Writing in situ presents a couple of challenges. Our days are already long as we use the majority of daylight to remain active. The rising sun and setting sun see us eating, and any residual evening light is used for a walk after feasting. When we finally reach our room our day has already been roughly 14 hours long. We do not reach for the remote control, though. Instead, I try to bring together loose ends regarding the details of this day for the blog. By the next morning, Caroline and I were making decisions about the photos selected for the previous day’s entry, and when that was done, she started editing the post I finished writing the night before, which was for the day before that.
As she is busy editing, I’m trying to think about what I’ll start writing this morning about the previous day. It’s inevitable that she’ll enquire about some garbled ideas I tried to capture in what looks like a haphazardly tossed pile of words that I, myself, who penned the random word scramble, have trouble deciphering. This interrupts my thoughts about what I might write about yesterday by dragging me into the day before while simultaneously considering that we have a new day ahead of us, and it, too, requires consideration. So, in effect, I have three days of travel running through my mind, and after some time out here on the road with consecutive 16 – 17 hour days, I start to suffer a bit of confusion about the time remaining, where we are, and what’s next.
Then, I bring my attention back to the photo at hand and focus. I’m writing about the snowy plovers we were watching yesterday morning as they darted back and forth, side to side, on the hunt for breakfast in the receding surf.
With the aquarium closed, we have no real choice but to do other stuff and that stuff starts at Marina State Beach north of Monterey. North will be the direction of our travels today.
Considering how I opened today’s post, I feel that those plovers and this man fishing on the beach are the ones who are really on vacation, but I admit that I only say that tongue-in-cheek. Out here with the purpose of walking hand in hand with Caroline, enchanted by every little thing except the trash, my exploration of the details we are experiencing and some thought along the trail about which of these impressions should be noted later, this structure of travel and vacation really is my perfect scenario.
If I were a flower that had the ability to document its world, I’d be taking photos of the insects that stop by helping pollinate me. I’d photograph the people who try to smell me or simply gaze at how beautiful I am. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be complaining too often about the dog that lifted a leg to pee on me and instead would sing songs about the abundant sunshine, occasional rains, and the intimacy of my world when fog hangs low and the surrounding world disappears.
One minute, these shapes emerged from the surf after it returned to the sea, and with the next crashing wave, most of it was gone while another pattern formed in its stead. The many times we’ve seen these on the beach, they were already present as relics on display for our passing eyes, but today, I’ve finally seen them being made and just as quickly removed.
This image and the two above were taken at Salinas River State Beach. The weather you are seeing is supposed to follow us all day.
Moss Landing State Beach was our next stop on this journey north. If I thought our Saturday drive was slow at 18 mph, so far, we have driven 20 miles in two hours for the breakneck average speed of 10 mph. Someday we’ll graduate to staying in a place next to the pool at some resort and reading a book, but for now, we keep on moving.
What contributes to making a vacation memorable for us beyond the extra handholding and time together is the myriad of details that create the totality of an environment. It’s easy to only focus on the extraordinarily beautiful and spectacular but how that picture gets painted in memories years down the road is important to me too. Maybe it’s not just the dramatic coastal views, lighthouses, and wildlife but the thread of all sights and impressions that were taken in as the experiences of the day. And so, even this lone fishing boat returning to the harbor, cutting its path between the otters we were watching further up the channel it too plays a part that reading or seeing fishing boats 20 years from now might help bring us back to those days when we stopped to watch them on the California coast.
There’s truth in that old saying, “You can never see enough curlews and plovers on the beach,” okay, I made that up, but there should be an old saying stating this obvious reward for being at the edge of the sea.
From the sea forest offshore, emissaries were sent as sacrifices so we might know their kind.
In order to move closer to the coast on our way to Manresa State Beach near Watsonville, we left Highway 1, and to our surprise, we spotted a Starbucks out here in the middle of nowhere. You can’t even see the coffee shop from the main road, and it wasn’t until we left their parking lot that we saw this amazing house. Since 1897, the Redman-Hirahara House has occupied this site but fell into disrepair long ago. In 2004, it was designated a National Historic Site but obviously has not attracted funding yet to save the fragile-looking former farmstead.
It’s a half-mile walk from the parking lot down to the beach, and with Manresa State Beach being part of the California State Park system, there’s a $10 charge for visiting. The cost was well worth it, and the pass is good for all other California State Parks for the remainder of the day. So, down the trail, we went looking for all that we may find.
Bright yellow flowers in front of the sea trigger memories of previous visits to the Oregon coast, where we’ve seen the invasive gorse in bloom. This is not the same plant, but the view is reminiscent and puts a smile on our faces all the same.
This is neither gorse nor the flower in the photo above, but it is yellow, obviously, so that might imply I’m trying to show a close-up of what I’ve already photographed, but I’m not. It’s simply another pretty flower I want to remember.
While I grew up in Southern California and have seen and smelled my fair share of eucalyptus, I can’t say I ever consciously recognized that the hard seed pods found under these trees at some point during the spring bloom with a thousand wispy flower elements. Picking one and squeezing the still green center of the seed, an almost solvent-like smell of fresh eucalyptus was released. The aroma was almost nothing at all, like the smell that wafts through the warm California air.
Because not all coasts along the Pacific Ocean look the same, one should explore as many as possible to discover the many sights on offer.
Good thing we’re on backroads instead of Highway 1, or we would have missed the guy on the side of the road. We actually turned around after remembering we had some cash, and for $15, we bought half a case or six baskets of fresh GIANT strawberries. Plenty of other times, we’ve been fooled by a layer of golfball-sized berries that were hiding tiny berries below, but not this time. As it was already after lunch and we were a bit hungry, we probably ate half this crate in the next 15 minutes.
Welcome to the SS Palo Alto at Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, California. This broken old ship made of concrete was built for service during World War I, but it never saw battle and was decommissioned in 1929. Apparently, it was once part of the pier system and used for fishing, but subsequent storms over the years have torn the ship apart, and the pier is now falling apart, too.
That yarn in Caroline’s hands is destined to become a pair of socks; she’s seen here after picking it out for me at The Yarn Shop In Santa Cruz.
Lunch followed at Taqueria Los Pericos, which was what came up after searching for the best burrito in Santa Cruz: they deserve that title.
I’ll give you three guesses as to why the park we are at right now is called Natural Bridges State Beach. Also of note, I’m sunburned to a crisp by now, as not only did we forget my hat in Arizona, but we left our sunblock at the motel back in Pacific Grove! Of course, Caroline applied sunblock to herself before we left, and she had her hat on. It’s always about Caroline and what she needs. I beg for sunblock reminders as I burn easily but she always forgets about me, ALWAYS! By the way, if she tries editing this to say I refuse the sunblock and my hat, she’s lying because she’s ALWAYS LYING, I swear! Though, on rare occasions, I’ve been known to need to stretch the truth, but NEVER about her and her constant neglecting me…not that I’m complaining. [really, John…? ಠ_ಠ]
With my face so burned as to be peeling off my skull in a blistering, pus-drenched ooze of juicy, crunchy bits, I refused to consider a 4-mile roundtrip hike through Wilder Ranch State Park down to the beach and instead opted to stop just north of the park where as luck would have it the reflection of the sun off the ocean probably permanently disfigured me, which is also Caroline’s fault. Why it’s her fault is still being worked out in my mind as I write this, but I’ll be sure to share my reasoning once a clever enough amount of convincing blame can be assigned without embarrassing me for embellishing a story.
As my eyes were welling with tears from the pain I was so stoically enduring, Caroline began to recognize the life-threatening situation I was facing. Without cell service this far out in the middle of nowhere (we were nearly 60 miles from San Francisco at this point), she insisted I pull over into Año Nuevo State Park. Somehow, she remembered that there was a payphone near the entry station. This memory is from 16 years ago when we last visited, but it was just my luck that the payphone no longer worked, so I laid down and cried. Caroline cruelly likely knew beforehand that the phone didn’t work and that sepsis was setting in; she brought me here to the edge of sanity just to watch me suffer. Through it all, though, I still love her a lot. [oh, ok then… ಠ‿ಠ]
Enough of the shenanigans. After learning that the elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park would not be visited on this trip either, as was our experience 16 years ago, we decided we’d go as far as Pigeon Point Lighthouse and turn around. From here, we were only 50 miles from San Francisco, but this type of vacation is definitely not conducive to visiting big cities; as a matter of fact, Santa Cruz, with its 64,500 people, was nearly too big for our senses after only four days away.
This appears to be our third visit to Pigeon Point; the first was with my mother-in-law in May of 2005, and our second visit was seven months later in December 2005. We may have passed it again since then, but there’s no note of it to be found here on the blog. There is a hostel on the property we could rent, but for the two of us in a place that hosts six for the price of $400 a night, it feels a bit steep.
Sadly, the lighthouse is in poor shape. When we were here last, the Fresnel lens was still in the lantern room, and I took a great shot that captured a slice of light from above, but now the lens has been moved into a nearby building for its own safety until a time when the tower can be renovated.
With a final glance at the ocean in the late day, we turned south for our return to Monterey, where we were once again eating with Hee-Kyong who owns Wonju Korean Restaurant. She was such a terrific host the other night, and we feel that any little bit we can help support her business might be helpful. Back at the motel by 9:00 p.m., it was later than we’d have preferred, and tragically, this is our last night at Lovers Point Inn in Pacific Grove, but tomorrow, a wholly new adventure awaits us.