Day 20: San Luis Obispo

Nau MaiYesterday we made a triumphant return to the crown jewel of middle California, San Luis Obispo’s Madonna Inn. The gleaming pink bulk of our tour bus rumbled down US Route 101 yesterday morning as the Moccamaster burbled and splattered its way to a full carafe of a single origin Ethiopian brew. As we rode each bump in the road the coffee machine’s automatic stabilisation mechanism would kick in, a powerful gyroscope telling the hydraulically actuated gimbal exactly how many degrees of correction were required to prevent a messy and dangerous overflow of boiling water. We continued up the Pacific Coast passing terracotta roofed beach towns and and rugged stretches of cliffs. As we neared the end of our journey the road cut inland and took us into a hilly part of this coastal region just outside the city of San Luis Obispo. We pulled off the highway and began up a long driveway, passing what looked like a twentieth hour hallucination of a Victorian era traveler’s inn and then…