As goes California so goes the US and eventually the rest of the World.
The problem with that well worn aphorism is that it is based in truth and it drives people nuts. There is a great deal of time and energy spent trying to prove its not true but California trundles on heedless.
Driving out of El Portal on a Sunday morning Highway 140 had a few cars heading into the park but almost none traveling in our direction. We crossed the state in four hours when no one was looking and we had the weird selection of roads Google selected for us, to ourselves.
Some of the farm roads were appalling, putting me in mind of the first of Mexican roads we had driven recently in the wilderness of the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua State.
These are the fields and orchards that produce fruits and vegetables sold all over North America. We see brands in Mexican supermarkets that we recognize from the Salinas Valley.
Water is splashed over this arid soil like there is an unlimited supply and fruits grow under plastic hot houses that look to my eye like they were designed after prairie schooners with their arched covers. A pioneer wagon parking lot:
But the world knows California from Hollywood and Silicon Valley and Napa wineries and world class national parks and a population bursting at the seams of more than forty million people.
Politicians mock California to make points and youngsters wear fashionable clothes all over the world that refer to the Golden State. I am pretty much indifferent to all of it. Layne grew up in California so I see us spending more time here to be close to her many friends but for me my home is aboard GANNET2 wherever parked.
I lived here for twenty years and I have very mixed feelings about the place. I never feel at home here, I don’t feel hip enough or radical enough to feel at home among the coastal hippies and techies or the old school conservative valley farmers and ranchers. They are all indifferent to me and my imagined social shortcomings so I drift through the landscape not of it, nor am I desirous to settle down here.
We stopped for lunch in San Juan Bautista, once upon a time a day trip destination from our home in Santa Cruz. The mission church was made famous by Alfred Hitchcock (who had a home outside Santa Cruz) in his thriller Vertigo when he created a bell tower atop the church from which to throw Kim Novak.
The history books will tell you the church was built in 1797 and has had mass said in it since 1812 when Napoleon was afoot secularizing Europe. On Sunday it was packed and late arrivals were praying in the bilingual garden.
This, you will be happy to know us the only remaining Spanish Plaza in California. Had you lived here in the Spanish and subsequently Mexican administrations you’d have seen the civil and religious heart of what is now San Benito County operating here.
As it is Spanish is widely spoken and on a Sunday, picnics are the order of a leisurely day where we saw lots of Latino families enjoying their time together in the sun.
And the auto industry that you are so fond of -I know I am!- is preserved in its original form in a barn on the square. 
They call the carriage house the Plaza Stables.
We stopped for lunch at the Jardines de San Juan of fond memory.
The gardens are as we remembered them but the food wasn’t.
The portions were ridiculously huge but my burrito was bland. I hadn’t had a California burrito in a long while and mine was the size of a football. One side was melted cheese, the middle was beans and the other side was the meat. All of it insipid. Layne insisted on to-go boxes promising we have hot sauce and spices in the van to make it edible later. GANNET2 to the rescue! It was a shame the food was that way because we had great memories of the place.
Everything costs more here, gas is around five dollars for regular forcing us to haunt Costco for the best possible price. Eating out is absurd and as we found not always delicious. But our friends live here and we enjoy the scenery and being nomads we are passing through so everything is good for us. Santa Cruz is our turning point of course so from the ocean we will go east and spend a few weeks in the mountains of Utah and Colorado before we see Chicago and the east. It’s all part of the variety of sea to shining sea over the next three months.
GANNET2 makes a great home for us.
