The Royal Road

To leave Los Angeles, a pair of visiting Midwesterners find their way onto what Californians, and visiting Midwesterners, call “the 101.” (The addition of the definite article in front of a highway number is a linguistic peculiarity heard only in SoCal.) The highway traces the route of the Spanish Franciscans who established 21 missions along the coast from San Diego to Sonoma in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The Spanish called it “el Camino Real,” the Royal Road, and signs along the road still display that name today. The 101 is also known as the Hollywood Freeway until it turns west, after which it becomes the Ventura Freeway.

Taking the 101 up the coast runs the travelers through Camarillo, which has a link to music history. Jazz legend Charlie Parker was a guest at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital in 1947, drying out from heroin addiction, and wrote “Relaxin’ at Camarillo” there. (Steely Dan name-checked the title in “Parker’s Band,” a track from Pretzel Logic.) Some people speculate that “Hotel California” might be, on some allegorical level, about a stay at Camarillo. The Midwestern girl, however, suggests that the real Hotel California is a motel in Santa Barbara, farther up the 101. It has “in” arrows painted at both entrances but no corresponding “out” arrows anywhere—you can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave.

Santa Barbara, the ultimate destination of the Midwesterners, is where the Spanish built a mission in 1786, and is named for Saint Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen and all who work with explosives. Her Wikipedia entry says “she is venerated by everyone who faces sudden and violent death in work,” which is why a T-shirt seen locally calls her “mistress of impending doom.” Named appropriately for a city on an earthquake fault, Santa Barbara is where Los Angelenos go for the weekend, so it’s loaded with motels and hotels, trendy shops, restaurants, and bars of all sorts, and has plenty of mountainside mansions. Its eastern neighbor, Montecito, is even more exclusive: Oprah Winfrey has a place there, as do Carol Burnett, Steve Martin, John Cleese, Rob Lowe, Steven Spielberg, Ellen deGeneres, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and the Midwestern boy’s favorite novelist, T. C. Boyle.

The Midwesterners sight only one celebrity during their week in southern California, however—70s pinup girl (and former member of Josie and the Pussycats) Cheryl Ladd stops at a winery they are visiting, but only for a moment. Rural Santa Barbara County is wine country (the movie Sideways is set there), and the Midwesterners indulge whenever possible. But it’s possible only for a while, a too-brief while, but one they’re unlikely to forget, and very likely to revisit.

“Ventura Highway”/America (buy it here)
“Parker’s Band” (live in 2003)/Steely Dan (bootleg)
“Mission Bell”/Fleetwood Mac (buy it here)