A drive to the Pacific coast

The road through San Gregorio

On Sunday 28th July, the day after our arrival in California, we got lost several times, up and down the winding roads. Along the Arastradero Road in Los Altos to start with, then up Page Mill Road, and then effectively in circles, losing our sense of direction in the forests of the Palo Alto foothills, with their steep sided coniferous slopes down to the creeks. In the end we gave up trying to follow the inadequate paper map and resorted to the GPS app. on the phone. That took us back almost to where we'd begun, so we tried again, along Portola Road up Portola Valley to the Skyline Boulevard where it joins La Honda Road. There are "rustic redwood cabins" at this junction, selling stuff, but the Mountain Terrace restrooms were closed, so to Chris' chagrin we had to move on, following a convoy of low-slung vintage cars. Bikers were also much in evidence but rode off in another direction. We followed La Honda Creek downhill to San Gregorio which consisted of very few habitations and no restrooms until we reached the parking lot at the beach: $8 well spent for the time we spent at this spot! The first thing you see is the magnificent view of Highway 1 snaking its way down the cliffs to the San Gregorio State Beach and San Gregorio Lagoon, with the Pacific Ocean beyond it flanked by the long, sandy shore. The lagoon is a "fish nursery" protecting young fish from the ocean. You start taking photos with enthusiasm. The next thing you notice, with a gasp of alarm, is the long mottled snake that wriggles out from under the picnic table in the grass above the lagoon, at your approach. I thought this was a rattlesnake, at first, but (having looked it up) I now believe it was a gopher snake. Chris said, it's called a gopher because, if you tread on it, it will go for you. Oh dear. But they are considered harmless to humans.

Gopher snake?

Once at the beach, I took my shoes and socks off and set off walking to Australia. The waves that rolled in over my bare feet were freezing cold so I didn't get very far. Further out were sizeable breakers. A few would-be surfers in wetsuits were gazing dreamily at them, but spent a long time getting into the water and didn't surf. I kept the warm find sand under my toes and climbed the dunes against the cliffs to take photos of the wildflowers for my botanist sister. Latin American fishermen stood hopefully with fishing rods on the shore. Mist obscured the distant cliffs. Kelp with dried out bladders (pneumatocysts) had got tangled in the driftwood, with shells and stones, creating intricate pieces of natural sculpture. We sat on a bleached log to enjoy the views and the breeze for a while before walking back to the car. A Muslim family, the ladies wearing full burqas, carried their picnic and pushchairs over the sandy rocks down to the beach.

Nasturtiums in Half Moon Bay

We drove on down Highway 1 (passing some more dramatic views of the cliffs) to Half Moon Bay for lunch, which we parked on Main Street and walked on to find at the Ark North Indian Cuisine on our way to the town centre. Half Moon Bay is an attractive and interesting place to stop, with bougainvillea, camelias and cacti in the gardens, not unlike coastal towns we've seen in New South Wales. Where the road bridge crosses a creek in a ravine, nasturtiums have rampaged over the undergrowth in a mass of colour. In 1906 a shocking earthquake of magnitude 7.9 destroyed most of Half Moon Bay's adobe houses, but a man called Joseph Debenedetti made a vow to rebuild the town, reinforcing its important structures with steel, and he did. There's a memorial to him here.

On the faster drive back to Los Altos, we passed numerous rose-growing farms by the San Mateo Road and then the Crystal Springs reservoir in the hills above Silicon Valley. We were hoping to drive down Canada Road along the left hand side of the lake, but it was closed to traffic on that day. I should have spelled that name Cañada, which is the Spanish word for glen.