Go ahead and click on the picture, to enjoy more of the beauty of Central California in the fall.
I’d first visited the area on a trip to Hearst Castle. My then nine-year-old daughter had put her foot down, when it came to roughing the entire trip. She was willing to camp out, but she didn’t see why we should have to make our own supper. It’s true that the two of us aren’t the world’s best cooks. My husband tends to do most of the supper making. But Jacob was doing field work in the Wasatch Range and we were fending for ourselves. I considered putting on my best determined parent act, and reminding her about that girl scout badge she was working on, but we’d been driving for three hours and, I’d just seen a sign for the Bear Valley Farm Diner.
The diner was everything she and I had wanted. It had been assembled in the 1970’s to resemble a pseudo-Victorian farmhouse setting, and the decoration hadn’t been changed since. There were french fries for her and a salad bar for me, plus air conditioning and hot water in the bathroom. Everything two campers could desire. I’d had a strong attachment to Bear Valley ever since.
Eszter and I had enjoyed camping together - there had been a beach within walking distance which helped a lot - but neither of us had ever been inspired to revisit Hearst’s overblown collection of more goodies than any one man could properly utilize. We had, however, stopped by the pseudo-farm every few years, on our regular trips to Disneyland. The kitschy décor of the restaurant, with it’s calico tie-back curtains and idyllic farmyard murals, gave us a soothing sense of returning to an imaginary era, nearly as good as our favorite fantasy world farther south.
Two years ago, Eszter had chosen a school from among nine colleges and universities into which she’d been accepted. And she’d chosen to go to U.Mo., just up the hill from Bear Valley Farm. I was only too happy to make the occasional three-hour drive down, to drop off clothes or sports equipment she couldn’t live without, because the Farm had a hotel as well as the diner. And every room in the hotel had it’s own gas-burning fireplace that turned on with an electrical switch. Just the spot for hanging out in an overstuffed wing chair and working on my laptop.
I suppose it was just the in-room fireplaces and the association with my daughter’s childhood that attracted me to the area. It couldn’t be anything else that had caused me to suggest to my daughter that she might cherish a visit from her mother in the middle of the quarter. Eszter was uncertain. Over the last two years, we’d transported every piece of sports equipment from the garage at home, and her closet was full. Still, I insisted she humor me. We could eat supper together at the diner, for old time sake. I was really coming down to visit a nearby specialty native plants nursery on the way back home the next day, I told her. The business was a small one, and open only certain days.
My husband was at work in remote area of Nevada. Having been married to a geologist for over thirty years, I long ago learned to enjoy time to myself as well as I appreciate our time together. But I suppose my daughter figured I was lonely, and I let her think it. The drive down highway 101 through the fields around Salinas, King City and Paso Robles was alight with color. The grape vines were decked in their autumn finery and the distant coast range was a compelling mass of blue shadows.
But I knew that something more than scenery was drawing me, inexorably, to the central coast.
to be continued
