Laid-back, mega-rich and gorgeous

By KEVIN JONES

As you wind through Hollywood and Beverly Hills, along Sunset Boulevard to Malibu and beyond, you see the rich side of LA life and gradually trade in the smell of smog for ozone.

Snake your way north along the first part of Highway One and you'll soon hit Oxnard and Ventura, neither of which are particularly memorable, but keep going and soon you'll strike gold.

Santa Barbara, possibly the most laid-back town in California, awaits.

Home to Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the whole town seems to bust a gut trying to be casual. Surely, you can't be this relaxed without trying so hard that your blood pressure spurts! This is a seriously blissed-out town.

It's got beautiful mountain vistas to the east, that craggy Californian coastline, with its surf beaches and rugged atmosphere to the west and a self-assured calm that almost belongs in a cult.

Before I sound too cynical, Santa Barbara is a lovely town with genuinely friendly people and just about everything a rich coastal community can offer. It is just a little too good to be true, that's all.

Santa Barbara was once the film capital of the world. In l919, before the motion picture industry moved to Hollywood, the American Film Company opened the Flying A Studio in Santa Barbara.

The studio was the largest of its kind in the world for many years. More than 1200 movies (mostly westerns) were made in the studio's 10-year life span.

In 1928, Charlie Chaplin built the Montecito Inn to cater to the Hollywood crowd of the roaring Twenties. Actor Ronald Coleman and Alvin Weingand bought the stylish San Ysidro Ranch resort in 1935, operating it as an exclusive hideaway for friends and guests such as Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Audrey Hepburn and Groucho Marx.

Santa Barbara has done a magnificent job of preserving its colorful past. The city is filled with old adobes and quiet courtyards, but there is an abundance of restaurants, shops and nightlife.

Check out the Santa Barbara Mission, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Stearns Wharf, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the area vineyards and much, much more.

Just don't fall into the trap of spending too much time in Santa Barbara's clutches because there is a lot of California to see yet.

California's Highway One is to be seen to be believed, and anyone who considers making the trip to San Francisco from Los Angeles by the inland route is a bogan with no soul; has rocks in their head; is in a big, big hurry and cannot afford a flight; or is all three.

Australians who have been treated to a drive along Victoria's Great Ocean Road would have something to compare Highway One to.

From Santa Barbara, through Goleta and the delightful San Luis Obispo and onward north towards Big Sur, there is a postcard view around every bend.

Along the way, it is worth taking time out to visit the legendary Hearst Castle at San Simeon, about an hour's drive north of San Luis Obispo.

Any movie buff who is a fan of Citizen Kane will know that star/writer/director Orson Welles based his tale on the larger-than-life persona of William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst, the legendary newspaper proprietor, was a mega-rich, rabidly jingoistic son of a millionaire miner who hated minorities and courted the rich and famous at his magnificent castle in the Santa Lucia range of mountains halfway between LA and San Francisco.

Craftsmen laboured for almost 28 years creating the beautiful Spanish mansion that was dubbed La Cuesta Encantada (The Enchanted Hill) but became known as Hearst Castle.

Visit the official web site of Hearst Castle now and check out the slide show to get a taste of Hearst's mind-boggling creation and some idea of how seriously, stinking rich he was.

After sampling the tour of the Hearst Castle, it's time to hit the road again because another treat awaits: Big Sur.

Los Angeles
Big Sur
Monterey and Carmel
San Francisco
Yosemite
Death Valley