A SLO Day

Sorry for such long delays between posts. It’s not that nothing has happened since we’ve been here in California. We’ve done a fair amount of things, actually. It’s just that Matt has gotten behind in getting things all written out and posted. He’s really going to try to get caught up. 3, 2, 1… GO!

The town of San Luis Obispo, where Maya is working, is about 10 miles up the highway from our apartment. It turns out that the locals don’t call San Luis Obispo by its name but instead us the mono-syllabic acronym SLO. We have not yet totally adopted this use between ourselves, but it’s really hard to resist the trend to verbal laziness.

Soon after getting moved in we drove up to San Luis (another shortened form) to find the hospital and investigate what kind of fun we could have there. SLO is the largest city for 30 or 40 miles around so it has almost all of the stores we might want. A Blockbuster, a World Market, a Borders, a Best Buy… There is also a Ralphs – which is really a Kroger with a different sign out front. This makes us very happy because all the items we are used to getting are available again, for the most part. Also the prices of most things here is closer to what we were used to in Louisville, expect for gas. Fuel here is typically $4.35-$4.75 a gallon. Don’t know how that compares to your neck of the woods, but we don’t like it. On the other hand, we do fill up when we need it, so that's inelastic demand for you.

We make a stop at the World Market just about every time we go up there. Early on we found a wooden figure of a bird that we liked. It didn’t have a price on it and it was the only one on the shelf so we debated about how much it would be and if we really needed it or not and whether or not we wanted to deal with them having to look up of the price on the item. In the end we decided that we liked it enough and took it up along with our other items. We’ve been buying a lot of wine here since just about every store has a very good selection of reasonably priced wines. The bird did have to be looked up and we waited while the manager people searched for a SKU. At first the cashier called back to the office and was trying to describe it. That’s about the time they opened another lane because we were holding up the one we were in. The over-the-phone description was not getting anywhere so a manager came out to actually see the item. They had been imagining some kind of wall hinging. So a manger came out and took the bird off to find out what it was called and how much to charge us for it. While he was gone, we expended all the small talk we could think of with the cashier and still he did not return so we just stood around in the line not talking and waiting. Eventually, the manager re-appeared bringing the bird and the news that it was called “bird blk w/ tail” which is surprisingly accurate descriptive of the figurine. It cost a mere $9.99! We bought it and now it is in the bathroom making the counter more interesting.

Speaking of interesting, California is full of missions. Back when “California” meant the whole western coast of New Spain the mission system set about bringing civilization to the hinterlands. From the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula to what is now the US-Mexico border there are about 30 missions. In 1767 the government of New Spain decided to expand the missions into Alta California (“Upper California,” what is today part of the US). This was an attempt to secure the Pacific coast against potential incursions from the British, the Russians and any others who might be interesting in settling the area. There is some room to argue about how the missions are counted, but the majority opinion is that 21 missions were founded in Alta California between 1770 and 1823. Lacking the population to send colonists from New Spain, the idea was to convert the local native population into Christians, agriculturalists and loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown. The mission effort met with mixed success. The whole history of the endeavor is terribly fascinating. More of it will be told here in time because we plan to visit all of the missions while we are out here.

San Luis Obispo is where it is because of a mission. The town grew up around the mission of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and took its name from the mission. It was founded in 1772 as the fifth mission and as a base for hunting the numerous bears in the nearby Los Osos Valley. Apparently, bear meat helped several of the missions survive long enough to get their farms and cattle herds up and running. The mission is just west of the scenic downtown these days. The building has been renovated several times and has looked quite different throughout its history. The last time it was renovated, it was restored it its original appearance. We went through the museum (former living quarters for the padres) and looked at the stuff there. The church itself was closed for some kind of maintenance so we didn’t get to see that. We plan to go back sometime and take the official tour. Visiting this mission came with strong recommendations so we need to really see all of it sometime. For now, we’re not checking this one off the list.

There is a lot of quaint shopping in the downtown area. There are some book stores, lots of clothing shops and various resultants and food shops. Driving in the area is a challenge because of the wall-to-wall people that are always crossing the street. Also when we were there the streets were swarming with little kids on skateboards. Ah summer! We visited one book store and a vintage clothing store, just to say we had seen something. This was just a preliminary investigation so we’ll most likely go back one of these days and see everything. We also have heard about a “gum wall,” which is supposed to be exactly what it sounds like. We’ll have to look for that too!