Yeah, Cecelia made the mistake of asking me to plan our Labor Day adventure, which began with a 4:30am wakeup call. By 5:30am I had managed to get the girlfriend into the driver's seat of her car, but she was already in need of a pre-dawn caffeine fix, so we stopped at her favorite drug dealer, an AM/PM convenience store, to purchase coffee. And by 7:30am we were rolling through Santa Barbara, heading up the Chumash Highway.
Dense fog prevented any sort of grand panorama of the seaside city and surroundings. We also experienced intermittent rain throughout the day.
After entering the Los Padres National Forest, we turned onto Painted Cave road and approached our first short hike to someplace special. Painted Cave can be seen from the road. It's that short of a hike. More like a hop, skip, and a jump. But it's a narrow road with no parking. So we drove a little further up to a turnout next to a use trail which made it slightly more difficult to reach the cave.
Metal fencing blocked access to the cave's interior, which was about ten feet deep. But two small openings provided enough space to peek through at the Chumash rock art.
Fancy websites like to speculate that these pictures played a role in ancient, shamanistic rituals. But any young, testosterone-driven male should immediately recognize the true, romantic purpose of these drawings. Try to imagine a Chumash Don Juan decorating his bachelor cave with celestial and animalistic art to impress his girl. Perhaps after a little peyote, she lies down on her back and stares up at his handiwork. If she likes what she sees, she will probably let him have his way with her, all the while thinking to herself, "How lucky am I to be with such a creative man!"
I then convinced Cecelia that she should drive me to our next special spot: Knapp's Castle. Only a few miles away from Painted Cave, we parked at a turnout along East Camino Cielo. A half-mile long fire road hike took us to the ruins of this old mansion which burned down a long time ago.
On a clear, non-foggy day, the view from the castle bedroom must have been amazing back when it was first built. I'm sure it, like the Painted Cave, played an important role in seducing a nature-loving woman or two.
Cecelia loves bouldering. So next I made sure to make her drive us to Lizard's Mouth Rock, off West Camino Cielo. Again, no parking lot, only a turnout near an obscure trailhead. There were problems following a faint path through the fog. But we enjoyed goofing around on all the rock formations.
Luckily we encountered local hikers who pointed us in the correct direction for Lizard's Mouth Rock.
I guess it kind of looks like a lizard's mouth. But I feel sorry for the wannabe Casanova who originally told his girlfriend, "Doesn't that look like a lizard's mouth?" Because he probably got a blank stare--and no mountain sex that day.
Watch out, Cecelia, the lizard is about to eat your head!
Well, after all that excitement, Cecelia and I needed lunch. So we drove out of the fog and onto Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. And like the Chumash shellfish-eaters before her, Cecelia consumed a whole pound of mussels at Moby Dick's restaurant.
Of course, afterward, like a true modern American, she required more caffeine in order to stay awake throughout the afternoon. She sipped a Coca-Cola during our final special hike of the day: Carpinteria Bluffs.
Perhaps a few ancient Chumash babies were conceived along these bluffs, but probably not many modern American ones. It was a nice enough place, but the top of the cliffs now contain a set of railroad tracks, and the beach below is now covered in bits of tar and dead animal parts. Several lobster/crab traps had also washed up onto shore. Other than that we enjoyed walking along the beach and inspecting the tide pools.
I tried to impress Cecelia with my rudimentary knowledge of the various shellfish clinging to the rocks. But having just consumed mussels for lunch, she suddenly seemed grossed out by the sight of them in their natural, tar-covered habitat. "These aren't the mussels they serve in restaurants, are they?"
Like I said, no American man has ever scored with a woman at the Carpinteria Bluffs.
