ROAD TRIP 1990–1992
May 1991. It was an era before GPS and smartphones, when a paper map was the only guide. This is the record of the first afternoon of a road trip that began with nothing more than a direction and a map, covering the stretch from Big Sur to Santa Maria along California Route 1.
I had left Sacramento that morning. Since then, I had crossed paths with a young man in a Volkswagen Bus, driven through forests in search of the ocean, caught my first sight of the Pacific, and followed Route 1 along the cliffs of Big Sur. And yet, somehow, only a single day had passed. As the young traveler continued south through the California twilight, he found himself looking back on a day that already seemed impossibly long.
Cliffs of Exhilaration
The Pacific Ocean lay to my right. Steep mountains rose to my left. Between them, California Route 1 wound its way south.
The sea filled the horizon. Route 1 clung to the cliffs as if crawling along their edge. Far below, the Pacific crashed against the rocks, baring white teeth as it roared.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel without realizing it, and my mind was alive with excitement. Every curve revealed a new landscape. Each time, I told myself that this must surely be the last great view. Then the next bend would appear, and an even more spectacular scene would be waiting beyond it. The pattern repeated itself again and again.
At some point, I began noticing strange utility poles standing along the ocean side of the road. There were only two wooden poles at a time, connected by a single thick cable. The span was no more than a few dozen meters. Beyond the poles, the cable simply disappeared. I could not understand what purpose they served.
They appeared when the landscape opened up, then vanished again, only to return unexpectedly long after I had forgotten about them. Oddly enough, those mysterious poles remain in my memory even more clearly than some of the spectacular scenery. They felt like a foreign object that had somehow found its way into the landscape.
The Endless Twilight and the Red Car
Gradually, the road began to soften. Before I realized it, the endless cliffs had disappeared. The mountains drifted away behind me, and the coastline opened into gentler country. Big Sur was coming to an end.
Route 1 transformed into a green plain that rose only slightly above sea level. The road became flat and unchanging, stretching south for mile after mile. The ocean wind settled into the calm that follows excitement.
My own excitement faded with it. With the setting sun at my back, I drove on in silence.
How many hours had I been behind the wheel?
When I left Sacramento, morning dew had still clung to the car. Now the sun was preparing to sink into the Pacific. The distance between those two moments felt impossible.
Somewhere along the way, the cars behind me disappeared. The oncoming traffic vanished as well. Before long, it felt as though only two vehicles remained in the world: the one ahead of me and my own.
The car in front was a red compact. A familiar Japanese badge sat on the trunk. Its roof rack was piled high with luggage, stacked almost like a small mountain.
Every time the road curved, the driver slowed down. Under the weight of the cargo, the car leaned gently into the turns. I could have passed it whenever I wanted, but I never did. Instead, I stayed behind it, mile after mile.
I wondered who was inside. Where were they going? What kind of journey were they on?
Looking back now, I realize I was asking the same questions about myself.
I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I was searching for. I only knew I was heading west.
I told myself it was because a hotel reservation was waiting for me. But was that really true?
The sun eventually slipped below the horizon, yet darkness refused to arrive. Light lingered in the western sky. California evenings seemed impossibly long. The sun was gone, but daylight remained. Blue faded into violet, violet deepened into indigo, and through it all the car continued south.
The hotel was still far away. Yet my impatience had disappeared.
Back in Santa Cruz, I would have been watching the clock constantly. Now time itself seemed to stretch.
I simply drove on, listening to the engine and following the red car ahead. That alone seemed enough.
As I drove, I found myself replaying the entire day—the morning in Sacramento, the young man in the Volkswagen Bus, the long bridge, the cowboy in the supermarket parking lot, the forests of Route 84, the red barn, the Pinocchio cabin, the tiny post office where I mailed a postcard to myself, my first sight of the Pacific, and the man who had shown me how to pump gas. They all felt like memories from another lifetime.
But they weren’t.
Every one of them had happened today.
And at the time, I was certain I would remember every detail forever. I truly believed that.
Yet thirty-five years later, different things remain. The smell of ocean air and the sound of the engine. The heat trapped in the driver’s seat by the California sun. The vibration that traveled through the car whenever the tires crossed the joints in the concrete pavement. The children comparing the flavors of their ice cream during a traffic jam. The giant box-shaped Ro-Ro ship moving through the strait below the bridge. The motorcycle officer who swept past me. And the red car ahead.
A Conversation with Darkness
Without warning, the red car signaled.
At a lonely intersection, it turned left.
Its taillights drifted into the darkness and disappeared. For a moment, it felt as though I had lost a traveling companion.
From then on, the only light on the road came from my own headlights.
The world suddenly grew smaller.
And darker.
The ocean was no longer visible. Only when moonlight reflected off the water could I sense that it was still there.
The Pacific had not disappeared. It had merely slipped beyond sight. Out beyond the darkness, that vast ocean still stretched beside me, cold and endless as ever.
Road signs occasionally flashed into view, reassuring me that I was still moving forward. There were few oncoming cars. Beyond the reach of my headlights lay nothing but darkness.
Nothing happened. There was no scenery left to admire.
Yet I did not mind those hours.
In a way, I needed them.
They gave me time to look back on the longest day I had lived in years.
An Ending That Was Only a Pause
It was close to eleven o’clock that night when I finally arrived at the Airport Hilton in Santa Maria.
The automatic doors slid open, revealing a fountain beneath a vast atrium rising through the center of the lobby. A sweet artificial fragrance greeted me, the kind I had noticed before in airports and shopping malls.
It had been a long day.
An extraordinarily long day.
Yet when I arrived, there was no sense of accomplishment.
This was not my destination.
It was simply a place to sleep.
By tomorrow, I would load the car again and continue south as though I had never been there.
After checking in, I stepped into a glass elevator overlooking the atrium. The ride to the third floor felt strangely slow.
Using the room key attached to an oversized plastic room tag, I unlocked the door.
I dropped my bags on the floor and collapsed onto the bed without even taking off my shoes.
That is where my memory ends.
▶ 1991 American West Road Trip Day1｜Road Map – Sacramento to Santa Maria
Articles from Day 1
- The Beginning of a Road Trip Across the American West (1991)
- The San Mateo–Hayward Bridge and a Quiet Silicon Valley (1991)
- Woodside: The Cowboy Who Appeared in a Supermarket Parking Lot (1991)
- Woodside: Where Silicon Valley Meets Cowboy Culture (1991)
- The Red Barn of La Honda Creek Preserve (1991)
- San Gregorio: Chasing the Memory of the Wind (1991)
- San Gregorio: The Story of the Stage Stop (1991)
- San Gregorio General Store 94074: A Living Time Capsule (1991)
- San Gregorio State Beach: Where Route 84 Ends and the Pacific Begins (1991)
- San Gregorio State Beach: Past, Present, and Future at the End of Route 84 (1991)
- South San Mateo County Coast: My First Drive on California Route 1 (1991)
- Santa Cruz: Coffee, Doughnuts, and a Full Tank of Freedom (1991)
- Santa Cruz: The Day a Payphone Changed the Journey (1991)
- Monterey and Carmel: The Places I Never Reached (1991)
- Big Sur to Santa Maria: The Final Stretch of Day One (1991)