish proximity, each larger and fancier than the last. Model names suggested adventure and outdoor activity--Trekker, Expedition, Excursion, Vagabond. But the dwellers in these luxury machines rarely exited them during the 16 hours I was at the campsite, from late afternoon until 8:30 am when I left. Except to walk their dogs, and each vehicle family had one or more, they were most often inside, behind curtains drawn across the vast windshields. As I walked by a pair to go to the bathroom, I could hear the generator quietly working, and it must have been so for each, as the afternoon in the unshaded park had become warm. So I can only assume that they cooked, ate, and used the bathroom inside their mobile houses, perhaps peeking furtively from time to time out the windows to see the awesome spectacle only yards away. The experience of the ceaseless pounding surf below, the hot wind in the afternoon, the sunset, the cool relative quiet of this morning--how much were they getting? Odd.
There was eventually a sunrise of sorts, as the sunlight pierced the mountains first through an opening between two peaks across from the campsite, and eventually reached the entire area. I broke camp and was ready to go around the aforementioned 8:30. When I started the car, the temperature was 58 degrees. It eventually climbed to 61, and stayed around that level during the rest of the time I was on the coast highway.
Today the sections of the highway on the coast rose higher and higher, until once again I felt visceral anxiety as I rounded the ever tighter curves on the outside, mere feet away from drops of hundreds of feet, in many places without guardrail or restraint. Climbs and descents became more frequent as there were many elevation changes as the road wound in very tightly tortuous curves through terrain closer to, then away from the coast, over and over. The offshore rocks became larger and more numerous. There were intermittent crossings of rivers on bridges extremely high, and low, rivers which flowed into the sea through openings both wide and narrow. There were flat, wide-ish bodies that signs called lagoons, and larger ones I took for bays, and these the road wound around.
These areas where bodies of water met the sea seemed calm and inviting, and I could imagine offloading the Castine to paddle, perhaps even out into the ocean. Not this trip, though, and never with the Camry, I fear. The Castine would no doubt act as a large airfoil on the roof of the tiny car, and I would sail off one of the highest curves, hang gliding down and down and down...
And always the highway was changing elevation, by means of hundreds of tight and winding curves over the course of the morning. Early there was little traffic, and later, as the number of vehicles increased, the road continued to feel open, as each driver found his or her comfort place in the line up, slower ones pulling over in the frequent turn out lanes to give way to faster drivers behind.
I found myself both passing and pulling over, until after a time I was going at my desired speed, with another vehicle far before me, and none visible in my rear view mirror. This was the way the traffic flow was supposed to work.
But nothing lasts forever, and as mid day approached, my arms began to tire from the constant wheel turning, and the vigilance necessary to maintain speed during the endless curves and cutbacks began to wear. Traffic flow started to fall apart, as single lane road repair stops repeatedly halted lines of eight, nine, ten cars. Then the system of finding one's comfort zone would begin, only to be interrupted before equilibrium was reached by another stop. The result was more or less bumper to bumper, and by noon my average speed for the day was 30 mph!
And finally, what I call the museum effect began to assert itself. One can appreciate furtive glances at the most awe inspiring scenery and vistas only so long before accommodation sets in, and even the most arresting attractiveness loses its luster. So it became for me around 12:30, and I realized that I had had enough of the Pacific Coast Highway; it had stopped being fun. :( I pulled off, reprogrammed Google Maps for the fastest route to San Jose, and took off.
I must say here that the views today were among the best and most wonderful of this section of the trip. However, I was able to make no photographs at all, concentrating on driving, and staying intact and movng. In the interest of complete disclosure, all of the pictures in this post are taken from the web, and are representations only of what I saw and drove through, not the real thing.
The relief of moving in straight lines and at reasonable speed was immediate. I found myself in farm country very soon, beef cattle, dairy cattle (I assumed the black and white ones in tall grass were dairy), and hay--lots of recently baled hay. Hay baled in small rectangular bales, not the big round ones I am used to. And these bales collected and stacked into ginormous rectangular piles, really big ones. This I had never seen.
And then I was on the 101 (doesn't that sound like a Californian talking?), amid many, many other cars, but moving fast and more or less straight for San Fransisco. Ahhhh, I could finally feel the miles unwinding under my butt.
Soon enough I was approaching the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. What might have been an exhilarating experience was muddled by signs saying that no tolls were payable by cash, only by Fastpass electronic means. I choked, not having any idea what to do, and slid off the highway by the last exit before the bridge, near the tiny, windy steep-streeted town of Sausalito. My calls to the 511 number on the sign I had seen lost me mired in a confusion of phone tree choices, from which I was never able to reach a human. Finally, still in considerable doubt, I re-entered the highway traffic flow, and resolved to take my chances at the toll booth. When I reached it, with sixty zillion other cars, it was automatic and unmanned, and I rolled through at my sign-mandated 25 mph, the only car to be so slow, I think.
I later learned that out of town drivers often have a similar experience, being naive of the procedure of license plate recording, and automatic billing to the registered owner of the vehicle. But one is able to Google pay golden gate toll and pay by credit card within 48 hours of crossing, and save some transaction fee or other. The cost to cross the bridge for my car: $7.50.
So my confusion, the six narrow lanes of heavy traffic, and the fog or haze or smog or whatever it was kept the bridge crossing from entering into my top ten experiences of the trip. So be it, it was what it was.
Exiting the bridge, I passed through a tunnel or two, and was soon reminded why I don't miss living in cities too much. Traffic. Lots and lots and lots and lots of bumper to bumper traffic, first on steep up and down city streets, and eventually on wide, multi-laned freeways. The 50 miles or so of distance to Cousin Ken's house in San Jose was covered in an hour or so, with a few slow downs to what seemed like crawl speed, but no actual gridlocked stops. I had to reacquire lost skills of agressive in and out to reach from the express lane to my eventual exit, and I am proud to have done so while remaining intact.
A few intervening streets, and I found myself driving up to the three story townhouse-like building that Ken calls home. Another leg of my trip was complete.
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