Right turn at Albuquerque

On the way down from SF to Santa Barbara today we had a magnificently beautiful drive down the Pacific Coast Highway; the driving was slow because the road wound through the mountains like some exotic pasta all the way from Santa Cruz to San Simeon. It didn't help, however, that we ended up stopping over and over again.
The first and most critical stop was to pick up a funnel cake at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk ("...in the warm California sun," if you know the jingle). To Inki's mind funnel cakes represent the culmination of thousands of years of human history. The invention of fire, for instance, allowed us to heat the oil to fry funnel cakes. The domestication of animals made possible organized agriculture, which led to the establishment of granaries full of wheat that could be milled into flour to make the funnel cakes. Agriculture also ended our nomadic hunter-gatherer existence as we built up cities and, ultimately, funnel-cake booths around the granaries. And so on.
Admittedly Andor and I helped a bit with the funnel cake. If you look behind us, you can see the boardwalk; if you look at us, you might just make out the telltale dusting of powdered sugar all down our fronts.
After that it was on toward the Carmel Highlands and Big Sur, and that's when the views got really amazing. Here's just one of dozens of the pictures we took, all of which are this good and none of which really do the place justice:





















By the time we got to San Simeon and William Randolph Hearst's castle (call it "Xanadu") we were too late for a tour, but we did get to see the elephant seals lounging on the beach just off the highway. The best description of how these guys move (when they can be bothered to do so) is this: they move in the exact same way that bread dough doesn't.

The next planned stop was Solvang, a Danish settlement an hour north of Santa Barbara. However, driving down 101 toward Solvang we came across signs for Pismo Beach. Now as any Bugs Bunny fan will tell you, that wascally wabbit is always trying to get there and saying he "should have take that right turn at Albuquerque." As a lifelong East Coaster, I always assumed that this "Pismo Beach" place was something the folks at Warner Brothers made up -- you know, one of those idyllic fictional places like Narnia or Paris. Apparently not, however, and I have proof for all my fellow Easterners:


So it was on to Solvang, which was everything you might expect a picturesque Danish country town plopped down in the hills of Southern California to be. Lots of Danish flags, bakeries, and other establishments, all with names like the "Hamlet Motel." Unfortunately for us, however, it seems Danish-Americans are deathly afraid of being caught out at night by vampires. By the time we got there at a little after 7:30pm, we were famished, but every restaurant in town save one was shut. One had a group of customers eating out on the patio but told us when we asked for a table that they were closing. There was still an hour of daylight left, for cryin' out loud, and we wandered in the fading light of this wilderness for what seemed like forty days and forty nights (but was more like forty minutes) before we came across "The Little Mermaid," which restored our spirits mightily with some great Danish specialties like chopped steak with onions and gravy and red cabbage (my choice) as well as Carlsberg on tap. Yum!
From there we managed to carry our stomachs back across the square to the car and drive on to Santa Barbara, where we're currently turning in for the evening. More tomorrow....