Dearest Readers,
Etta and I are camped at San Simeon State Park off Pacific Coast Highway 1 north of Cambria, California. The site is on a raised plain overlooking a foggy valley with the ocean off in the distance. Once again pit toilets, no electricity, and no showers. Tonight I’m wearing my entire outfit from the day, plus socks, a jacket, scarf wool hat, and two sweaters. No stars are visible because of the misty cloud cover. Is God laughing at me now for wishing to escape all those sweltering days in the southern states and Texas?
I enjoyed the drive today. Got a late start, but headed back toward LA to deliver Dinah Sargeant’s six hand-painted and quilted Iraq War gloves from 2007. www.dinahsargeant.com We are standing in her home in Newhall, CA next to a recent textile piece entitled Echo. http://www.dinahsargeant.com/quilts.html
I took pictures of two dolls from her spine series. These address having a strong spine, meaning a strong character. The hand painted black and white female doll with the wire hair, is slightly spinning. The larger male doll is shown in front and in back with its twisted spine exposed. Dinah and her two little dogs say goodbye at her front door as I depart for the North up the Pacific coast.
I took Hwy 126 West out of Newhall across citrus and vegetable country to Ventura. Pickers were hard at work and irrigation systems spewed misty arcs of water. The scenery looked a lot like my new Camarillo friend Roxie Ray’s “Camarillo Irrigation” acrylic painting. http://www.roxieray.com/ I crossed miles of fruit trees planted along this corridor to the sea. The cloud cover had rolled in along the coastal plain keeping the sun out of my eyes along the north-south coastal Highway 101.
Miles of vinyards rolled in perfect linear rows across the hills and across flat valleys, like this shot of Laetitia Vinyards near San Luis Obispo .
I dipped inland a bit across the foggy San Ynez mountains north of Santa Barbara. The sky cleared briefly on the lee side, then I picked up Highway 1 along the Pacific coast to this final rustic campground. I am content today and grateful for the continuous cloud cover.
What a wonderful place to pick up the blog after my own month of unanticipated adventures. I remember Highway One and "the dark range of Santa Ynez" (as my 1969 memorial poem for Kerouac described it) fondly and vividly, from more than half a lifetime ago.
ReplyDeleteHow strange your journey has been so far; so brutal, so gentle, so beautiful, so dangerous, so wonderful, so terrible, so unwelcoming, so inviting...plum worn-out just reading it!
ReplyDeleteJust so happy to read the near-to-end line of you being content today. Ahhhh, we can all rest alongside you and Etta now.
Continuous travels with this in mind and okay, maybe a teeney more sun and warmth now!
"Meeting" all the artists and their work/homes/studios along the way has been Mucho Agusto too!