California - Day 10 - to Lost Hills

Lost Hills KOA, Lost Hills

Thursday, 10 March 2022

today's route

I stayed on US-101 all day, and it ran through a real variety of countryside.  As you can see from the map, for a while it ran right along the ocean.  In some places there were stretches of beach, sometimes being used but sometimes not.  In other places there were long lines of RVs parked along the access road at the edge of the beach - boondockers.  And I saw signs that said, "Litter will cause closure of parking area," in an attempt to get those RVers to behave like responsible citizens, I guess.

On the other side of the road were steep hillsides, sometimes completely covered in yellow.  Maybe goldenrod?  And I saw several offshore oil drilling platforms.

After passing towns with populations like 28,000, it was a surprise to come across the town of Gaviota, pop. 94.  Just 94.  And not far away was the Gaviota Tunnel, which serves only the northbound traffic (like me).  It was built in 1953 and has been shown in several movies, such as The Graduate.  I saw fences that looked like chainmail strung along the sides of the steep hill to stop rocks from rolling onto the highway - which I guess was reassuring, assuming they work.

I passed beautiful tree-covered hills, wineries and vineyards, blueberry growers.

US-101 at this point is still called El Camino Real Route.

Buellton, pop. 5,433, bills itself as the Home of Split Pea Soup.  I had to look that up, because I knew they couldn't claim to have originated what my Rhode Island born-and-raised mother made when I was a kid.  It turns out to be one of those only-in-America stories, which you can read here.   http://www.peasoupandersens.net/history  The town is also advertising a Chili Wine Fest on March 20 (which I'm sorry to miss) - the sign said "chili" as in the stew, but I think they mean "chile" as in the pepper.  Hard to be sure, because they're also having a Beer Fest on May 7 which is when they should be serving chili, the stew.  Regardless, I guess these are fun-loving folks.

I saw lots of horses today, lots of vineyards - some being planted, also some cows.  In the fields I saw a sort of greenhouse - white plastic arches covering planted rows - in many places, probably because it's not reliably spring here yet.

At one place I passed the Allan Hancock College Student Vineyard, which I later learned is a program of a community college in Santa Maria.  Pretty clever of them to be teaching wine in a community college.

Santa Maria, with a population of 108,000+, is the largest town in the area, and from there northward the amount of traffic increased noticeably, making driving not nearly as enjoyable.

I passed Pismo Beach, with 7,600 residents, and looked up the Pismo Beach Disaster that is part of the story in the movie Clueless.  And learned, along with others doing the same thing, that this disaster was entirely a product of the brilliant imagination of writer/director Amy Heckerling.

I came to San Luis Obispo, pop. 45,000+, where I saw gasoline being sold for $6.19/gallon.  I fervently hoped I'd find a lower price later on when I needed to buy.  I remember stopping here long ago to see the old mission, built in 1772, but decided not to on this trip.  I noticed that lots of the houses I saw were 2-story and wondered if there were some reason for that.

I saw a watch-for-bears sign, and thought it at least possible I might see one, figuring they'd be starting to come out of hibernation about now.  But not so lucky today.

The sign I saw didn't say "crossing" but it did 
have a picture like this one of a momma and her cub
which I thought was really sweet.

The road went through Cuesta Pass, elev. 1,522'.  While these passes I've come to in California seem pretty low compared to those I went through in - say - Colorado, the fact is that we're a lot closer to the ocean here, so these passes are starting more from actual sea level than those starting in the Rocky Mountains which are already a whole lot higher than sea level.

As an example, I passed the town of Templeton, pop. 7,700, where the elevation is 700'.

When I searched on the radio for an NPR station, I found conservative talk radio, religious stations, Spanish-speaking stations, 3 classical music stations, and no NPR.

I passed huge vineyards and fields of some kind of crops I couldn't identify.  I saw lots of cows grazing on more of those folded hills I saw farther south.

some of the folded hills I saw

I saw huge orchards with bare branches - maybe pistachios?  I saw a sign saying 420 acres of pistachio farm was for sale.

I passed a bulldozer corralling huge piles of tumbleweeds in the median.  I knew I'd been seeing a lot of them, but that sight showed me just how many were around.

I passed the Pacific Almond company's fields, complete with bee boxes.  I heard on the radio that the boxes are getting stolen (why would someone want to cart around a bunch of bees?) - often enough that some bee raisers are putting those electronic tags on their boxes so they can find them again.

I passed a couple of large solar fields.

And coming into Lost Hills I came upon an enormous field of working oil wells.  There must have been hundreds of them.  And I learned that the Lost Hills Field is the 18th largest oil field in CA, but it ranks 6th in total remaining reserves, with an estimated 110 million barrels of oil still in the ground.  By 2006 it was the 2nd fastest growing oil field in the state.

I wanted to give the dogs a chance to stretch their legs before we went to the campground so we stopped at a city park we passed.  They had a sign there reading, "A Gift from the Wonderful Company."  That seemed really odd to me so I looked it up and learned there really is a company called the Wonderful Company.  They mostly grow pistachios and almonds, also some citrus.  I guess they're doing well because it was a nice park.

The town's population has grown substantially in the last 20 years, from 1,938 in the 2000 census to 2,370 in 2020.  Maybe because of growth in oil field production.