Attention: These posts following our coastal Christmas-thru-New-Year’s trip are named a bit specifically, that’s because when these were originally shared, they only had one photo each due to bandwidth limitations back in the day. Since that time, I’ve updated them to include images that relate to the details of each day.

Wow, what a find – The Seabreeze Cafe in Santa Cruz, California, and they were open on New Year’s Day!!! We had originally stopped a few days ago on our way up the coast based on a tip from the cashier at Dharma’s Vegetarian Restaurant. This was Caroline’s plate: it is an oat and corn flour waffle topped with fresh pineapple, banana, kiwi, mango, yogurt, and a dusting of toasted macadamia and coconut with a hint of ginger. A great start to the new year and a future stop on our journeys up the Pacific coast.

It’s overcast and stormy, making us happy on one hand that we bailed out of the north as maybe they are taking the brunt of it, but then again, we could have had blue skies, which would have been a nice touch. What wasn’t nice was that we got a flat with a nail through the tire. There was no way I was going to drive on the spare all the way back to Phoenix, especially down Highway 1, which already offers a goodly amount of pucker value due to the narrow road that hugs the coast, er, um, I mean cliffs.

Barely visible on the right is the Bixby Bridge, and while it might be argued that the coast is less than stellar on overcast days, I’d like to offer that being able to see this amazing coast in any condition is a gift.

Clouds rising from the forest with redwoods hidden back there add to the beauty.

The waterfall is a part of the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, but the greenish/brown turbid water must be from some nearby runoff as we’ve seen this waterfall before, and that tiny amount of water is certainly not what is discoloring the ocean.

Oh shit, landslide ahead. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I honestly and desperately wanted to turn around rather than face what might lie ahead. My mind is racing as to when half a mountain will just slide into the ocean, and with all this rain we’ve had in the last few days, I can easily see just that happening any minute.

And then it’s our turn to run the gauntlet, passing observers who are monitoring what’s going on above. Oh my god…are those rocks an indicator of a much larger fall that’s about to ensue? I’m not happy, though maybe I would have been more unhappy had I turned around and skipped the rest of the coast. Once we are out of the danger zone, I start to breathe again. Though I’m done taking photos for the day I just want to reach someplace dry without cliffsides that drop an infinity down to the furious ocean below.