We were in for a rude awakening when we hit the central coast of California. After a few weeks in the Southwest where it was at times too hot to move and several hikers actually died from the heat, we had gotten used to having our choice of campsites. After lunch at In-N-Out in Santa Barbara (animal style, the least overrated fast food burger out there, in Victor’s opinion), we had a tense drive up to San Luis Obispo looking for a campsite. There are half a dozen or so state parks along the Pacific Coast Highway, and every single one of them was totally full. Several of them had overflowed their overflow parking, leaving people to park along both sides of the highway for several hundred yards in either direction from the park entrance. We began sending frantic Couchsurfing requests and searching for cheap hotels, but no one responded, and it seemed there was not a hotel room to be had within 100 miles. None of this would have mattered, except that we had already spent money on tickets to tour Hearst Castle at San Simeon the next morning, so we couldn’t go too far out of the way. At one point in time, it was permissible to just park for the night in the turnouts along PCH, but those days are long gone. Giant placards expressly prohibit overnight camping, and we weren’t about to tempt fate.
Gorgeous scenery rolled by the driver’s side window, but neither of us paid any attention. We were getting desperate, and evening was inexorable. We had driven all the way up to San Simeon and were headed back south. In Cayucos, we just started calling hotels, and finally found a room for an exorbitant rate in the nastiest motel I’ve ever stayed in. I normally give little to no credence to online hotel reviews, but the dirty floors and dingy towels in this one were exactly as advertised by Yelpers. We got dinner at a little chowder house, walked the pier, and then returned to the hotel to plan the rest of our stay in California.
Hearst Castle was a little bizarre. The tour included a short film about newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s life and inspiration for building the house, conveniently glossing over the majority of his career in yellow journalism. The grounds and guest villas are undeniably beautiful, but the house itself left something to be desired, for me anyway. It was designed to look like a church, which I found odd, and the furniture and decor were all heavy and dark, which seemed at odds with the sweeping openness and sunshine of the scenery. Though it’s arguably more ostentatious, the Biltmore, Hearst Castle’s East Coast equivalent, is in my opinion far more beautiful. Except for that pool – I would have paid an embarrassing amount of money to be allowed to swim in the Roman Pool. The Neptune Pool was drained a year or so ago, when the State realized it was pretty bad optics to keep a leaking pool that no one swims in topped off during a catastrophic drought.
Since we took the first tour of the day through the house, we had the whole afternoon to cruise up PCH to Big Sur and actually enjoy the views and the unbelievable weather. Looking at my pictures, I still can’t believe that Big Sur is real, it’s so breathtakingly beautiful. We watched a big group of elephant seals on the beach, and got an early dinner in Carmel-By-The-Sea before we headed somewhat off the beaten path into an upper sliver of Los Padres National Forest. We found a totally deserted, totally free Forest Service campsite about 10 miles up a dirt road, somewhere between Carmel Valley and Tassajara Hot Springs. It was hot and buggy, but it was free, and after our experience in Cayucos, we weren’t going to look a free campsite in the mouth. We saw a bobcat on our way out the next morning, and got breakfast in Carmel Valley at a cafe run by a surly Frenchman. Getting started early paid off yet again, as we had plenty of time to get to and start exploring our next big destination – San Francisco.
The Indigents Abroad 
Wow, great photographs and writing! The place look wonderful!
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