On Moonstone Beach
Three years ago for Kim’s 60th birthday, we brought most of our family and friends together for a special night of celebration. I rented Hearst Castle in San Simeon for a party of fifty (strictly limited to that number). Hearst Castle was the fabled home of William Randolph Hearst, a media magnate of his day and the subject of the Orson Wells film Citizen Kane, one of the ranked best movies of all time. It is set in the remote Central California Coast, more or less halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Between Los Angeles and San Diego there are occasional uninhabited spots, but it is mostly sprawl and never feels remote. The northern Central Coast where Hearst Castle sits is very different. With the exception of Santa Barbara to the south and Monterey/Carmel to the north, most of this distance is covered with varying degrees of extreme remoteness.
Big Sur is the most rugged and well-known part of the coast though it seems increasingly difficult to access. Three years ago the coast road, Rt. 1, was out, literally washed into the Pacific Ocean by a landslide. After a two-year repair process, the road was opened. We actually took it north last summer and it was as amazing as I had remembered it. Well, there has been another landslide and the road is again out indefinitely. The Los Padres National Forrest makes that whole part of the state inaccessible other than the currently dysfunctional Rt. 1. That’s probably one third of the LA/SF coastline. The coast to the south is gorgeous and very emblematic of the golden hills and scattered live oak trees that symbolize the grandness of the state.
Because we were hunting Missions, we spent the day driving on the side toads along the central coast. We were in Solvang, made famous by the movie Sideways. We actually saw The Hitching Post, where Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church drank wine and the Andersen’s Hotel where they stayed. Solvang is a charming town with a very Danish style architecture and feel. We past countless wineries along the road. While the Mission Santa Inez in Solvang was rather ordinary as Missions go, the Mision La Purisima Concepcion in Lompoc was quite special. It is a national landmark and a state park so it has been left in its natural state and as such gave us a good feel for what Mission life might have been like two hundred years ago. We also made a quick stop at the Mission San Luis Obispo, but by then were too travel weary to stay long, so we carried on to Cambria.
For Kim’s birthday celebration three years ago, we needed a place for our whole entourage to stay. We picked the small, intimate, simple,but nice Fireside Inn, which is on a stretch of coast north of Cambria called Moonstone Beach. I guess I am simply too moonstruck to ignore the name Moonstone Beach. The stretch is perhaps a mile long and has twenty or so small hotels like Fireside Inn., set on the inland side of a simple road. The ocean side is a lovely and natural bluff with paths along the fescue that occasionally roll down to the long stretch of pebbled beach. It is the sort of beach that exists all around the world and is more introspective and scenic than prone to resorts and sunbathing. I have no evidence of that, but think of this as a strolling and pensive beach versus its decadent sandier version of its warmer climate cousins.
We have been back here to Moonstone Beach’s few times now and have always chosen to stay at Fireside Inn. We are always given the same seaview king room, which is nice. But we have been given a surprise this visit in that we are told that they are no longer pet-friendly. That is s change and they have made an exception for us this time, but it seems they have remodeled the rooms and are choosing to favor keeping the place nice versus keeping it friendly. That’s a shame because we will need to find a pet-friendly hotel for our Héctor visit. I would stay at the famous Madonna Inn south of San Luis Obispo, but it too is pet unfriendly. It strikes me as funny that a remote and rustic spot that is so beautiful is simply not friendly. Go figure.
Thanks to the Rt. 1 fiasco, we will head inland tomorrow and head north east of Los Padres forest. The Mission I am most interested in seeing is the Uber-remote Mission San Antonio de Padua that is set in what appears to be in the middle of nowhere. It’s hard to imagine that it can be more pristine than the La Purisima, but that, I suppose, is the reason for this vision quest of ours. I also imagine that San Juan Bautista may be nice as well, but that Santa Clara and San Jose will be urban/suburban drive-by’s for us as we try to make Sonoma before it get too late.
We will be half done by Sonoma and will use the ride home from our two day stay in ‘Mendocino to pick up San Rafael, San Fransisco de Asis, Santa Cruz, San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, Nuestra Senora de la Soledad and San Miguel Arcangel. Unless we choose to revisit Mission Santa Barbara, that will complete our tour of the California Camino Real Mission Trail. We don’t get a prize and we are hardly the first to run this course, but there will nonetheless be a sense of accomplishment that I see as completing our yearlong transition to becoming Californians.
Neither Kim nor I started life as New Yorkers and yet we each spent the lion’s share of our adult lives as New Yorkers. If there are two things that New York stands for, it’s finance and theater, so it is not do strange that those are the two areas we spent our time focused on. Neither of us became king or queen of our respective hills, but we each had enough success to satisfy us and feel we had made good showings. We were both fully in synch with the retirement plan of moving our acts to California. We are both happy to become Californians as much as we were NewYorkers. Our year has been spent reshaping our hilltop into a small piece of California chaparral. I’m not sure what else besides our Mission Quest we could do to adopt a Californian way of life. I already have a hot tub and Kim already drinks green kale smoothies.
What I do know is that with our friends Frank and Loretta and Gary and Oswaldo transplanted back in California as well, we have the big centers covered (Sonoma/SF and Hollywood/LA) a d are sure to be aware of all the fool Californian things to do. We may be on Moonstone Beach at the moment, but watch out all you remote corners of the Golden State…we will likely get to you all before long.