Day Two - Santa Barbara to Cambria
We got up pretty early on Saturday morning to go explore Santa Barbara. It's a pretty town on the ocean, but there are some pretty downtrodden areas in town, as well. Still, the views of the oceans from some of the parks up and around the city were pretty neat. It would be tough to wake up to those views every day.
We ended up downtown, had breakfast at a nice little place, then ventured over to the Santa Barbara Farmer's Market. It was one of the nicer farmer's markets we'd ever been to. There was produce, flowers, knick-knacks, and a little bit of everything there. We could have spent a lot of time there, but we needed to hit the road. Cindy bought a bouquet of flowers and we took off up the road.
We ventured off of Highway 1 and stayed on U.S. Highway 101 to go up to Santa Maria to visit a friend of mine, Brad Paulsen. Along the way we passed the town of Solvang, which we found out later is a beautiful little town that dubs itself as the "Danish Capital of the US". It's also the gateway to one of the most beautiful wine growing areas in the world, the Santa Ynez Valley. Oh well, next time.
Brad was the national sales manager for B&K Components at that time. I was representing B&K in the Midwest and Brad and I had traveled a few times together. He's a Wisconsin boy and he used to love to come back to the Midwest for dealer visits. When he heard that we were going to travel the Pacific Coast Highway, he asked us to stop in for lunch.
Brad lived not too far off of Highway 101 and we got there a little before noon. He had the grill going and he said he was going to make for us a local delicacy called the Santa Maria Tri-Tip. Brad had this big hunk of beef on a plate covered with some seasonings and he threw it onto the grill.
He cooked it at right about an hour and when he pulled it off the grill, it was this huge charred mess. He said, "Mr. Veber, I'm going to allow you to do the honors of carving the meat. Cut it crossways making the slices no larger than about a quarter of an inch."
I'm looking at this thing laying there, literally smoking on the plate. I thought, "Jesus, Paulsen. You cooked the life out of it."
So, I cut into it and it was the most perfect medium rare to medium that you'd want to find on any steak. The meat was succulent and juicy. And the burnt crust with the herbs and spices on the outside of it was rather tasty.
During lunch, Brad told us the history of the tri-tip, which is the tough underside of a sirloin steak when it's cut.
Years ago, the Santa Maria area was a huge ranching area. The ranch hands were usually Mexicans, known as "vaqueros", who were given the less desirable pieces of meat by the ranchers to eat. The ranch hands found that if you seasoned the tri-tip with garlic, salt, pepper and parsley, then cooked the living shit out of it over an open fire, it became moist and tender.
Santa Maria bills itself as the "Barbecue Capital of the World". Brad said the smell of oak wood (the "only" way to barbecue in Santa Maria) permeates the air many nights.
Before we left, Brad told us we had to go west a few miles past Guadalupe to a place called Guadalupe Dunes along the coast. A portion of Cecil B. DeMille's epic "The Ten Commandments" was filmed there. It was the setting for "The City of Pharoah" set. When DeMille finished filming at Guadalupe Dunes, he had the set dismantled. But instead of hauling it away, he let Mother Nature - in the form of the howling winds off the ocean that pushed the sand around at the dunes - take over.
We went out there and came to the entrance (left). The wind was coming off the ocean at over 30 mph, kind of weird for such a nice day. We gingerly made our way along the black top road as it snaked its way through the dunes toward the ocean. Many times the road just disappeared under the sand. It was kind of unnerving.
We made it to the ocean and the combination of wind, sand and water spray made it so we couldn't get out of the car. In fact, the sand was hitting the windshield so hard it made thousands of little pock marks in the glass.
The ocean was unlike anything I'd seen before. I can't really say there were waves coming in. It was like the water was coming up from the bottom. It was very surreal and sort of scary to see the ocean literally boiling in front of you. And the sound it was making - even with us sitting in the car - was ungodly loud.
We got out of there without seeing the ruins of the movie set. It turned out that we couldn't have seen it any way. Years and years of shifting sands buried the set. Only recently there have been film historians working at the site to try and excavate some of the set.
We made our way back to Guadalupe, gassed up and then took off back on Highway 1 to Pismo Beach. But before we got there, Cindy saw a road side stand selling strawberries next to a strawberry field. She made me stop so she could get some. I like the smell and taste of strawberries, but I'm allergic to 'em. Cindy said they were some of the best strawberries she'd ever had.
We went out to Pismo Beach and, once again, the wind was just blowing. There were a few people camped on the beach and they had "lean-to's" they'd erected to shield themselves from the wind. We drove down the beach a ways and got out to look at and hear the ocean. It was unbelievable.
Here's Cindy at Pismo Beach nearly getting blown away.
We got back on the highway for the short drive up to San Luis Obispo. Just outside of San Luis Obispo is the somewhat famous Madonna Inn. Someone told Cindy that we needed to stop just to check the place out.
The Madonna Inn is a boutique hotel that offers a number of "theme" rooms. The rooms were a little pricey for us or we probably would have stayed there, just to stay there.
But the highlight of the visit was the trip to the men's bathroom. The urinal is a waterfall. It's the perfect urinal because you can pee onto the rocks and into the water stream without having to worry about splashing on the floor or walls or yourself. Whoever thought of that was a goddamn genius. It's too bad the staff at the Madonna Inn get pissy when women try to go in to have a look.
We had dinner that evening at Benvenuti (now Colago) on Marsh St. in San Luis Obispo. Housed in a quaint Victorian home on a one way street near San Luis Obispo's downtown area, Benvenuti was recommended to us by a friend, Richard Colburn, who had eaten there many times before. Italian food was their specialty and we weren't disappointed in the least. It was romantic, cozy, the service was great and the food was equally superb. I'm glad we stopped.
We drove around the downtown area of San Luis Obispo after dinner and then worked our way back onto the highway heading north and west. 
We made it up to Morro Bay just as the sun was setting and got some pictures of Morro Rock and a nice sunset into the Pacific.
We drove the remaining 15 miles or so up to Cambria, a quaint little art community on the central coast. We stayed at a little mom and pop hotel that night - the Cambria Palms Motel. The manager, it turned out, grew up just east of the Quad Cities. It had been a long day and we knew we had another long day on Sunday.
Next - Day Three - Cambria to Monterey
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