The modern Pismo Beach has been built up over several generations, with successive groups of folks moving in from other places. As the town has grown, and the small amount of easily accessible and usable land already used for building… it was inevitable that building would progress higher up the hills. These newer homes tend to be more individual in character. These steep sites with engineered slopes and retainer walls lend themselves to custom planning for the habitation itself.
The stark geometric lines of the house below are natural extensions of the retainer walls of which the structure is well integrated with.
clean crisp lines in Pismo Beach
Steep drops in Pismo Beach
Many of these homes are four levels high on the downhill side, yet the top floor is street level on the uphill side. Such requires massive pilings several meters deep into the underlying rock. The price of the lot is just the beginning of the costs…. but my.. what massive stunning and sweeping views of the coastline from those windows!
This coastline is something of a Riviera area…. the weather is mild… and the population seems to swell in the summer… in the winter it is a sleepy little town on the beach.
Iberian style architecture in Pismo Beach
The first Europeans in the area were the Spanish. But they used the area only for ranching, the nearby port was a handy place to load the stacks of cowhides that were this areas major export.
Close on the heels of the Spanish were a good number of Portuguese families who became known for fishing these local waters. They left their mark with the architecture, some local dishes, and names in the phone book.
This home is reminiscent of some of the homes in Portugal.
Steep hillsides in Pismo Beach
Strong retaining walls are required in these hills. You can take a steep hillside and convert it to a series of terraces…. sometimes each with one level of a home…. There are some nice examples of steep hillside dwellings in Pismo Beach.
“My thoughts expand and flourish on this most barren hill…” ~Thoreau
In the summertime we get a regular weather phenomenon known as a ‘marine layer’ that appears in the later afternoon. This brings in a layer of moist wet foggy low-clouds that roll in from the sea. By late afternoon the fog has reached inland enough to blot out the sun. While this might seem a disadvantage… actually, when other places are broiling in the summertime, our coastal areas can have very nice and cool temperatures. And in wintertime, we often have much sunnier weather than we do in the summertime…. go figure!
At any rate…. the spread of this fog layer normally extends only to the first row of hills that are a prominent feature of the landscape along much of the California coast. The relatively flat areas between the hills and the sea are known as a ‘Coastal Plain’. The Coastal Plain is heavily influenced by the moderating of the sea. In the winter time, the relatively warm waters keep the coastal plain a bit warmer than the hill areas and inland deserts. In the summertime, the relatively cool waters will keep the coastal plain area from being too hot.
We live inland beyond the coastal range of hills. So while we have clear skies in general, we can often look at the hills along the coast and see the fog backed up on the coastal side.. trying to reach over the hills. When it does, it slides down the low spots (saddles) and drifts down like a stream… slowly the warmer drier inland environment will break up the mist and vaporize it… you can watch as it slowly dissipates and turns into a vapor and drifts off into the air…. vaporizing and disappearing as it drifts….
They say that each Hydrogen and each Nitrogen, and each Oxygen molecule has been around the world a number of times…. been breathed into and out of the lungs of great numbers of people and animals in the last billion or so years….. each of these molecules is something that is, was, and will be. Eternal as matter can be.
The fog creeps in from the sea, behind the grassy knoll
Big Sky
Fog
Panorama from the Rivenrock Cactus Plantation
Fog creeps over the Coastal Hills in California
The importance of this fog layer cannot be discounted. The fog keeps the local dry environment cool enough so plants transpire less, it reduces soil moisture loss, and as a great bonus, the fog often leaves the plants wet with dew by morning. This dew and fog being caught by the plants and dropping to the ground gives the local environment a bit of moisture in the heart of an otherwise dry summer.
There is a new addition to the Marian medical building in Santa Maria.
It’s pretty large…. and has some building techniques I’ve never seen before….
It seems to be covered with a plastic sheeting….. perhaps to protect it from the elements until the outer coating can be completed.
I wonder if it is huge foam blocks… that would be filled with rebar and concrete….
But it is interesting to see. I suppose if I listened to the local news some…. I’d know what’s going on.
This winter’s rainy-season gave us plenty of rain. Luckily it mostly came down in nice easy showers for eight months or so. I don’t think there were too many weeks in which we did not get at least a little rain. Because of the low angle of the winter sun, some areas of north-facing creek bank deep in the canyon don’t get any sun at all for four months or so. These areas got plenty of thick moss growing along the vertical rock cliffs. It was worth taking photos of. I also made a screensaver of these photos, you can download it for free from our screensavers page.
We’ve had nearly a week of rainy weather… accompanied by high winds.
Some local areas got twelve or more inches of rain in a week…. this is about one third of a usual year’s rainfall… all in one week. For many places, this would be merely a regular stormy week…but it is the first such weather we’ve had in three or four years.
Here is a flooded area just off the 101 in the Avila area.
Here are two shots I took near our place… one is a downed oak in the canyon.
We had several trees go down in the canyon. The soil is so wet that the winds allow the roots to semi-liquefy the soil by moving the tree back and forth, hour after hour, day after day… for five or more days while the rain comes down, hour after hour, day after day…. this can help the tree topple.
The other photo is a nearby field, used to graze beef cows…. it is years since I have seen this amount of runoff water on this spot. The water has natural drainage swales… these people treat this ground prety good… they never allow livestock in while the ground is marshy… it is bad for the feet of the animals… and it turns the wet spots into mud wallows that don’t provide any food for the animals, and keep them muddy. Their animals are rotated around different fields so they always have fresh clean grasses, and never destroy the structure of the soil.
On the left is a tree that went down on the canyon road … there was no way to get around it. This has happened before.. once I traded vehicles with a neighbor on the other side of a downed tree…. it got me home, and him to work. Some local folks carry chainsaws with them when coming in and out… you never know when a tree will come down…
In a case like this it is local custom that anyone coming along with a chainsaw may take what they can cut… but the first goal is to open the road. In this case, the county came by and cut it. Usually when a tree goes down like this, local canyon dwellers usually cut it up and haul it away before an hour has gone by…. he who waits will not get wood. In this case.. the wind was blowing fiercely, and no one else was about… I went home and waited out the storm rather than risk a tree falling on me. I was going out taking a cat to the vet to be teutored… this is the third time he has escaped his lessons… the first time he got locked in a neighbor’s garage, the second time he clawed his way out of the doggie door while being held indoors overnight… and this was the ‘third-time’s-the-charm’ thing.. and it seemed like God caused the tee to fall to keep this cat’s bloodlines going…. what’dya think?
This is a neighbor’s barn. We had a few hours of decent weather between the thunderstorms…. just after I took this photo the radio sounded off with the ‘Public EmergencyAlert’ (first time I recall hearing an actual messag on it instead of jsut a test), warning of a severe thunderstorm crossing Pismo Beach, and heading inland at thirty MPH. A few minutes down the dirt road hail started falling onto the truck. We seldom get hail… I’ve only seen it here perhaps five times in the last twenty years. The severe thunderstorm was overhead. In a matter of minutes the wind started roaring and blew like crazy again.
Here is a photo of some clouds coming onto the shore at the Dinosaur Cove area near Pismo Beach. On the way back into the canyon I saw a young deer on the road… My first photo used the flash… but the deer was too far away… but I like the deer-eyes glow. You can see what condition our road is in…. four miles each way daily will take a toll on car batteries, and suspension systems.
A storm like this can topple some of our cactus plants also. The large Opuntia ficus-indica to the far left fell over…. it was perhaps seven feet tall, and probably weighs about one hundred pounds.
The middle photo is some of the grasses growing on one of our hillsides.. notice how they are bent over by the rain and wind. I really want the grasses to grow… they absorb water reducing runoff, they also open the soil permitting more water entry, helping the water to infiltrate into the soil. Depending on the situation, we often let the grasses grow, mature and set seeds. We will then mow them to reduce the cover for snakes, and keep the weed stickers down. The cut grasses form a mulch on the soil.
The third photo is one of our outdoor cats, Elizabeth Little-Grey. She sleeps in a little cat-condo… here she sticks her head out. We often lay a blanket over the condo at night, to help keep her warmer. On occasion we’ve brought her indoors during storms, but she doesn’t like being indoors at all… she quickly runs to the door begging to get out. She’s really cute and friendly outdoors though. All-in-all, it’s been a fairly un-fun experience the last week. Plenty of ag and mining operations have lost much production. The tourism industry likely lost some revenue during these storms… but on-the-other-hand… we’re pretty darn lucky… things could have been worse (but we’re not out of the weather yet), most of the country has had much worse weather for the last two months than this one single week has been for us. So we’re really lucky, but still hope we don’t have to go through anything near this again for some years.
After a week of near-constant rain, the sky stopped crying, the air cleared up… we were able to harvest and ship some cactus….
and we were rewarded with a spectacular sunset
Steve Ray Vaughan – The Sky is Crying ( Albert and BB King)
When you’re young is the time to go off and do silly fun things for a while. Yet, you don’t want to get so caught up in it that you lose your future.
I had a great time for a while when I was a youngster…. but then I got caught up in work…. yet I always still try to hang onto the fun in life. And in general each day is a blast, an adventure, and I love it all so much. Yet, I’m tied to a piece of land, chained to the world on this cactus-patch I cultivate. Perhaps that is why when I see folks travelling and exploring this great huge world, and themselves, I have to smile, and hope they proceed safely, and arrive at a destination one day, a destination in which they can, like me slowly age and settle into safely.
I was dropping off our boxes of cactus in Santa Maria yesterday, near the 101 Freeway, I came upon two young scruffy guys with signs, trying to gather money for their travels. Fifty yards further on I saw the honey-pot…. (or honies I suppose). I am sure these girls are travelling with the guys…. they are the ones who get the money, and the guys are close enough to keep the girls safe. It made me smile to see their marketing plan, so I snapped a picture and gave them a couple of hard-earned cactus dollars.
And yes, I’ve always had a soft-spot for those ‘Hippy chicks’, it’s good to see the species is still viable.
Travel safely young-ones!
Travelin', Broke and Adorable
~Boston~
‘Peace of Mind’
Now if youre feelin kinda low bout the dues you’ve been payin’
Future’s coming much too slow
And you wan’na run but somehow you just keep on stayin’
Can’t decide on which way to go
I understand about indecision
But I don’t care if I get behind
People livin’ in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.
Now you’re climbin’ to the top of the company ladder
Hope it doesn’t take too long
Cant’cha you see there’ll come a day when it won’t matter
Come a day when you’ll be gone
I understand about indecision
But I dont care if I get behind
People livin in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.
Take a look ahead, take a look ahead’
Now everybody’s got advice they just keep on givin’
Doesn’t mean too much to me
Lot’s of people out to make-believe they’re livin’
Can’t decide who they should be.
I understand about indecision
But I don’t care if I get behind
People livin in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.
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