Ok, it’s been over nine months since I’ve published a blog. I’ve done a bit of traveling in the meantime and sadly only three short bicycle tours, but I’ll start where I left off. Ferda and I had a direct flight from London to Los Angeles (21 hours from our hotel to my parents’ house; finding that inexpensive trans-Atlantic flight was the impetus for our UK trip) and started a road trip with my Dad a couple weeks later.
Our first stop was in Ventura at the San Buenaventura Mission, one of the California’s missions that perhaps even my Dad hadn’t been to before. It was the third that Ferda and I have visited together after Alcalá in San Diego and San Miguel Arcángel on another road trip with my Dad two years earlier.
Buenaventura Mission was the 9th and final mission established by Junípero Serra in Alta California. We watched a propaganda video describing how well Junípero Serra treated the natives. I haven’t read enough to have much idea about how accurate those claims are. I’m sceptical. As a non-sequitur Junípero Serra was the name of the street I stayed on when I studied Spanish in Guadalajara.
The mission grounds were pretty.
We spent the night in San Simeon, followed by breakfast at a classic American diner — fun.
Next up was a section of Highway 1 that I had ridden 25 years earlier on a bicycle tour. I remember being astonished to come upon the elephant seals completely unexpectedly. This time Ferda was astonished. She knew we’d stop to see elephant seals but had no idea what to expect. I didn’t really either. There were far more than in the winter 25 years ago.
The elephant seals are an uplifting conservation success story going from near extinction to about 250,000 individuals. The females come on land to give birth and nurse, but they were gone by the time we got there (beginning of July). The males come on land to molt and practice sparring.
We continued north through Ragged Point and Gorda and then turned east toward Nacimiento and Hunter-Liggett on a wonderful road I had never been on before. Great for cycling, I thought, and then we saw two!
You won’t be surprised that our next stop was Mission San Antonia de Padua, one of the more remote missions in California. My Dad had been here before.
We spent the night in Palo Alto with Terry and Mike, one of my Dad’s Stanford classmates. For 4th of July the alumni took Ferda and me on a tour of the beautiful campus.
Disappointingly, because of the holiday we couldn’t get in any buildings. There’s a lot of outdoor artwork to enjoy.
Favorites include Rodin’s Burghers of Calais and the Gates of Hell.
Back in Ketchikan? Or Lithuania?
Finally, if you find yourself in Palo Alto, I recommend a visit to Tony Foster’s gallery. He adds maps and other mementos to his watercolors and groups the artwork into a collection called a “journey”. Excellently done and thoroughly enjoyable.
