Back to California

Back home from my 2-week trip to the Southwest —this leg: Las Vegas to Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo to Bolinas

The Topanga Ranch Motel (adjacent to The Reel Inn in Malibu— see below) was built in the ‘20s and afforded low-cost seaside accomodation for decades until it closed in 2004. The State Parks now own the property and word is that they won’t bulldoze it, but rather fix up the little cabins. Fist bump, State!

I have a secret beach I go to in LA. If you go to the Malibu Colony and drive along the houses (Malibu Road) as far north as you can go, you get to where the road dovetails into the Pacific Coast Highway. Just before that intersection is a beach you can walk down the cliff to. (This is south of Coral State Beach.)

It’s clean, very few people, and you can walk or run south on the sand all the way to the Malibu pier. I always go there and jump in the water. The beachfront houses are interesting, most of them krappily designed, but the occasional stunner. There’s an especially beautiful one on a point, with a rock-terraced garden and Spanish tile roofed stone house.

Another place I generally go to in the vicinity is The Reel Inn Fresh Fish Market and Restaurant — 18661 Pacific Coast Highway. You select the fish you want from the display case and then eat at communal tables. Excellent vibes. Old school.

Outside in the parking lot was this Corvette:

Also, a bit north of this area is Coral Canyon. About a mile or so up the canyon, turn left on Solstice Canyon road, park in the parking lot and you can make your way up a creek — you’d never know you were in LA. (This was Chumash territory.)

There are the remnants of a beautiful home a ways up the canyon that burned down in 1982. From the remains you can see what a unique place it was. Lush vegetation, springs, waterfalls — all a few miles as the crow flies from the busy coastal highway. It looks to me like they had dammed up the creek to make a 50-foot long narrow swimming pool (lane).

Earlier in the day I met Joe Bark at his shop and bought this 12’ carbon fiber paddleboard. It’s a beauty, weighs 19 pounds, and was used in this year’s Catalina Classic race, 32 miles from Catalina Island to the mainland, by 15-year-old Toa Pere, who took second in the stock category. (Joe’s son Jack won the overall race this year, breaking the 25-year-old record by 10 minutes.) I was taking no chances leaving it in the truck at night. I’ve wanted to get one of these carbon fiber boards for years. It floats like a feather and I get a wake going when paddling.

My other score in LA was this state-of-art skateboard with drop-down deck by Loaded Boards, generously gifted me by my “sponsors” at Loaded:

I spent two nights in San Luis Obispo, a wonderful town and home to my favorite American school of architecture, Cal Poly. Great coffee shop, fast wi-fi, and best morning bun ever at Kaffein Coffee (1242 Monterey St.). Then took my new Loaded skateboard to deserted high school campus on Sunday and had best day of skating in years. Also shot a few photos:

I headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway, planning to go up Highway One to visit the house I built in Big Sur (at Burns Creek, two miles north of Esalen) but it turned out a slide had blocked the road just north of Gorda, so I had to detour inland through King City and thence to San Francisco and home — where I slept for 14 hours on my first night back.

My trustee 2003 Toyota Tacoma — 5 speed, stick shift, 4 cylinder 4 by 4, which ran flawlessly on the 3000+-mile trip. Board is strapped on top of my rooftop tent for voyage home.