Page 47 - 2019 Travel Guide to California

A COLD MORNING AT CONVICT LAKE off
Highway 395 at Mammoth Lakes, right; Butterfly
Beach in Santa Barbara, below; fun on the beach
at Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, bottom.
Coronado, where Marilyn Monroe frolicked
in Some Like It Hot; classic surf breaks made
famous by the Beach Boys; star-studded
Malibu; Riviera-like Santa Barbara; Hearst
Castle; Big Sur; Santa Cruz, with its old-
timey beach boardwalk; San Francisco;
Point Reyes National Seashore; artsy Men-
docino; Redwood National Park.
Good news for road-trippers: An enor-
mous landslide that had been blocking the
road 16 miles north of Big Sur has been
cleared.
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, it’s
more than 40 miles between gas stations—
and restrooms.
Cowboys & Indians
East of the Sierra Nevada the green, popu-
lated 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 of cin-
ematic 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,
» PICK YOUR
HIGHWAY
CA-1 The Coast
pacific-coast-highway-travel.com
US-395 Eastern Sierra
aaroads.com/California/us-395_ca
2019 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA 45