Big deal: the Giant Artichoke in Castroville. To read the start of this blog, scroll down on the right of this page, below the calendar, to the heading "Browse the archives" and click on March 2008.

We arose early our final morning after staying overnight at the Salinas Best Western (complete with foam coffee cups, plastic stirring sticks and authentic Best Western conditioning shampoo in the convenient half-ounce bottle).

We were due for a 12:33 p.m. flight on Alaska out of San Jose. We had a couple hours to kill, so rather than take a straight shot on the freeway to Silicon Valley, we detoured through the croplands on Highway 183, through Castroville and out to the bay past Santa Cruz

And we're glad we did, because otherwise we'd have never seen the Giant Artichoke, outside the Giant Artichoke Restaurant in Castroville. (We had to veer off the highway and take a photo.)

A statue of Charley the poodle sits in
the front seat of Rocinante, John Steinbeck's
camper, at the National Steinbeck Center.

SALINAS -- I got to touch Rocinante. I am dopily, nerdishly and deeply thrilled.

The main house at Hearst Castle was
modeled after a Spanish cathedral. Courtesy
Hearst Castle/California State Parks

SAN SIMEON -- Hearst Castle is a pretty amazing place to see -- no matter when you see it.

But our visit last night at sunset, when dapper men in dinner jackets waved their cigars at us and women in evening gowns and plumed hats laughed at their jokes and waited for another martini before singing along with a piano ditty, really kind of put us in the mood for the place. Just as if it were, say, 1931.

Fog blurs the line between mountains and sea along Highway 1 as it
snakes southward from Big Sur.

The road south. Weather: Brilliant sun, punctuated by fog every 5 miles or so. Driving music: Sound track from "Across the Universe" (Beatles tunes). Road trip!

At Big Sur Bakery, gallery art and the
Santa Lucia Range add to breakfast-time
attractions.

We found two places we loved for breakfast, which is the only meal we could (almost) afford to eat out at Big Sur, where everything costs more than in the rest of the physical world, because -- well, because it's in California, and it's several miles down a winding road from anywhere, and simply because it's the ethereal world of Big Sur.

As we cruised southward on this Big Sur coast where oceanfront cliffs and pyramid-like mountains (in close proximity) can still make the simple task of getting from Point A to Point B a problem requiring a pack of strong mules, I got to thinking about the folks who came to this country in its early days. What an interesting lot they must have been.

And it made me think of Tom Deasy, a local guy we had lunch with back up the coast in Capitola, near Santa Cruz.

Our little Dodge, which we've dubbed
the Billygoat (because it hugs hillsides), in
front of our cabin among the redwoods at Big Sur.

"Sur" is the Spanish word for south. So why is this place called Big South?

A ride in Andrew Molera State Park ends where
the Big Sur River enters the Pacific.

Just when I thought a horseback ride through Big Sur country was going to bolster my image as a manly man, I narrowly avoided being known as "Gigi" all afternoon.