“I suddenly realised I was in California. Warm, balmy air – air you can kiss – and palms.”
I thought about these words Jack Kerouac wrote in 1951 as I turned off the state’s famous Highway 1 and followed the road around, the gleaming Pacific Ocean in sight. Everything around me was tinted pastel pink in the early evening light. A liquor store’s neon flickered, sun-faded motel signs promised vacancies, a couple walking arm-in-arm crossed the wide street framed by the rolling Irish Hills. If the perfect sleepy beach town still exists in California, I wondered if I’d found it.
