{"id":1931,"date":"2013-07-15T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningnewsinverse.com\/?p=1931"},"modified":"2013-07-14T14:09:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T21:09:06","slug":"nipomo-foreign-or-domestic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=1931","title":{"rendered":"NIPOMO – FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Capt_Dana_Tree_Nipomo\"<\/a>

Captain Dana Tree
Hopefully he didn’t hang people from it<\/p><\/div>\n

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson<\/p>\n

This week we’re doing the best thing you can do in Scottsdale in the summer. \u00a0Leave. \u00a0I can hardly contain my excitement. \u00a0If it weren’t so darn hot I’d do a dance, but blinking my eyes while lying in a heap on the couch will have to suffice. \u00a0For several summers now we have spent a few weeks in Nipomo. \u00a0If you’re typical of my friends you have just asked yourself – where in the heck is Nipomo? \u00a0I’ve had people guess that it’s some quaint village on the coast of Italy. \u00a0One person thought we were going to a remote city in Japan. \u00a0I have even discovered that if you write it in a blog, spell-checker doesn’t recognize “Nipomo”.\u00a0Fact is, most people have no idea where it is\u00a0and that’s what makes it so good.<\/p>\n

Nipomo is<\/strong> a quaint coastal village and it is<\/strong> remote (sort of) set between Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo in the Central Coast of California. \u00a0We discovered it several years ago as we were driving on Highway 101 from San Francisco to Los Angeles. \u00a0There was a Trilogy development that had just opened in Nipomo that we wanted to check out. \u00a0For those of you unfamiliar, Trilogy is the name Shea Homes has given to all the “active adult” communities they’re building. Guess it sounds better than “old geezer housing”. \u00a0 Being active and adult (okay, not always but at least sometimes) we wanted to see if it might be a place to live one day.<\/p>\n

We told the sales person we had never heard of Nipomo and he said that it was once the answer to the “Jeopardy” question: “Where is the most consistent weather in the United States?” \u00a0 Given that NO ONE I know in California has ever heard of Nipomo, much less contestants who might be on Jeopardy, I suspect that it was just one of the many lies that the salesman told that day. \u00a0But we were intrigued enough with the surroundings to come back the next summer and stay in the Blacklake Golf community and have done so most summers ever since.<\/p>\n

Turns out that Nipomo was first settled by the Chumash Indians. \u00a0Ne<\/em>-po-mah<\/i>\u00a0is the Chumash term for “foot of the hill”. \u00a0It probably should have been “footing the bill” given the success of their current day casino. \u00a0Rancho Nipomo was one of the first and largest of the Mexican land grants in San Luis Obispo County. \u00a0Modern day Nipomo was founded in 1837 when the Mexican governor granted William Dana, a Boston sea-captain, 38,000 acres in the area. \u00a0He married a woman from Santa Barbara and in 1839 they built the\u00a0Dana Adobe, which\u00a0served as an important stop for travelers between Mission San Luis Obispo and Mission Santa Barbara. \u00a0It also became the exchange point for mail going between Northern and Southern California, thus becoming the first regular mail route in California. \u00a0I wonder if they lost as much mail back then? \u00a0But I digress.<\/p>\n

\"Migrant<\/a>

Migrant Mother<\/p><\/div>\n

Nipomo became a large farming area and was a major stop for the Pacific Coast Railway from the 1880’s through the 1930’s. \u00a0Turns out that one of my favorite photographs\u00a0(right)was taken in Nipomo: \u00a0“Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange . \u00a0Apparently during the Depression Ms. Lange worked for the Resettlement Administration and would travel the old US Highway 101 photographing migrant farm workers. \u00a0The name of the woman in the picture is Florence Owens Thompson. \u00a0In the 1950’s the current Highway 101 was built west of the old road. \u00a0Fittingly, the old highway was re-named Thompson Road.<\/p>\n

\"Blacklake\"<\/a>

Blacklake Golf Course
Odds are I’ll be in that trap<\/p><\/div>\n

By the end of 1942, the train tracks had been removed for the\u00a0war effort and Nipomo became just another small farming community. \u00a0Today, it is known for two things: \u00a0golf and Jocko’s steak house. \u00a0The golf is good, with 27 holes at Blacklake, 30 holes at Trilogy (including a fabulous 12 hole 3-par course) and a beautiful course in Arroyo Grande, just a mile from Nipomo. \u00a0Notice I said it was good – not great. \u00a0The Nipomo Chamber of Commerce describes the golf this way: “The prevalence of golf has led some to refer to Nipomo as a mini Pebble Beach, only with better weather.” \u00a0I think the “some” they’re referring to are a) members of said chamber and b) people who have never actually been to Pebble Beach. \u00a0But then again, in Nipomo you don’t pay $500 (plus cart and caddie) per round. \u00a0Nor do the golf courses in Nipomo require that you stay at their lovely Lodge for\u00a0two nights at $700 per night in order to play there. \u00a0\u00a0 So all in all, it’s a good experience and you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to hit a little white ball.<\/p>\n

Jocko’s Steak House is famous up and down the coast of California. \u00a0Even on a Tuesday night the line to get in wraps around the corner. \u00a0It’s so good that, well, I’ll just say this: \u00a0I don’t eat red meat and I make an exception once a year to eat at Jocko’s. \u00a0In fact, it is SO good that I will devote my next blog entirely to Jocko’s – assuming that I haven’t gone into cardiac arrest before I can write my review.<\/p>\n

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson This week we’re doing the best thing you can do in Scottsdale in the summer. \u00a0Leave. \u00a0I can hardly contain my excitement. \u00a0If it weren’t so darn hot I’d do a dance, but blinking my eyes … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,813],"tags":[1066,1064,1072,1063,1068,1069,1074,1067,1070,1071,1062,1073,549,1065],"class_list":["post-1931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-travel","tag-arroyo-grande","tag-blacklake-golf-course","tag-california-mail-route","tag-chumash-indians","tag-dorothea-lange","tag-florence-owens-thompson","tag-highway-101","tag-jockos","tag-mission-san-luis-obispo","tag-mission-santa-barbara","tag-nipomo","tag-pacific-railway","tag-pebble-beach","tag-trilogy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-v9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1931"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1931\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}