The Wall Street Journal doesn't often carry an article that will choke you up, put a tear in your eyes. I just finished reading one such. Entitled "The Walker and the Saint," it is a meditation on the travails of a cancer semi-survivor whose response has been to walk Father Junipero Serra's mission trail from San Diego to San Francisco.
She has walked the entire length, some 800 miles. Now with cancer returned for a third or fourth (?) time, she has started walking it again, this time the 48 mile segment between Mission Santa Barbara, the "Queen of the Missions," and Mission Santa Ines, located in Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley.
I've not walked this, I don't share her ecstatic response to the plodding miles. But I love this part of the CA coast, and have spent perhaps 30 months in the region over the last two decades. Her description of San Marcos Pass, CA154, as frightening is accurate ... for a pedestrian ... no problemo for an alert driver.
Ironically, stratospheric housing costs force non-wealthy people with jobs in Santa Barbara to live in the Lompoc-Santa Maria area and drive CA154 daily, contributing to the traffic which frightened her when she walked it.
It is gorgeous country, you immediately know why Ronald Reagan, with money to burn, bought himself a ranch high in those mountains. I would too if I could afford it, and had the Secret Service to guard it.
