Tuesday November 16, 2004 A Few Days in Cambria

Tuesday November 16, 2004 A Few Days in Cambria

Our trip to Cambria began around noon on Sunday, November 14th. My wife “I” and I loaded up her car—hers is newer than mine and has far less mileage, hence ideal for long drives like this one—and headed south on 101 bound for our favorite getaway, Cambria. Since we moved to California, this little town has been a part of our lives and we’ve watched it morph over time into a far more popular destination now than it was when we first started visiting in the late 1970s with our first visit to Hearst Castle.

Cambria sits about three miles north of the California Highway 46 and Highway 1 —the great drive that meanders along the breathtaking coast of California. The small village thrives off a tourist trade, which is drawn by the location—it hugs a stretch of coast battered by the Pacific surf just at a point where the Santa Rosa Creek flows into the ocean. Its second major attraction is the artist community that has sprung up in the village—painters and sculptors and crafts people with their studios strewn about the town. It also draws the new-age spiritualist community—no doubt attracted by the towering and majestic Coastal Mountain Range, a mere 10 miles inland from the sea, which has experienced a deadly earthquake in recent months. Its other major attraction is the many Central Coast wineries that have sprung up over the last two decades along Highway 46 and environs: Wild Horse (their Merlot is one of the best to be found), Castoro Cellars, Bonny Doon, York, Zenaida, Peachy Canyon, and many others.

What’s remarkable about this place is that, someone returning after being gone 50 years would see only that the town has grown, not that it has changed significantly in appearance since they left. The town resides along Main Street. If approached from the north traveling from San Francisco toward LA on Highway 1, you would turn left at Main and you would be on the main drag of the West Village as Cambrians refer to this part of town. On your left heading south and east is the Main Street Grill, an enormous indoor barbecue restaurant—it’s the most popular eatery in town. Further along Main on either side are shops containing a myriad of crafts, T-shirts, trinkets, and souvenirs that you find in every beach resort community. Also lining both sides of Main are real estate offices doing a land office business in vacation rentals as well as in homes and land sales for those who become smitten with the place and have to have a second or retirement home in town as well as for those once smitten and now eager to extricate themselves from rental property. Further down Main on the right is the Cambria Lawn Bowling Club—it’s very active during the day with plenty of lawn bowlers—and a small theater, the Pewter Plough Playhouse.

At this point you pass out of the main part of the West Village—where the tourist like to hang out—and head toward the East Village, another favorite with tourist and the larger part of town. You pass the Cambria Grammar School on your right—it would look right at home in the 1940s, a hill top shopping center on your left, accessed by a short but steep winding road, and a few road side businesses on your right—the chic Bistro Sole restaurant, a strip mall with more restaurants and sundry stores. Then you come to a stop sign. Making a right takes you up Burton Drive toward Highway 1. Along the way you’ll pass more restaurants—Robin’s Nest for one—and hotels such as The Squibb House.

Proceeding through the stop sign at Main and Burton, you’d be in the main part of the East Village with grocery stores, bakeries, a Bank of America, restaurants—lots of restaurants: Linn’s, Sow’s Ear, among others. At the intersection of Bridge Street and Main, a right turn takes you past the town’s U.S. Post Office and then carries you in a circle back to Burton Drive. Proceeding through the intersection will take you through the village and along a stretch of road that eventually ends at Highway 1.

What I like most about this place is that it has a personality. It reminds me of one large bed and breakfast resort where the community is a family that welcomes these throngs of guests continually streaming through. The flow is greatest on Friday and Saturday, but during the warmer months after spring break and through Labor Day, the stream is heavy even through the week as tourist drive California 1 and stay a day or two in Cambria. Even the off-season provides the town a steady stream of visitors mostly on the weekend but retirees make a point of visiting during the week when there are no crowds and the pace of the town if more to their liking.

Cambria is also unique in that it has few major chains of any kind in town, no burger places, no supermarket chain, no recognizable store or restaurant chain. It’s like this trademark-free, brand-free zone. The only exceptions are a Chevron and Shell station in the East and West Village, respectively, the Bank of America in the East Village and a Best Western on Moonstone Drive. For all of us who are besieged daily by a constant flood of messages driving home branded products, Cambria is like an oasis in a desert and a welcome retreat. We seldom watch television or listen to the radio when we’re here, not even to catch the news. When we return to San Jose, we’re pleasantly surprised at the events that have gone on since we’ve left.

Visitors from the UK feel right at home as many of the street names in the residential area are British: Hastings, Wellington, Dover, Downing, Weymouth, Yorkshire… Indeed, Cambria is the Roman name for the area now mostly known as the country of Wales in the UK. Moreover, the bed and breakfast hotels that populate the town, especially along Moonstone Beach Drive are decorated in a fashion that would not be out of place in the UK, canopied beds and flowery wallpaper. Teatime in Cambria, however, is replaced with wine and cheese at the more chi-chi B&Bs.

Moonstone Beach Drive is the place we hang out during our stay. The drive parallels Highway 1 and runs along the shore ten or twenty feet above and a few hundred feet from the persistent surf that is eating away at the cliff, which is inching its way toward the road and the B&Bs beyond. There is nothing to do along the beach except surf, walk along the boardwalk the town has installed the length of the drive in front of the B&Bs to keep visitors from destroying the cliff-top flora, or drink wine and look at the ocean—the passtime most visitors indulge in. We like to read and write besides the other passtimes except surfing.

We’ve stayed at nearly every B&B along Moonstone and each one has its own appeal. And each contains a diary where guests can enter their thoughts. It’s a pencil and paper blog but kept current by the constant stream of new visitors filling the pages with musings. The writing is as you might expect, where the guests found the best food in town, the best bottle of wine, who they met, why they are there, what they did during the day and night. The exhibitionist in us all produces the content, the voyeur in us all find the diary compelling to read. There is the occasional story of someone passing through on a journey to forget or remember a loved one, who left of their own accord or was taken by fate in an accident or by natural causes. The words are a heartfelt attempt to express a grief that this place with its natural beauty has somehow made less burdensome.

We’ve often considered living in Cambria but “I” and I both realize that the place, despite its beauty, would soon wear on you. It’s a great place to contemplate your life but not one where you would want to live it.