The new highway misses the village by a mile or two, but the knowing ones will never regret that its quiet and seclusion are still unbroken. They will enjoy the pleasant rural inn even more on that account.
Our car was before the Tavern's vine-covered veranda early in the morning. There was nothing to detain us in Los Olivos and after a breakfast quite as satisfactory as the dinner of the evening before—we had trout from the Santa Ynez—we bade good-bye to our host, who gave us careful directions about the road. These were beginning to be needed, for sign-boards were less frequent and El Camino Real in some places was little better than it must have been in the days of the padres—often scarcely distinguishable from the byroads. All this will be improved in the near future, for everywhere along the roadside we saw stakes marking the state highway survey, which, when carried to completion, will make El Camino Real a highway fit for a king, indeed!
For the greater part of the day we ran through hills studded with immense oaks—the omnipresent glory of this section of California. In places we caught glimpses of green carpeted dales stretching beneath these forest giants, and noticed that these trees usually stand at spacious distances from each other, which no doubt accounts for their perfect symmetry. The road in the main is level, though somewhat rough and winding as far as Santa Maria, the first town of consequence. It is a modern, prosperous-looking place which the last census set down as possessing four thousand souls; it now claims a thousand more and, indeed, its appearance seems to substantiate its claim, though one is likely to be fooled in this particular by some of the newer California towns. Their wide streets and spacious lots often give the impression of a larger population than they really have.
Out of Santa Maria we followed a bumpy road to Arroyo Grande through a brown, barren-looking country—for the season had been almost without rain. The wind was blowing a gale, driving the sand with stinging force into our faces; and two weeks later when we passed over the same road on our return the same sirocco was sweeping the country. We asked a garage man of Santa Maria if this had been going on all the time, but he promptly declared that it had begun only that morning and that it was "very unusual."