Day Two

In the morning, I continued to the coast on Nacimiento Road, through a light coastal overcast layer. Highway 1 was deserted and spectacular all the way south to the Hearst Castle. At Cambria, I turned inland to continue my automotive game of microclimate hopscotch, crossing back again from the coastal scrub to forest to live oaks and vineyards to dry fields. At Parkfield, I photographed the visibly bent bridge that crosses the San Andreas Fault.

Turning south through dry fields of grass, I encountered some beige debris on the road, which turned out to be grasshoppers. Hundreds and hundreds of them. They didn’t appear to be moving much, but as I learned later, my car must have vacuumed up every last one of them as they hopped at the last instant.

A local resident steered me south from Shandon on Shell Creek Road, which features an unfenced pasture full of cattle free to wander onto the road. Fortunately for the NSX and me, they stayed on the grass. Highway 58, perhaps the finest driver’s two-lane highway in the state, brought me back west to 101 and civilization. Later, east of Santa Barbara, the winding Highways 150 East and 33 North took me to Ojai, where I finished the day at a campground

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