The West is a great place to live. That I’ve never lived anywhere else might make such a claim suspect. On the other hand, that I’ve never left is a ringing endorsement of the validity of my statement.
The benefits of living in the West, California in particular, are legion and legendary. The weather. The wealth of things to do, to be lived and experienced. The geological and biological distinctiveness. The endless possibilities of life-altering road trips because the West has asphalt for arteries and highway markers as a skeleton.
The rarest and most precious gift of living here is that, where I live anyway, I’m never more than a couple hours’ drive from a winery I’ve never visited or never knew existed. Little treasures tucked away in sleepy hamlets, hidden in the blink-and-you-miss-them burgs that blanket California like the poppies in spring. This is not the California people talk about, fantasize about visiting. This is not the California of flying elephants and mouse ears, of Tinseltown glitter or bridges painted flaming sunset red, of skyscrapers and 39 million souls. This is the real California: tiny towns and wildflowers and wine.
And not traffic-congested, $30-tasting-fee, four-dollar-sign-Michelin-rated-restaurant wine towns, either. That’s not the California I’m talking about. I’m sure it’s a fine California, that one. But it’s not my California.
I’m the only person I know who will turn a camping trip into a wine tasting tour that just happens to involve sleeping in a tent. My partner and I went camping at San Simeon State Park some years ago, and we could have taken Highway 1 to get there. Most people would and should – it’s breathtaking and beautiful and one of the best drives in the paved world. It’s a must for the bucket list.
I’ve done it. But there are no vineyards, no wineries, no tasting rooms. Just lots of hairpin turns and sheer drops into the Pacific and even more cars, RVs, and Harley-Davidsons. These latter three are my California too, whether I like it or not.
Highway 101, on the other hand, runs right through Paso Robles. And then there’s Highway 46, and Templeton, and casks of God’s nectar hiding behind friendly, welcoming iron gates that open on the winding gravel driveways that are the road to Heaven. Our conversation from this point in our journey starts with “One more?” and ends with “Why not? We’re on vacation!” with not much in between. One can’t talk much when one’s mouth is pressed to a wineglass.
We did finally make it to San Simeon. We even got there more or less on time, if there is such a thing as time on a camping trip. We pitched our tent and opened our boxes of Target wine (don’t scoff – it’s won awards, lots of them, besides being a great value and easy to pack) and we toasted each other and our life together as we always do.
That first night we made a friend. We called him – or her, we never became intimate enough friends to know which – Miko. Miko felt comfortable enough with us, however, to begin rifling through our food boxes and ice chests, looking for dinner. I suppose this sort of familiarity comes naturally to raccoons like Miko, but we were on a tight budget and had to eat for three more days. So before retiring, we stowed all our foodstuffs in the car and our newfound friend went hungry that night. Or, more likely, to a neighboring campsite.
We’re wine snobs in our own way, my partner and I, and at the time we took glass stemware with us on camping trips. We were probably the only campers in the West to do this, and in the wee hours of the second night we discovered why.
