Waves and wine; Trip of a lifetime; Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez Valley, Big Sur: a Central Coast road trip makes a vintage romantic getaway

Sunset, Sept, 2005 by Matthew Jaffe

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I had already decided to buy the book before Gui arrived, and she signs it as Toren praises her work. "Well, I think it's accurate," she says simply, then explains how her father didn't think Henry Miller was very smart and mostly ignored the author and painter who settled in Big Sur in 1944.

It's very much a Big Sur moment: slightly eccentric and wholly serendipitous. Gui, after all, provides a connection through her father to that pre-State Highway 1 Big Sur, when it was an even more pristine and wild frontier than it is today. "What a scene!" Jaime de Angulo wrote as he rode horseback down the coast on trails so steep he became dizzy. "Yes, I lost my heart to it, right there and then. This is the place for a freedom loving anarchist. There will never be a road into this wilderness ..."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

There is a road along the Big Sur coast now, but also much that Jaime de Angulo would recognize. Big Sur has a way of perpetually remaking itself yet retaining its essence. The fog repaints the Pacific, the ocean keeps carving the land, and the land changes from gold to green with the arrival of the rains. Beautiful as it is to look at. I'm not sure any landscape smells as good as Big Sur either. We stop at a canyon, where the first rains have unleashed the oils in the sage, which join the pine spice of redwoods and the salt air of the ocean into a fragrance that should be bottled as Eau de Sur.

I'd like to claim that, inspired by Jaime de Angulo's story, we decided to camp alongside a creek with only the redwoods and stars above us. But instead we semi-rough it at Treebones Resort, where we stay in a yurt--complete with electricity and a hardwood floor--that overlooks the ocean at the southern end of Big Sur. The yurt's insulated canvas walls and wooden lattice supports rise to a roof, where a round skylight offers views of the night sky. Becky sleeps soundly, lulled by the rhythmic crashing of the waves, but I wake up frequently to watch the passage of the stars across our private galactic porthole.

1 DAY, 65 MILES

Big Sur to Hearst Castle

William Randolph Hearst wasn't satisfied with just gazing out on the universe. He wanted to own it too.

We drop down from the cliffs of Big Sur to the more open coastline of Point Piedras Blancas and San Simeon.

La Cuesta Encantada, better known as Hearst Castle, is the California dream writ large: a Mediterranean fantasy, created by the great Berkeley architect Julia Morgan, where Hollywood stars and the San Francisco elite were brought together by perhaps the only man colossal enough to stand astride both worlds.

Near the wharf where much of the treasures used to build Hearst Castle came ashore, we stop at another San Simeon landmark. The Sebastian Store dates back to 1852, when the whaling industry thrived along this coast. It's now run by Neil Hansen and has been owned by his family since 1914, when his great-grandparents bought the store from the lighthouse keeper at Point Piedras Blancas. But Hansen's roots run even deeper: He's a sixth-generation Californian and can date his father's side of the family back to mission days.