Rocinante...

The movers gone and a new camera in hand, I spent some time at the Point Mugu beach on Friday morning, intending to capture the blue skies over Laguna Peak and Mugu Rock.  Instead, I got inspired by the bird club shooting photos of the local avian fauna. Yes, Naval Air Station Point Mugu doubles as a bird sanctuary; its lagoon and wetlands are protected areas.  Was I looking for anything special, anything endangered?  Nay, I liked the common seagull who, like me, can be found near any seashore.  On the left, the SoCal variety.  Mugu lacked any solid entertainment, though...so off I went to visit Kat in Monterey.

U.S. Route 101 traces the California coast north from Ventura, around Santa Barbara rather than through, and then cuts inland at Vandenberg Air Force Base.  California's Route 154, the Chumash Highway, goes into the hills, past Lake Cachuma, and through the Santa Ynez valley before rejoining the 101 north of Vandenberg.  It's one of the prettiest drives in the area, winding up the sides of the mountains and providing spectacular vistas like this one, overlooking Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean.  On a clear day at sea the Channel Islands are visible....today the marine layer clung to any peaks and hid the horizon in a slight haze.

Traveling via the Chumash Highway allowed me to hit Santa Barbara's wine country: Santa Ynez and Los Olivos.  Here, Gainey Vineyard, one of my favorites, with its winter vines stretching towards the not-so-distant mountains.

I wanted to get to Salinas in the early afternoon, though...so no further stops until...

Salinas!  A slightly run-down downtown, but I love the brick buildings from the early 1900s that still line the downtown area.  Central to Old Salinas is the much more modern National Steinbeck Center, which places the area's native son in the context of the places he lived and wrote  through the 1940s.

Rocinante, John Steinbeck's custom pick-up truck-cum-trailer, in which he and his "gentleman French poodle" Charley traveled across the country, named after Don Quixote's horse.  I can't imagine living in such a small space...though I suppose it would encourage me, like Steinbeck, to see the country through the diners, small-town Main Streets, and churches (on Sunday).  Once back on the trusty mechanical horse, what to do except pull out a pen and pad to write?



My car is no Rocinante.  My luggage will fill the trunk and back seat and the added weight will make the car struggle to climb any steep hills.  I won't have the room to sleep, though if I pull my laptop out, I may be able to spend part of a drive channeling my inner Steinbeck writing about our native land.

Mentioned in this post:
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck