Cambria, California’s Best Kept Secret

There’s a dramatic coastline to the west and rolling hills to the east, but it’s the scent of pines that announces your arrival in Cambria.  Ensconced in a forest of evergreens, this California village—deemed “one of America’s prettiest towns”—sneaks up on motorists traversing Highway One, the state’s scenic roadway.

Situated equidistant between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Cambria is the child of neither but rather a destination unto itself.  Admittedly more NorCal than SoCal, this is a region of California where there is more going on than the application of sunscreen.  Far from the tourist track, Cambria feels like a secret.  Operating under the radar, time slows down when you arrive.  There is no rush hour, there are no rigid rules and fast food chains don’t line its streets.  With a single glance, it’s apparent that life rewarded the village with a stop-and-smell-the-roses ambience, but despite this enviable rep it remains an unknown commodity to many.

Upon closer inspection, Cambria unfolds like a cozy coverlet.  Let me set the stage.  Tracing the unincorporated town’s main street, actually called “Main Street,” you’ll meander through its East and West Villages—past 20-some art galleries, an assortment of eateries from informal to gastronomic, a collection of locally sourced boutiques and a single grocery store.  The setting is old-fashioned charming.  It’s a dog friendly place with many of the town’s attractions found in pastel painted houses with Victorian style storefronts.  If you’ve ever wished you lived back in the day, Cambria is calling your name.  It represents a period of time when the reference to “apple” signified a fruit and the word “yahoo” meant hooray.

Let’s explore.  Meal choices are varied and voluminous, whether you’re starting your day with a lobster omelet on the patio of Indigo Moon or dining by candlelight at the Black Cat Bistro while savoring the meal’s finale of sticky toffee pudding.  There’s seafood at Sea Chest Oyster Bar, international cuisine at Robin’s Restaurant and American/French cuisine at Madeline’s.  The list goes on and on.  And the coffee scene is equally plentiful, beginning with Main Street’s Cambria Coffee Roasting Company, a welcomed reflection of local java enthusiasts.

With more than 100 wineries within 30 miles of Cambria, the region additionally tips its hat to vino, but there’s no need to leave the village for a sample. Fermentations, a retail wine shop featuring a variety of Central Coast wines, gives tastings; El Colibri Wine Bar serves its wine fireside in its cozy lounge accompanied by California tapas and you’ll find artisan wines by a single label winemaker at Black Hand Cellars.  But if a visit to a local winery is on your agenda, head into the hills.  The 2,000-acre estate vineyards of J. Lohr in Paso Robles is only one of your tasty options.

The shopping scene is classic Cambria, teeming with antique shops, gift stores and art galleries.  It’s a renowned artist colony, with artisans often in their gallery studios.  A talented example is Patricia Griffin, who can be found most afternoons in her converted one-room schoolhouse workroom, the Patricia Griffin Studio.

Cambria’s live entertainment ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­landscape equally thrives.  Showcasing concerts, musicals and plays, venues include the 35-year-old Pewter Plough Playhouse and the Cambria Center for the Arts.  And for the make-your-own entertainment crowd, there’s always lawn bowling at the Joslyn Center.

Hearst Castle. Photo: Cynthia Dial

Moonstone Beach – A shore distinguished by pebbles of amethyst, gypsum, rose quartz and milky moonstone (the area’s locally coveted gemstone), its 1.5 mile boardwalk is punctuated with benches and wooden stairs that span the distance from the cliffs to the surf and tide pools 100 feet below.

The Coast. Photo: Cynthia Dial

Fiscalini Ranch Preserve – Located in the heart of Cambria, this 440-acre area contains a vast network of trails, from an oceanside boardwalk to tracks through an endangered forest of Monterey pines.  The most popular trail is the one mile Bluff Trail, running along a cliff overlooking the ocean. The “Ranch,” as it’s called by locals, is open from dawn till dusk every day of the year, and offers a docent-guided walk once a month.

Piedras Blancas Light Station – Perched on the rugged coast about eight miles north is this historic lighthouse that promises “a glimpse into our nation’s past when lighthouses served a vital role in sage maritime navigation.”  This is prime property for spotting marine life, such as whales and sea otters, and for listening to the sounds of the sea, from the surf to the barking sea lions.

Elephant Seals’ Beach Rookery – Approximately 17,000 elephant seals migrate twice a year to this popular beach overlook, their home for breeding, birthing and molting.  The schedule of activity for these distinctive mammals with prehistoric-looking males weighing up to 5,000 pounds shakes out like this:  Winter is peak season of seal activity. Males begin arriving from their Alaska migration in late November, pregnant females appear in December and the pups are born from mid-December to early February.  The rookery, which is ten miles north of Cambria and just south of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse, requires no entry fee and provides countless photo ops.

Hearst Castle – If you fancy the finest, there’s Hearst Castle.  Celebrated for its unabashed, unadulterated and unconditional luxury, William Randolph Hearst was the man behind this ambitious architectural endeavor called La Cuesta Encantada, “The Enchanted Hill.”  Situated on a hilltop in the Santa Lucia Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a battalion of artisans labored nearly 28 years to create the regal estate of 165 rooms sitting amid 127 acres of lush gardens, numerous terraces and an assortment of palatial pools.

Known as a 20^th century phenom, Hearst is recognized for his expertise in publishing, politics and Hollywood.  In Central California he additionally is associated with the famous estate that bears his name.  The love affair of William Randolph Hearst with the best began at the age of ten when he traveled with his mother to Europe and returned with the desire to create his own “castle,” one that years later would become a home for his vast and impressive museum quality art collection of classical paintings, tapestries, religious artifacts, oriental rugs, sculptures and even antique ceilings.  Collaborating with architect Julia Morgan, this masterpiece was the multi-decade realization of his boyhood dream.

Hearst Castle is a place where “spare no expense” was the guiding principle and where the 15-minute drive up the steep hill serves as a statement of arrival.  Here Hearst entertained such luminaries of the Hollywood, political and literary worlds as Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill, Calvin Coolidge, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes.

Today a visit to the Castle is akin to previewing a private serenade to history within a home that once attracted only the moneyed crowd.  Offering a selection of four tours, it’s a thoroughbred kind of stop.  Options include: the Grand Rooms Tour, Upstairs Suites Tour, Cottages and Kitchen Tour and the Evening Tour (offered seasonally).  Each walkabout gives visitors the opportunity to return to its fabled past as a haven for the rich and renowned, but it is the Evening Tour that allows visitors to experience the Castle as one of Hearst’s guests might have enjoyed.  Docents dressed in period outfits bring the lavish surroundings to life as it existed in the 1930s.  As you walk its grand rooms teeming with its docent “houseguests,” you feel like you’ve passed a velvet rope to time travel back in history.

Located in San Simeon, Hearst Castle is about six miles north of Cambria.  Enroute keep a lookout for the property’s zebras that roam the Castle’s undeveloped land.  These black-and-white striped mammals represent one of the area’s most photographed sights after the Castle itself and the rookery’s elephant seals.

A year-round destination, Cambria’s most popular annual events are the Cambria Art and Wine Festival (January), the Cambria Western Dance Jamboree (February), the Cambria Chili Cook-Off & Classic Car Show (May) and the Scarecrow Festival (October).  Then there’s an old-fashioned July 4^th celebration and Holidays in the Pines is celebrated throughout the month of December.

Known for the indigenous moonstone found on its beaches, Cambria is the most precious stone of California’s Central Coast crown.  It’s the perfect antidote for a world that is a little too large and a little too fast.  Cambria is where to go for simplicity and for a landscape and a lifestyle that are generous, authentic and perfect.

www.visitcambria.com

The area code for Cambria, California is 805.