Page 43 - 2017 Travel Guide to California

HEARST CASTLE, right top; Santa Cruz
Breakwater Lighthouse, a.k.a. Walton
Lighthouse, center; the San Francisco Bay
Bridge and San Francisco skyline, bottom.
A few tips: Allow far more time than you
think you need; besides the frequent diver-
sions, the road is so winding in places it’s
hard to average more than 30 miles per
hour. If you’re prone to carsickness, this
isn’t the trip for you. Keep your gas tank full
and your bladder empty. In some areas, par-
ticularly Big Sur, it’s more than 40 miles
between gas stations—and restrooms.
Cowboys & Indians
East of the Sierra Nevada the green, populated
West Coast ends and the brown, sagebrush-
covered West begins. This is the Old Frontier
of our imagination, a realm of real cowboys
and real Indians (and also, as we shall see, of
cinematic cowboys and Indians.)
Highway 395 hugs the state’s eastern
border, and the 264-mile stretch of high
desert from Reno to Lone Pine, which passes
tumbleweeds, swinging-door saloons and
ghost towns beneath the breathtakingly
sheer eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada, is
one of California’s most iconic drives.
The northern stretch traverses ranch-
land that was once—and sometimes still
is—the domain of Basque sheepherders,
and in the town of Gardnerville, just over
the border in Nevada, you have your choice
of excellent Basque restaurants. As you
drive south, keep an eye out for cowboys,
although these days they’re as likely to be
riding an all-terrain vehicle as a horse. Far-
ther south, as you approach Mono Lake,
you’ll probably encounter members of the
Washoe and Paiute tribes.
Highway 395 grazes the shore of enor-
mous Mono Lake, which is so alkaline Mark
Twain once joked he could do his laundry
merely by dragging it behind him in a boat.
In Bishop, the studio of the late photogra-
pher Galen Rowell has become a major
attraction. Stop at Manzanar, just off the
highway, for a poignant visit to the site of a
relocation camp for Americans of Japanese
heritage during World War II. In Lone Pine,
the Indian Trading Post sports autographs
on the wall from Gary Cooper, John Wayne
» PICK YOUR
HIGHWAY
CA-1 The Coast
pacific-coast-highway-travel.com
US-395 Eastern Sierra
aaroads.com/California/us-395_ca
2017 T R AV E L G U I D E TO C A L I F O R N I A 41