“It’s not a Ford.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s not a Ford.”
These are not words I want to hear. We have just struggled up three flights of stairs with all our luggage in tow. We have wandered the third floor parking lot like Moses in the desert. We have played suitcase tetris with the boot. Trunk. I dig out my booking form.
I know I booked a Ford. Two months ago I was sitting in my kitchen, scanning tiny pictures of cars and listening to Colin Meloy in the background. I had shouted “Can you drive a Ford?” to my husband, and he shouted back “Yeah, probably.” I booked the Ford.
Here is the booking form, and right up the top, the words “Eight days with Ford Focus or similar”. Ha, Ford! Uh-oh. “Or similar”. I wonder what that means. I know what that means.
“Is this a Ford?”
Jon stares back, divorce in his eyes.
How did this go so wrong? I know how this went wrong. It’s Colin Meloy’s fault. Him and his stupid beautiful voice. Colin Meloy sang about California One, the fantastical highway that skims the coast from north to south.
Take a long drive with me
On California One, California One
And the road a-winding goes
From golden gate to roaring cliff-side
And the light is softly low
As our hearts become sweetly untied
Beneath the sun of California One
Colin sings to me and I get all seduced and lose my head. Next thing I know, I’ve booked flights for my whole family into San Francisco, out from Los Angeles and a “Ford or similar” to drive the highway in between. This is madness.
“All right,” I say. “So it’s not a Ford. What is it?”
“Dunno. It says XT4 on the side.”
“What’s that?”
“I dunno. It’s a big, dumb car built for idiots.”
“Can you drive it?”
I get the divorce-stare again.
“So do we take it back and ask for a Ford, or whatever else they have?”
We both sit for a minute and contemplate a repeat of the morning in reverse. Driving back into the third floor parking lot. Dragging the kids off their devices and out of the back seat. Digging out our luggage from the boot. Lugging our suitcases back to the rental office…
We ease out into the San Francisco streets. It’s ten-thirty on a Wednesday morning, and even the tourist areas are quiet.
Travel is never as romantic as the vision you have of it. It’s jetlag and streets that smell, dirty clothes, cold food eaten off paper. Travel is cranky kids and big dumb cars for idiots.
It’s not driving on the right that’s the hard bit, I tell my husband for the thousandth time. You just follow the bum-end of the car in front of you. It’s turning a corner and remembering to stay on the right that’s hard.
But there are few corners and lots of bum-ends of cars to follow. We slow down for pedestrians and people on bicycles, scooters. The sun is shining, it’s spring.
I see what Jon means about a big dumb car for idiots. There’s a button for everything, clearly marked with little pictures in case words are too hard. Lights are automatic. There’s a reversing screen and an alarm in case anything gets too close. It’s much fancier than our car at home. We’re a bit jealous.
We reach the highways and decline two dozen invitations to go to San Jose. There’s a long, smooth stretch of polite disbelief, then the highway suddenly reaches the coast and there it is, the Pacific Ocean, shining as deep and blue as it must have done for the first settlers to reach the West Coast. It’s spectacular.
“Isn’t this the same Pacific Ocean we saw around Alcatraz?” asks my eldest son, briefly looking up. “And that we saw from the Golden Gate Bridge? In fact, don’t we have the Pacific Ocean at home?”
“Do you want to hear Colin Meloy again?” I threaten from the front seat. He retreats to his screen.
I know it’s the same ocean, but it’s magical somehow. After the long miles of cities and freeways, canyons and plains (most of which we haven’t travelled), the sudden appearance of the sea is shocking, dazzling. We swing around to the south.
The first stop is Año Nuevo, a marine park with elephant seals. We have to imagine them though, because the seals are out on a rock you can almost see with binoculars after a mile and a half hike. But there’s a beach full of perfectly striped rocks which fascinate the kids, and a sea otter pelt in the store.
We stop for lunch and Starbucks, and the dubious privilege of paying the equivalent of thirteen Australian dollars for a drink with more cream and sugar than coffee in it. I turn my mobile onto roaming.
In the list of wifi hotspots, I can see Starbucks, the phone shop, and somebody’s car. It’s named MyCadillac 686.
“Hey kids!” I say. “Some wanker in this car park has a Cadillac with its own wifi!”
We look around eagerly.
“What does a Cadillac look like?” asks my youngest.
“I don’t know. I think they have fins on them,” says Jon. “Like a shark.”
“This car has a fin,” I say. “I think it’s just an American thing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Soon after we hit the highway again, I notice MyCadillac 686 is still in my list of wifi hotspots. I tell the kids the wanker must have followed us, but scanning the highway, we still can’t recognise anything Cadillacy. We let it go.
Santa Cruz is unexpectedly enchanting. The boardwalk is closed for the night and we wander the empty rides, the wide beach behind us. A tiny shopfront sells frozen mango bubble tea, and the kids are delighted. The houses are a mix of beach shacks, spanish archways and wooden chalets, oddly in keeping with the steep mountains rising above.
The next day we climb the mountains to seek out the giant redwood forest.
“What’s the point? The trees in our backyard are taller,” says my eldest.
“I know, but these trees are special. Because they’re…” Redder? Older? Fatter? “Fatter,” I say with confidence.
The kids frown, unsold on the special fatness of the trees. I should have gone with older, I realise in a few minutes. Our mountain ash are young upstarts compared to the redwoods, lasting only 600 years or so. These trees were three thousand years old when the Roman Empire was born.
Monterey sparkles in the sun. Big Sur is closed so the Big Sur marathon has detoured down Alvarado Street. We wander in the evening twilight, surfing the waves of cheerful runners beneath twinkling lights in the trees.
We see the Lone Cypress on 17-mile drive, contemplate serene jellyfish and sea otters at the aquarium. Carmel is full of surprisingly homely beach houses, surrounding a street of unaffordable shops. The eldest wants paddle boats on the lake. Our giant duck spins in slow circles until we accept the littlest’s legs don’t reach the pedals and switch him out with Dad. He howls beside me. It’s mid-afternoon and giant geese-like birds bob on the surface with us.
The little one has gone full tourist. His sweater says San Francisco, his cap says Monterey, and he waves a three-dollar flag we picked up at a supermarket. “That’s my flag!” he proclaims whenever we pass another American flag. He says it a lot.
“We don’t know,” we tell the hotel receptionist who asks for the make and model of our car in return for a parking pass. “It only says XT4.”
“That’s a Cadillac model,” she says agreeably.
She comes out from behind her desk to check for us. Our rental car is indeed a Cadillac XT4. We stand, gawping, at the silver car we’ve littered with muesli bar wrappers and coffee cups.
The detour around Big Sur takes us through miles and miles of strawberry fields. The towns we pass through roll off my tongue, Paso Robles, Soledad, San Miguel. We pass spectacular vineyards and find Highway One again in Cambria.
When I see the Pacific Ocean again, I know I’m lost. Travel is never as romantic as the vision you have of it. I don’t know how this happened. I play Colin Meloy, over and over, until my family beg for mercy.
Annabelle lies, sleeps with quiet eyes
On this sea-drift sun
What can you do
I warble along. The mountains rise up sharply on our left, so close I could reach out the car window and touch them. The beach moves along our right, the white sands sometimes spilling over the road. And the highway, balanced perfectly between them, skimming the edge where the mountains drop into the sea, stretching for day after day. I am completely seduced.
In Morro Bay, there’s a rock. Nobody offers any explanation. It’s just an enormous rock, sitting in the bay. The sun is forced to set around it, huge gulls nestling to sleep, perched on pristine white yachts. There’s a place that sells only saltwater taffy in six dozen flavours. It’s just too American, I refuse my kids’ pleading faces. But we find a burger place that makes ahi, seared raw tuna, and cod tacos. My son snaps excited pictures of his food.
Somebody has tied a kite to a balcony railing. It flies itself on the harbour breeze.
We visit Ostrichland to find not only ostriches, but emus. We stare at each other with amazed antipodean eyes.
We picnic in Solvang, where the main street is full of quaint Danish architecture but the streets behind are pure American, making the town feel like a stage set. My kids gleefully entice squirrels with corn chips.
We climb up to Ojai, a high valley crammed full of orange blossoms, surrounded by towering mountains in all directions. Our mouths and hands are glued together from the bag of gently melting saltwater taffy in six dozen flavours. The red sun lingers on us like it’s held in a giant stone hand.
On the last day we move through mile after mile of Malibu, to find the Santa Monica boardwalk. Acrobats and breakdancers move through the crowd. California One ends here. For us.
I take my youngest on the ferris wheel. I’m not the best with heights, and I didn’t account for the wind; our cage rocks and creaks alarmingly at the top. I hang on for dear life. My son screams with delight. Below us, a surfer crashes through the waves. Through streaming eyes I can see Highway One winding back behind us, a bright ribbon balanced on the edge between ocean and mountain, shining in a sea-drift sun.
“Why are you crying?” he wants to know.
Do you want to hear the song that started it all? Listen to Colin Meloy’s California One, here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCeRD3I55Lw
