California coast trip, Day 6: From Nepenthe to Half Moon Bay, with stops to chat along the way

The day is done, and I have in my right shirt pocket a matchbook from Nepenthe, a Junipero Serra prayer card from the mission in Carmel, and a receipt for a perfectly adequate scallops dinner here in Half Moon Bay.

Which means, dinner snarkiness aside, that I put in a lot of stops along the 167 miles between Ragged Point and here. And it’s a funny thing. Some days, on a trip like this, you fall into a landscape habit and spend the day walking or climbing, but you don’t talk much with other people. Other days, you bounce from one conversation to another, never get to half the spots on your itinerary, yet feel great about the way it turned out.

And then there are days like today: landscape and people, people and landscape.

Maybe this actually started last night with the brothers from Japan, whom I joined on a Ragged Point cliff top. Together we squinted into the fog to barely glimpse the rocks and sea, about 400 feet below. One of the brothers admitted that this wasn’t the California he had expected, saying it looked more like England, or Scotland. I had to agree.

But this morning the same spot was fog-free and spectacular. I started to scramble down the dicey path to the rocky beach, but soon gave up — way too much mud on the trail. Then it was back to the road, the scenery, the chatter — beginning with Nepenthe, the emblematic Big Sur view restaurant that goes back to the late 1940s. (Great organic architecture, great spicy chili, great gift-shop selection of nonessential goods for anybody seeking baubles for wife and daughter.) Big Sur’s businesses are still reeling from the enormous summer fire up here, but driving through, you barely notice the slope with blackened vegetation — most people, after all, are looking down and west, not up and east.

A few miles north of Nepenthe comes Bixby Bridge, the classic span that’s in so many postcard pictures of Big Sur. There I fell into a conversation with a couple of Ireland on their first trip to California. With 22 travel days, they gave the first seven to San Francisco, then started inching south, hoping to perhaps reach Santa Barbara. (No particular interest in Los Angeles.) They were, to throw in a little transatlantic slag, gobsmacked by Big Sur. Like the south of Ireland around Kerry, they said, but higher cliffs. And freaky driving — remember, they’ve spent their lives on the other side of the road.

After them, without even leaving the scene, I bumped into a couple from Toronto. They were doing a big California trip too, but with a healthy dose of deserts. (What could be more exotic, if you’ve come from eastern Canada?) Joshua Tree and Borrego were highlights, as was (leaving the desert now) Santa Cruz.

Then, after shooting pictures of the day’s last kite-boarder at Waddell Beach (north of Santa Cruz), I ended up talking with him as well. If I were standing in a dripping wetsuit with a 52-degree wind slashing at me, I’m not sure I’d be chatty. But this guy was — full of questions about how many days I’m taking to do the state, where I’m sleeping and what I’m not bothering with.

Unfortunately, Santa Cruz is one of the places I had to bypass, in part because I needed to give Carmel a few minutes. In a state so influenced by the Spanish missions, the Carmel church is the only one that made sense on this trip. And it happens to be the one where Father Serra, the Franciscans’ missionary No. 1 in 18th-century California , is buried. I stopped at his tomb by the altar, checked out the boards from his coffin in the nearby display case, and wandered around outside in the cemetery, where Native Americans and others are buried. Their graves are marked with abalone shells, which happened to be catching the late light as I stepped into the yard.

Can’t wait to get to bed tonight: my room ($184; the Cypress Inn) faces the sea, with a big sliding-glass door and balcony, and the surf is roaring. Best lullaby ever.

— Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times staff writer

Top photo: Graves in the Carmel mission’s cemetery are marked with abalone shells.

Middle photo: Chili, coleslaw and a warm fire at Nepenthe in Big Sur.

Bottom photo: These flowers (some help, botanists?) seem to be the accent of choice among Big Sur gardeners.

Photos by Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times

Related:
California coast trip, Day 1: From Tia Juana River to the Hotel Del
California coast trip, Day 2: Juan Cabrillo, our state’s 1st European tourist
California coast trip, Day 3: South Bay bike-riding, Malibu boat-watching, Oxnard hot-tubbing
California coast trip, Day 4: Battle with an Oxnard surrey, inspiration at El Capitan beach
California coast trip, Day 5: unexpected rewards in Morro Bay, cranky elephant seals farther north

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 1:30 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Big Sur, California, California's Central Coast, Carmel, Family & Kids, Islands & Beaches, Monterey Peninsula, Northern California. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.