Refugio State Beach

It's always a little sad when the great coast road strays inland. There you are, blasting north on the 101, passing Ventura, passing Santa Barbara, then, sigh, waving goodbye to the shoreline when the freeway veers inland at Gaviota Pass. This landscape is gorgeous too, but the beach is the beach. So it felt a little like cheating one Friday last month when, with Santa Barbara fading in the rearview mirror and the great veer inland just a few miles off, up jumped our destination.

The only remaining evidence of s'mores was stuck on chins and T-shirts, and some of the campers were nodding off in front of the campfire, when the headlights of a strange car swept across the group site at Refugio State Beach north of Santa Barbara. The newcomers, Lorraine and her teenage son Travis, traveling from Santa Cruz to visit relatives in the San Fernando Valley, were looking for a place to spend the night.

Ellwood Shores, where hawks forage in the fields and monarch butterflies winter in the eucalyptus groves, seems an unlikely battleground. But this tranquil coastal mesa is a prime development site, commanding a 360-degree view of the sea, tawny grassland and the deep green of the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Sunset casts a dusty rose hue across the giant rocks and sparse landscape. The cholla cactus is cloaked in a fiery aura as its dense spines reflect the sinking sun. Joshua trees, the park's namesake, turn from green to black and then vanish in the fading light. Night brings Sirius, the Dog Star, flickering so brightly with tiny bursts of color that it looks, at first glance, like an airplane. That frothy, glowing band meandering across the sky is the Milky Way Galaxy.