Doyle Grocery Hotel

Doyle is on U.S. Highway 395 south of Honey Lake. The Grocery Hotel is on the north side of the town park, a nice park with a gazebo and tepee and a dog who comes by to check you out and carefully marks the part that is his. The owner said, "The hotel is functional. It's old Grandma's house, with a living room, dining room, kitchen, and 7 bedrooms, all with double beds. We're a well-kept secret. You should know that the famous lizard races are the first week in August. The world champion just pulled into town. He did six feet in 0.9 seconds."

Building of Hope

Right in the middle of Point Reyes Station stands the Building of Hope. There is no doubt about it: someone has stuck on its bricks, facing Highway 1, in block letters H-O-P-E.
It's empty. It looks as if someone else is trying to repair it, but no progress has been made in over a year.It is the community bulletin board, a valuable resource for anthropologists trying to figure out who humans are.

Bolinas

Bolinas is supposed to be a California alternative town, a latter day hippie town, an off-the-grid kind of town, especially off the grid of mainlining American culture. CALTRANS used to put up signs on Highway 1 with arrows to Bolinas. The town would take them down. No sign is there today.

You expect to see old hippies and young hippies, all calm and cool in the fog of a Sunday morning. You are not disappointed. A cluster of unshaven old men in unwashed clothes lean back against wooden house steps, talking, a young man in unkept khakis takes patient care of an untidy two-year-old, a tie-dyed young woman gently pushes her child in a second-hand stroller, an old woman with blackened teeth and patched bluejeans repeats "inevitable" to everyone who passes by, a man with a guitar slung over his shoulder, wearing a tailored black coat, with a paisley scarf over his face, slow dances down Wharf Road and sings a cappella to himself.

But also the sheriff's deputy shuffles along, smiling, talking to all of the above, and to none of the following: heroic bare-chested surfers manly striding out to meet the waves, moustached, leather-clad bikers, cyclists in motley tights, affluent French tourists digitally taking photos, a middle-aged, well-to-do American man, alone, sitting on the lone stump in the deserted bare-grass park and afterwards ordering a meal and beer at the Coast Cafe, not eating the former but drinking the latter, elbow on table, head on hand, staring.

The center of town is an altar of flowers and antelopes, angels and buddhas, lots of them. Next to it are multi-colored sheets of paper to write messages "for divine love nectar to bubble up throughout America's communities." Ernesto Sanchez left an artist's statement, "A spirit house, a shrine, an altar--each is a manmade object that offers a portal to the unknown." The guitar man says to the sheriff's deputy, "Dude, that's what got me to reality."

Behind Bo*Gas is a little outdoor, sort of a non-gallery. On the rear door is written, "Wharf Road will only give you life."

Hallelujah Junction

Where Highway 70 comes down from the Sierra Nevada and meets Highway 395 is Hallelujah Junction. Once it was a bar. A reverend on tour said, "Hallelujah ought to be a church, not a bar." Then, for a while it doubled as a terminal, when Highway 70 was closed. Pilots used the pavement for a runway. "I guess they thought it was the promised land," a local man once said. Now it's a Shell Station doubling as a lottery bar. All filling stations. It never was a church.

Bordertown

Humans like edges ... borders ... boundaries. We like to be on them, though we might fall off. We like to cross over them, into other humans' territory, though it may be strange. Misanthropes, remember this about us. Be thankful for the wander gene, that makes us cross from California into Nevada at Bordertown, where new vistas unfold and new ventures beckon. Go ahead, put money in the machine. It Pays to Play.

Schickenberg Nursery

Among a cluster of nurseries along Highway 1 north of Half Moon Bay are the topiaries of Schickenberg's. A carriage and team of horses ride by as birds fly off into the moisture-thick sky. Across Highway 1 to the west is Winged Stump, carved by the wind, unable to rise again.

Sculpture Yard

In Half Moon Bay, across the creek that intersects Main Street, is a yard of sculpture. A gravel road makes a circle. Inside the circle is art made of wood. On the circumference of the circle, lined up against a row of dark foliage, is more art made of wood. Off to the side is what looks like a workshop. There are no words anywhere, no name of the business, no name of the artist, no titles, and no signs "For Sale." Next door, however, or maybe the same door, is "Body and Soul."