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Health & Fitness

An El Camino Real Journey

El Camino Real is an important part of California history and Bay Area life. AllCamino.com is a blog that celebrates the past, present and future of The Royal Road.

My earliest memory of El Camino Real is not from actually traveling on it; it's from the classic used-car commercials I saw on past-my-bedtime television when I was growing up in the East Bay. You old-schoolers, follow the bouncing ball with me: "Pete Ellis Dodge! 1095 West El Camino Real, Sunnyvale!" As an Alameda County kid, I had only the foggiest notion where Sunnyvale was, but the name "El Camino Real" was forever lodged in my consciousness.

In elementary school I learned what every California student is taught: that El Camino Real is the dusty trail the Spanish used to link their 21 missions and presidios spanning from San Diego to Sonoma. Our Bay Area missions are household names: San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Jose, and more. A 200-year-old road was still just an historical abstraction, though.

I got a crash-course in the everyday reality of the road in the late 1980s when I started my first year at Stanford University, bordered by El Camino. I quickly learned it's the infinite strip with every conceivable store: fast food, groceries, video rental, retail as far as the eye could see. I forgot about its past and simply enjoyed it for its modern convenience.

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Once I graduated and got my first car and my first job in Sunnyvale (ha!) and started spending more and more time on El Camino in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, I came to appreciate how unique the road is. While it's completely modern in every way, it's easy to see past the concrete and asphalt and visualize how it has lain in its present location, nestled between hills and Bay, crossing over creeks, for centuries. Men and women have come and gone, but the road they used and the land it spans remains.

I can also close my eyes and see the road in a different light as a symbol. California culture pours out of El Camino Real like a Big Bang of history. It's also where our future lies, as it becomes the focus of discussions about transit, dense housing, and sustainable mixed-use development.

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Since 2009, I've had my own blog about El Camino Real called AllCamino.com. I write about the road's history, its noteworthy people, places, and things, and its forward-looking plans. In short, I cover its past, present, and future. I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to work with the Bay Area Patches stitched together by The Royal Road, their common thread. (Cool metaphor, right?)  I'm an enthusiast but not yet an expert, so I look forward to hearing from you about what El Camino means to you and your town. Let's take this trip and learn something together, and may the road rise up to meet us.

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