From Arroyo Grande there were two main roads to San Luis Obispo, but we chose the one which swings out to the ocean at El Pizmo beach, a popular resort in season, though when we saw it a forlorn-looking, belittered hamlet, seemingly almost deserted. The attraction of the place is the wide, white beach, some twenty miles long, so hard and smooth that some record-breaking motor races have been made upon it. We could see but little, for a gray fog half hid the restless ocean and swept in ghostly curtains between us and the hills. The road ascended a long grade, affording some glorious sea views, for the fog had broken into fleecy clouds and the sunlight had turned the gray sea into a dense expanse of lapis lazuli. But we had not long to admire it, for the road turned sharply inland and a half dozen miles brought us into San Luis Obispo. The town takes its name from the mission founded by Serra himself in 1775—San Luis, Bishop of Tolusa, being commemorated by Padre Lasuen, who selected the site. Near at hand may be seen a series of strange pyramidal mountains, almost as regular in contour as the pyramids of Egypt, and one of them, curiously cleft through the center, suggested a bishop's mitre to the ancient Franciscan; hence the name of the "City of the Bishop." The town, though ancient, has little of interest save the mission and this, through unsympathetic restoration, has lost nearly all touch of the picturesque.
We hesitated a moment in front of the chapel and a Mexican at work on the lawn offered to conduct us about the place, and a very efficient guide he proved to be. He led us into the long, narrow chapel, now in daily use and which has a number of old paintings and queer images besides the regular paraphernalia one finds in Catholic churches. While we walked about, several Mexican women came in and kneeled at their devotions. They were clearly of the poorer class; our guide said that the people of the congregation were poor and that the padre had difficulty in raising money to keep up the mission. Around the neat garden at the rear of the new dormitory—a frame building contrasting queerly with the thick, solid walls of the chapel—were scattered bits of adobe walls of the buildings which had fallen into decay. One low, solid old structure, used as a storeroom and stable, remained to show the sturdy construction of the buildings.