Last post
I fly out of San Luis Obispo this afternoon 5:15pm local time. It has been a great month or so here in SLO and I am NOT looking forward to going back to the cold but I am looking forward to getting home. Hope you all enjoyed and perhaps continue to enjoy, this blog.
Have a nice day 
The other side of Walmart
So today I went into SLO to look at some gallery paintings by local artists – two of which I will mention here. Mike Klung and Tom Huhn stood out for me. While I was in town, I got asked for money by 4 different people. SLO is not a poor town by any means but there are some who have fallen on hard times. On the one hand I was admiring paintings by these talented artisits which are selling for US$3000 and on the other hand there are people who are desparate for a dollar. Anyway, hava a look at the “Just Looking” link in the menu and check these two artists out.
Meanwhile, I am kind of looking forward to going home. the cold is putting me off, though! 12 degrees?? C’mon, Auckland, turn it up a bit would you…..
Walmart: a tribute
This is our local Walmart. It’s not one of the bigger ones – it’s not even a superstore, which they do have (similar to the Red Shed’s superstore concept). Nevertheless, they sell 1 gallon flagons of wine, yes, 1 GALLON, which I am sure is delish (yeah, right), bottles of painkillers containing 500 pills, and at the other extreme they sell organic shampoos, brand name cosmetics and good quality cookware.
This is such a wierd country in many ways, and Walmart expresses this wierdness perfectly. It is the largest retail company in the world, and you can really buy everything here from a measuring jug to a scope for a hunting rifle. All the items are always cheaper than almost anywhere else, and all the stores are enormous, even our local one, which isn’t that big by American standards. Even though the Americans, along with everyone else, have been through the economic meat grinder, you still get the impression that Americans feel that they can have anything they want, at any time in any place. And that’s because of companies like Walmart.
California Kitsch
This is defined as a place called Solvang. It is a small town which lies south of SLO and north of Santa Barbara. You may well be thinking to yourself that it seems a very strange name for a town in California, which, after all, is full of towns called “San” this, “Santa” that or “Los” something else. You would be quite correct. Solvang is a tribute to all things………Danish. And it is so kitsch that it works. Kind of. The entire town is built according to Ye Olde Denmark – that is, windmills, cutesy architecture and lots of references to vikings. I have inluded some photos below to give you an idea.
It was quite quite funny for us today because not only was it wierd suddenly finding ourselves in this freaky little Danish town in the middle of Spanish California, there was also this big Chinese tour group cruising around with their cameras. They looked so out of place in this town which in turn looked so out of place in California that we didn’t quite know where we were. There was nothing that was recognisably American. Even the phone boxes and CCTV cameras were damn cutesy! I mean, would you look at this…..??
Anyway, it was cute and interesting. Lunch was Danish pea soup at Andersen’s in Buellton, a township down the road from Solvang which is meant to be famous for its pea soup. I don’t know what it’s like to come from a place famous for its pea soup, but it was hearty meal which I enjoyed.
So hej hej from Solvang and hola to San Luis Obispo again. 
Where there’s smoke there’s two fires
The whole central coast area is a tinder box at this time and this morning the smoke finally reached our back yard here in SLO. There was a definite smell of smoke in the air which came from the hazy layer of brown smudge which hovered all around the area. The local TV station, KCOY, is offering constant updates and video footage of the big fire. It is called the La Brea fire and it is taken hold in a (thankfully) remote area inland and south from where we are (San Luis Obispo, right above the sign for route 1), in the middle of the Los Padres National forest.
View Larger Map
This is a big fire. It’s burned 67,092 acres as at this morning so it’s probably spread even more now. the other fire is smaller, the Lockheed fire, but it’s closer to us. It has burned just over 4,000 acres of land in another remote area in Santa Cruz County to the north of SLO. See the links in the menu on the right for more info. Wouldn’t it be nice if I couldn’t fly out of here and had to stay…..
Anyway, there’s a treat for all those of you who are enjoying the lovely weather in Auckland at the moment. Not to be daunted, we went to the beach at Montana De Oro today. I wanted to upload a video that I took of all those lovely waves crashing on the beach but I would have buy an upgrade to my blog to do that. which I’m not going to do. So here are some piccies instead.
…and a picture of some cormorants hanging out.
Prefumo Canyon and Shell Beach
The Canyon is not like the Grand Canyon, but it’s very, very pretty and my little camera just could not do it justice, but I’m not interested in carrying around several kilos of camera equipment so a compromise had to be made….
Next on the agenda was Shell Beach where I saw some of the most ostentatious, ridiculously palatial piles in the universe. And guess what…..many of them are SECOND homes. Check it out.
I mean….HUH?? They are worth an estimated US$5M a piece. they have a wondeful view of the ocean and their own private beach which is small, sheltered harbour right below these houses. This is what they wake up to every day.
It’s just a whole other planet. Planet Wealth.
One thing I have noticed is that there’s a lot more variety in the coastal birdlife here than at home. It’s not just seagulls that populate the air – there are any number of cormorants, herons (white and blue) and the pelicans. These are very ungainly when they’re either taking off or coming in to land but once they’re in the air they really are big, beautiful birds. The more rare of the species is the white pelican, but I didn’t see any in flight, so the best I could do is take a snapshot of the more common brown pelican. Still, they are impressively graceful.
snakes and trees
OMG, my first snake!! A California King Snake – not venomous but very pretty…
Spotted on the Avila bike trail. Then, some very Middle Earthy trees with Spanish Lichen growing all over them – these are Coast Live Oaks from the Los Osos State Reserve and quite weird.
Bishop Peak
We went for morning saunter up this little hill called Bishop Peak. It was bigger than I thought it would be and I freely admit that I was huffing and puffing when I got to the top. Of course my Dad, being Rambo in disguise as a normal human being, was fine.
So anyway, there is more information on the trail on the link in the menu on the right hand side of this page if you are interested. There was a great view of the top of the Lemon Grove trail we did yesterday from about halfway up this one so we went quite a bit higher this morning.
The view from the very top was great – check this out – you can see the ocean in the distance
The body of water in the foreground is laguna lake which is where we went last week. Another new experience was seeing poison oak for the first time. It’s got a rather nasty oil in it which causes an extremely itchy and painful rash apparently. I’ve never heard of it but it’s apparently related to poison ivy and it’s b****y everywhere up this trail. Here’s what it looks like anyway -
So I spent a considerable amount of time making sure i got nowhere near the stuff. Fortunately you come out of the vegetation just below the halway mark and you get into a more scrubby type of environment. Great walk, though!
Avila Beach and Lemon Grove Trail
had a great and lazy afternoon at the beach yesterday. I felt so relaxed last night that I couldn’t muster up the energy to blog on here. It was the perfect afternoon – the sea at this beach is clean, there were no jellyfish and although there have been reports of a shark in the area very recently, there was no sign of him yesterday. Everyone was just very chilled out.
So today we thought we’d better do some excercise so we walked the Lemon Grove Trail and I saw the first cacti which are just about to flower and they look quite dramatic in their natural setting
The view from the trail is also great – this is one looking down into the town of San Luis Obispo from the highest point on the trail.
For more details about the trail, have a look at the link on the right.
Steamers and Blackbeach
We had lunch at Steamers Restaurant today and it was a great meal. The view from this place is so fabulous I just had to take a picture.
The line of cloud visible in the distance is the cloud that comes on shore at the end of every day. It sticks around until mid morning the next day and then just breaks up and retreats to the horizon, revealing glorious sunshine which lasts until late afternoon. This is what’s called the perfect climate.
Then it was time for my Dad to indulge in some golf at Blackbeach Golf course. I must confess I’ve never been on a golf course before – it had the look and feel of a typical English park. I walked it while Dad played his 9 holes.Very restful. And sunny, and warm. We ended the afternoon with a cold beer. Wonderful.
