California’s Hidden Treasure

Big Sur Tour

by Julie Ubben, Assistant Marketing Manager

“Ran away from home when I was seventeen/To be with you on the California coast…Drinking margaritas all night in the old cantina/Out on the California coast…” Linda Ronstadt’s haunting solo brings to mind an entirely different vision of California than what typically comes to mind. But not far north of smoggy, glitzy Los Angeles is an unspoiled remnant of an earlier California: a land of avocado fields, orange-scented groves, even honest-to-goodness cowboys – a California that retains the magic of its youth. The central coast area has an unforgettable, pastoral seductiveness. Massive live-oak and eucalyptus trees, golden fields, and ripening vineyards fill the air with earthy fragrance, leaving one with an awareness of season, of ritual, of community. Not much has changed here for a very long time. The coastal area too is pristine – home to busy pelicans, several varieties of heron and crane, and scores of comical elephant seals sunbathing on the warm sand. Rocky shores and secluded beaches here are undeveloped and – during the seasons we visit – largely devoid of traffic and tourists.

Mother Nature smiles on the coastal area of Central California, blessing it with temperate mid-70’s weather that makes for idyllic riding.

Paradise for wine lovers, the region recalls an unpretentious Sonoma Valley of former times, with vintners quietly going about their craft. Names like Chalk Hill, Wild Horse, Epiphany, and Bonny Doon beckon from carved wooden signs, inviting the curious to stop in for a sampling of what Robert Louis Stevenson called “bottled poetry.” The vineyards’ low-key atmosphere is at once reassuring to the novice and inviting to the savant. Flowers are everywhere: roses, lavender, impatiens, wisteria clambering on fences and trailing from arbors. During the fall season, your nose tingles with the pungency of grapes at crush time.

Mother Nature smiles on the coastal area of Central California, blessing it with temperate mid-70’s weather that makes for idyllic riding. October visitors to Los Olivos are laughingly informed that it hasn’t rained there for the last 8 months, and isn’t about to start now. Given the choice to be anywhere in the world, Lance Armstrong’s team trains in the Santa Ynez Valley every January, cycling through peaceful ranchland and vineyards and into the hill country on many of the very same roads we follow (and along some of the optional routes we suggest for the more daring).

Our trip offers more surprises: an oft-sighted herd of zebra freed decades ago from a private zoo, left to run cheerfully wild and multiply in the coastal ranchland; 1,000-year-old Egyptian sculptures garnered to decorate journalism king William Randolph Hearst’s castle fountains; a town called Harmony, whose sign declares “Population: 18”; the sizable rooms at the classic Cambria Pines Lodge, which boast not one, but two fireplaces – just for fun.

But the biggest surprise is how many people aren’t there. The rides through the rolling hills and valleys of the inland area are spectacularly free of traffic, as are those along the coast. Our routes truly capture the very best the area has to offer while minimizing interaction with motorists. Riding through the ever-changing vistas, one is treated to the happy sense that he or she may very well be among a scant few to have chanced through. And watching a blood-red sunset over the ocean at the end of a day only heightens the sense of timelessness and peace that has been the hallmark of our journey from the get-go, in this very unexpected place.

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