Coastal Michigan Lighthouses

Crystal Lake near Frankfort, Michigan

Woke up at the R&R Motel in Frankfort, Michigan. How could we not stay in this town? Caroline is, after all, from Frankfurt. The first stop was to race up the 6 miles to the Point Betsie Lighthouse for sunrise, but the view over Crystal Lake was so compelling that we pulled over to walk down the lakeshore.

Lake Michigan near Frankfort, Michigan

With the sun yet to strike Lake Michigan, the hues of turquoise water meeting the still-gray sky were powerful enough to distract me from our objective. Regarding the birds, I can’t be certain as I write this, but it appears those birds are magnificent frigatebirds that technically shouldn’t have been in this area, but it’s not impossible that they were here either.

Point Betsie Lighthouse near Frankfort, Michigan on Lake Michigan

Under clearing blue skies, the day is starting off perfectly. Catching these first rays of sunlight on the Point Betsie Lighthouse has it appearing that our timing couldn’t have been better.

Frankfort North Pier Lighthouse in Frankfort, Michigan

Back in town, we stopped at the Crescent Bakery for breakfast, which is within easy walking distance of the Frankfort North Pier Lighthouse. If the day were to stop right here, neither Caroline nor I would have anything to complain about, but as is the story of our travels, we were hardly done.

Betsie Lake in Frankfort, Michigan

With our sights set on the Elkhart, Indiana, area for later today, we only have a brief 235 miles of driving, so going slow is absolutely in the cards. Good thing because just getting out of Frankfort is proving difficult; look at the scenery here at Betsie Lake, and you should understand the dilemma.

Betsie Lake in Frankfort, Michigan

No, Caroline, we are not going to spend the whole day with me trying to photograph the most perfect grass growing out of a shallow lake, reflected in those waters, with some fall colors showing up in the background; I’ve almost got it…

Inspiration Point in Arcadia, Michigan

Jeez, had we gotten stuck there at Betsie Lake, we’d never have made it down here to Inspiration Point in Arcadia, where we found…you knew this was coming, INSPIRATION!

Somewhere on Route 22 in western Michigan

I’m checking myself as to what is truly inspiring: a platform above the lake or this giant legless bigfoot (obviously footless, too) that is made of hay bales.

Somewhere on Route 22 in western Michigan

For my 60th birthday, I’ll compile a dozen of my favorite red barns found across the United States to roll out a 2023 calendar, but this would mean I’d have to bump my calendar of favorite abandoned homes for 2023; good thing I have time to figure this out.

Fish Tale Cafe in Onekama, Michigan

Okay, that last paragraph was a fish tale, as I have no plans for my 60th, aside from growing older, but we are seriously at the Fish Tale Cafe in Onekama, Michigan.

Fish Tale Cafe in Onekama, Michigan

Who would have ever guessed that I’d be able to claim I ate the biggest burger I’d had up to this point in my life here at the Fish Tale Cafe? Which already implies I’m making this up, but look for yourself. Do you think I shared this with Caroline? She’s a vegetarian and is having a grilled cheese and bowl of veggie soup across from me. With all this driving and raw nature, I need to keep my protein levels high.

Manistee, Michigan

Here we are in Manistee, a truly beautiful town, and all I’m posting is this stairwell. Well, it’s like this: I took a couple of dozen photos of my favorite corners but not one of them is worthy to represent here, but these lines, colors, and lighting have aesthetic qualities that I find appealing.

Manistee, Michigan

There were also these leaves in town, so Manistee also has natural beauty and not just architectural relevance.

Manistee, Michigan

Still in Manistee and now hanging out with some monarch butterflies, as one can only handle so many leaves and lighthouses.

St Joseph North Pier Inner Lighthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan

Oops, spoke too soon as here we are further down the road and angling for a shot of the St Joseph North Pier Inner Lighthouse as seen from Silver Beach.

Caroline Wise at Lion Park Beach in St. Joseph, Michigan

I don’t want to say this is a frisky look from my wife, but I don’t know how else to characterize it. The pelican she’s riding was found at Lions Park Beach which was also where we found someone’s cellphone, which we took to a local police station. As for Mr. Springy Pelican, he came back to Arizona with us.

Lion Park Beach in St. Joseph, Michigan

This morning, the color scheme was turquoise and gray; this evening, it is silver and blue, topped with a fat layer of orange. I’d guess that in a few months, everything will be bathed in winter white and gray, cold and ice, and those things that made this visit so enchanting will be dormant until spring rolls back around.

Lion Park Beach in St. Joseph, Michigan

And here I thought that truly spectacular sunsets were restricted to the desert southwest; I was wrong.

Lion Park Beach in St. Joseph, Michigan

And what the heck is this deviltry? I’d have to guess that it’s the evil of California emitting the flames of hell, which helps explain why so many people in the middle of America hate that state. Come to think about it, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the current governor; maybe he’s over there filming a new sequel to the Terminator series?

Lion Park Beach in St. Joseph, Michigan

After all the sunset action that two people could handle, we left Lake Michigan and headed for Indiana, grabbing a room on the state line in South Bend. Our goal was to sleep in Elkhart, but for one reason or another, we weren’t able to find a place.

Tree Tunnels & Blueberries

Copper Harbor, Michigan

“Seek and ye shall find” paves the way to a moment of “lo and behold,” and a vision of beauty enshrouds us. I can’t say that we intentionally focus on finding the gorgeous corners of our world, but then again, we really don’t make much effort at all to focus on cities where the toil of work makes monsters of people who forget or never knew the calming effect of being in places where tranquility is a drug for those who can locate a frequency aligned to its prescription.

Copper Harbor, Michigan

Dawn over serenity is a destination afforded only to the few whose constitution demands a refreshing cleansing of the grime that accumulates during the drudgery of trading time for money, though there is no greater truth in our modern world that money equates to being able to afford the discovery that takes one places, often deep within.

Leaving Copper Harbor, Michigan

The roads to external and internal beauty find their starts at different junctions in our lives. One path begins with a word, the next with a book. Maybe a sunrise alights the spark where the journey into early light takes hold of the eye and imagination, suggesting that there is something else at work aside from the simple repetition of a planet circling a nearby star. Here on the Upper Peninsula, the literal beginning of a path slices down an entire country, and while interesting as a whole, we’ll experience but the tiniest of fractions during our journey of it. Like a great book where we are limited to only reading the first chapter, we’ll be denied what the rest of the story delivers.

Driving south on US-41 on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Our drive this morning is effectively navigating a tree tunnel as it wends its way south out of Copper Harbor; within moments, we gasp at the profundity of autumnal beauty. Surely, we should have anticipated seeing this rainbow of color, but the dense layers of foliage juxtaposed against the woods and asphalt brought us beyond even our wildest dreams.

Driving south on US-41 on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

It is as though the strings of the orchestra are focused on creating a symbiosis between the melancholic and the ecstatic as we are simultaneously elated and emotionally fragile that, for some incomprehensible reason, this is all ours to experience. The musicians of the forest perform for us and us alone, where are the others?

Driving south on US-41 on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Notes from a felted piano touch the delicate soft places of emotion that seem to guide the rustling of leaves saturated in the hues of autumn while the heartstrings of John and Caroline synchronize with the speed of the landscape pulsing in attraction to pull us in.

Driving south on US-41 on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

The visual magnificence of this play of light has touches of brilliance and surprise that, while they might be a composite of different sights gathered on other days, stand unique in their performance that will only be offered at these exact moments where we were present to accept the song and theater of nature.

Driving south on US-41 on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Maybe all of this should have remained in the furtive clutch of hidden memories as it is an absurdity to consider that these feeble words will weave together the threads of a narrative that can share how the two of us bring images of sea and sky, the sounds of elation and noise, words of enlightenment and imagination, and the joys of love and anguish to define the overflowing romantic sense of being in such a place that largely defies explanation.

Driving south on US-41 on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Later we came to learn of our extraordinary good fortune of being at the right place at the right time as we were told that we were witnessing a record year for leaf peepers during peak color change. And as beautiful as it truly was, later in the day, someone asked if we had driven the Brockway Mountain road that allegedly puts this tree tunnel to shame; we had not. Upon leaving Copper Harbor, we had seen the turnoff but knew not where it led or what it might behold. No matter, as we are so entranced with the natural beauty of the Upper Peninsula that we are sure to return many times to these moments.

Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Then, after the infinity spent in the delirium of total saturation, we are again at what appears to be the sea, though, in fact, it is merely a lake but of such depth that it too has a song that resonates within us as so many other places of great beauty.

Wild blueberries found off Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

On our way to Gay, Michigan, we passed a lady rummaging on the roadside. My unabashed curiosity demanded I stop the car, followed by a quick reverse while lowering the window, and an inquiry as to what she was looking for.

Wild blueberries found off Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Cranberries were what the lady was hunting and she kindly offered to show us where to look. With Caroline kneeling down next to our amateur botanist, I spotted what looked like blueberries and asked what they were. After mentioning that the local cranberries are a sour type, requiring cooking and a good dose of sweetener, she tells us that the little blueberries are yummy wild blueberries and perfectly edible.

Caroline Wise picking Wild blueberries off Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

We spent the next hour collecting a bag full of these wild treats. Over the next three days, we rationed this peninsular treasure, enjoying its near-winter sweetness while relishing our great fortune yet again and basking in the memory of picking berries next to Lake Superior.

Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

We could have gone in any number of directions up in the Copper Harbor area, but compromises are always required when exploring new lands and new terrains of experience and so we go forward to wherever that forward might take us. Had we remained in the autumnal heavens of tree tunnels, we’d have never discovered the things we hadn’t imagined were out here.

Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

The atmosphere weighs heavily upon the waters of Earth as gravity works to contain that liquid domain within boundaries ordained by the nature of our planet. We stride over these surfaces with the intention of finding something of meaning that remains mysterious and elusive, but that doesn’t squash the curiosity of these two people who seem to intuitively understand that something magical is right in front of our senses. Is it the white froth of the waves, that large mossy rock there on the shore, or the trunk of a tree gripping its tiny corner on land above the depths? It must certainly be everything and nothing, as even in the dark sky, our minds are looking for patterns that might offer answers to the unknowns.

Gay Lac La Belle Road Eastern Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Oh my…it’s a scene mimicking our very lives. At the edge of the shifting sands of time, we hold fast in a tenuous grip of our place within it, but at any moment, we might succumb to the battering energy of life that laps at our fragile existence

Caroline Wise and John Wise at the Gay Bar in Gay, Michigan

But everything changes once we hit the Gay Bar. Seriousness and discovery give way to debauchery and humor. We have arrived in Gay, Michigan, population unknown, though obviously fluctuating due to those bent on visiting a gay bar at least once in their lives. Souvenirs are, as you’d expect, Gay-themed and bawdy. Lunch was perfect after ordering a footlong hotdog, allowing visitors to brag about having had 12 inches in the Gay Bar.

Fish Bail vending machine in Gay, Michigan

Beyond my juvenile prurient humor, it was this bait vending machine outside the Gay Bar that really attracted Caroline’s attention. Hopefully, she can add just why it was so interesting to her.

[I just couldn’t believe there would be such a thing as a live bait vending machine. Food, drink, underwear, we’ve all seen (or heard of) those machines, but live bait? Too bad we didn’t check the price. In hindsight, we could have bought some and fed fish somewhere – Caroline]

Deer on the Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Somebody forgot their lawn ornament next to the road.

Leef peeping on the Upper Peninsula, Michigan

I’m speechless about seeing even more of these colors, or maybe I have just run out of words that will convey anything else.

Leef peeping on the Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Yep, red, yellow, orange leaves, and me in awe; nothing else exists right now.

Quincy Mill ruin near Mason, Michigan on the Upper Peninsula

Exploring the Quincy Stamping Mill ruin near Mason, Michigan, and also paid visits to the Quincy Smelting Works and Quincy Mine Museum further down the road. But hey, that sounds interesting; where are the photos? The gargantuan chore of assembling all these materials 16 years after we took this journey (it’s February 18, 2022, as I write this) is already an undertaking of a scale I don’t want to make larger. When I’m done with the nine days we were here in America’s mid-west, I’ll have pushed the original brief single photo posts, each with about 180 words of text to something containing between 25 – 35 photos and about 1,000 words each.

Random sign on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Fulfilling Caroline’s dreams and ensuring I don’t have regrets, we stopped at a yarn store somewhere after the mining museum, but where that was exactly and what its name might have been are lost in time. Regarding these roadside all-American signs extolling the virtues, typically religious, of the community or of the kind of morals people should live by, Caroline has been enchanted with them for years since first laying eyes on them.

Mt. Shasta Restaurant in Michigamme, Michigan

While we stopped for dinner, our hopes were dashed as the kitchen had already closed, but the OPEN sign hadn’t been turned off yet. As luck would have it, our stop wasn’t for naught as this location on the side of the road across from Lake Michigamme was full of history that was pointed out by the person informing us we wouldn’t be eating walleye here tonight. The Mt. Shasta restaurant played a role in the 1959 Oscar-nominated film Anatomy of a Murder starring Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, and Eve Arden.

Caroline Wise at Jasper Ridge Brewery in Ishpeming, Michigan

Still a half-hour from Marquette, where we’d stay the night and obviously still hungry, we found the Jasper Ridge Brewery in Ishpeming was open; time to eat, as who could know if anything was open further up the road.

Jutta On The Road – Day 6

Disclaimer: This blog entry wasn’t written until 15 years after the trip. It should be noted that it was a huge mistake to have not written it way back when. Sometimes, after writing so much about other days, it happens that at the time directly after the trip (or even during), I convince myself that the details are not that important. Years later, these details are that important, and pulling them out of foggy memories is difficult. The photos help and often leave clues, and then Caroline’s memories are usually far clearer than mine. With that said, here goes.

As I look back at these photos and consider how it sufficed so many years ago to have a single photo representing an entire day, I cannot believe how far we’ve come regarding bandwidth and storage. Pages were slow to load when overloaded with images, and so in light of that, it seemed perfectly fine to choose a favorite and go with it. Those days were pre-Instagram and social media, even photography had not caught back up in popularity as it had been in the decades before. Now, here I am in 2021, filling in some blanks, and I find it difficult to only choose the 15 images that will now accompany this day spent visiting the Oregon Coast. This was Jutta’s first night sleeping in a yurt, and it wasn’t going to be her last. She loved her “camping experience.” When she needed to visit the loo at night, she nudged Caroline to help her find the facilities, and on the way, they enjoyed the starlit sky.

By the way, it’s been fortunate that I kept nearly all the itineraries I made for these trips. So, in this instance, we were staying at Sunset Bay State Park in Charleston for the bargain price of only $33.

Waking up next to the ocean, it was obligatory that we went for some sightseeing before continuing our trek north.

Our first encounter with the bridges of Oregon had us falling in love with these beautiful structures that add so much character to the coastal drive. This particular one is the McCullough Memorial Bridge in North Bend.

Just this past November 2020, Caroline and I took a tour of this lighthouse once more. We are at the Umpqua River Lighthouse, where we have stopped on every trip we’ve made over the years, and on more than a few occasions, we also stayed in the state park just around the corner.

We’ll never tire of looking through Fresnel lenses, ever. This particular lens has an intriguing pattern of white and red flashes in the dark, a spectacle we are drawn to on every visit.

We finally gave in and visited the Sea Lion Caves, though we had a bit of trepidation that it might be more hype than an amazing spectacle.

Well, two sea lions down in the cave qualified the place as living up to its name, but still, it was just two.

The view from down in the cave, though, is spectacular, even offering a great view of Heceta Head Lighthouse.

Yeah, I know another lighthouse today would have been off the chart, but we had places to be with limited amounts of time. This is the Alsea Bay Bridge in Waldport.

There was no way we’d skip out on a stop at the Blue Heron Cheese Factory in Tillamook for some smoked brie sandwiches, followed by ice cream cones at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I’d guess by now, you can recognize that we’re having a perfect day.

Did some backtracking so we could take Jutta up the hill to another lighthouse. By the way, this view of Bayocean Peninsula Park from the road is now gone as a landslide stopped vehicle traffic. As of 2021, the word is that the road will once again be open.

Cape Meares Lighthouse near Tillamook, Oregon

One lighthouse a day isn’t enough when it’s possible to visit a second. This is the Cape Meares Lighthouse near Tillamook, which is no longer in service. This photo became very special to us this past year as we’d learned that some drunk young men decided to shoot at the Fresnel lens and damage it forever. This image is of the formerly complete and intact lens that had been standing sentry here for more than 120 years.

Three Arch Rocks in Oceanside.

This is my likely very tired and in need of a nap mother-in-law, Jutta. Time is precious to spend with our families, and there will be plenty of time to sleep when she returns to Germany, so my motto was, “Shake a leg, Jutta, we’ve got places to be.”

Our second night in a yurt was at the Cape Lookout State Park for only $33. Over the years, they’ve become more popular and were $57 a night in the off-season last time we stayed in one back in 2019. Tomorrow, we’ll head up to Washington as we continue on this crazy 5,000-mile road trip into the entirety of the western United States.

Jutta On The Road – Day 4

Pigeon Point Lighthouse in California

Disclaimer: This blog entry wasn’t written until 15 years after the trip. It should be noted that it was a huge mistake to have not written it way back when. Sometimes, after writing so much about other days, it happens that at the time directly after the trip (or even during), I convince myself that the details are not that important. Years later, these details are that important, and pulling them out of foggy memories is difficult. The photos help and often leave clues, and then Caroline’s memories are usually far clearer than mine. With that said, here goes.

South of San Francisco stands the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, which is part of the Pigeon Point Light Station State Historic Park. The weather following us up the coast couldn’t be better. This was our first visit to this particular lighthouse, one of the tallest in America. A  youth hostel is on the grounds right next to the lighthouse. but the lighthouse itself is closed with a chain-link fence around its base.

The name Pigeon Point comes from the fact that in 1853, the clipper ship Carrier Pigeon ran aground here.

Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California

Like the air over San Francisco on the left, my memories are hazy. Even with the image of the Golden Gate and those that follow, they don’t work to bridge a path to digging out details of the day. I’ve been paused in updating this old entry and moving on to the subsequent days as I searched for inspiration that hasn’t arrived. Somehow, the first few days were written with a lot more ease. Caroline, on the other hand, just reminded me how much she is looking forward to my continuation, so even if I come up flat, we’ll still have something posted with these images. And who knows, maybe Caroline will add a little something herself?

Muir Woods National Monument in California

Maybe it was because it was Monday, or maybe the Muir Woods wasn’t run over by the masses yet, but here we are without an issue finding parking or getting in. As I write this in July 2020, after four months of self-isolation due to COVID-19, I am asking myself if we were far luckier than we realized at the time. The trail was quiet, there was no fear of contagion, no second thoughts about where we’d eat, no worry about my mother-in-law flying halfway around the Earth. It’s difficult when doing something that feels so normal to always be cognizant of the good fortune we are experiencing, but looking back right now, I can’t help but wonder if this will come back in my lifetime.

Caroline Wise and Jutta Engelhardt in the Muir Woods National Monument in California

Of course, Caroline and her mother discovering somewhere new together is something now lost, too, as Jutta is about to turn 85 in just a week, and she’s no longer able to travel. Even on our last visits to Germany, her stamina was such that we couldn’t go far with her. But back on May 23rd, 2005, Jutta was in awe and reveling in how sagenhaft everything was when she was traveling with us. Sagenhaft is German for awesome. The truth is that sometimes things weren’t so sagenhaft as a stubborn lady at 70 years old and her even more stubborn 42-year-old son-in-law could butt heads. I don’t mean to diminish the incredible nature of our journeys into America, as the ratio of friction to amazement was easily 99 to 1, but I feel a tinge of guilt that I wasn’t more patient and understanding of someone who’d made it to 70 and was already suffering from the effects of being inactive while at home in Germany in large part due to loneliness. Sadly, we cannot stand in someone else’s shoes while we walk together when our gender, cultural background, and age difference don’t allow us to be aware of the truths of the other.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Pt. Reyes National Seashore in California

So we put on smiles for the camera as we know we’ll get over the tensions and will want to look back with eyes that remember with fondness the good times. Today was one of those days where impatience and the tour guide’s unreasonable demands for perfection interrupted an otherwise beautiful day. While I certainly can own my share of the guilt, and those darker moments are likely long gone from Jutta’s memories, I do wish I could rewind the clock and show my wife a more compassionate and understanding friend and husband. Our frictions never lasted more than an hour or two, but they hurt my wife more than they bothered Jutta or me. Still, Caroline put on the smile in her effort to diffuse the grumpy, hot-headed guy on her side, and while I’d certainly like to forget these dumb moments where my emotions arising out of impatience got the better of me with those around me paying the price, I cannot forget, but I am happy that I believe I’ve been forgiven.

Pt Reyes Lighthouse in Northern California

Caroline bolted down the stairs to Point Reyes Lighthouse while I remained with Jutta. Her lack of stamina wasn’t allowing her to be fully with us. Hence, my disappointment spilled into misguided anger. But let’s leave all of this behind us and get on with the day.

Pt. Reyes area in Northern California

Our drive up the Mendocino coast was just beautiful, and for that spectacle, everyone in the car was happy.

Caroline Wise and Jutta Engelhardt on the Mendocino Coast in California

There are always breaks to stretch the legs, even if the basic premise is first to find a bathroom for the ladies. Then, the side effect of that stop is to hopefully take in some grandeur of our location or, if we’re at a gas station, to indulge our taste buds with ice cream.

Mendocino Coast in Northern California

I no longer remember exactly where this was, but obviously, we couldn’t have wished for a better day to have been here.

God Rays on the California Coast

There’s some kind of magic in the god rays that fall on the road, or maybe they are sunbeams and are distinct from god rays, but whatever you want to call this type of light sliced by trees, casting shadows within the illuminated moisture along the coast, this phenomenon always elicits our oohs and aahs. That must be magic, then.

Sea Ranch Chapel in Sonoma County, California

Approaching the Sea Ranch Chapel in Sonoma County. If you are not intrigued enough to stop, you must be a little dead inside. This whimsical bit of architecture out in the middle of nowhere was a surprise I hope we are so fortunate to stumble upon again in our lifetimes.

Point Arena Lighthouse in Northern California

We are running out of daylight as we stop at a distance from the Point Arena Lighthouse. With dogged determination, though, we still have a long drive ahead before reaching Eureka, California, 175 miles north of us. Somehow, we took all day just to drive the first 80 miles before reaching the lighthouse. This has often been an issue with our road trips where, during the planning stages, I think that 255 miles is nothing and we’ll be arriving at our motel early, but I’m almost always wrong.

Jutta On The Road – Day 3

Disclaimer: This blog entry wasn’t written until 15 years after the trip. It should be noted that it was a huge mistake to have not written it way back when. Sometimes, after writing so much about other days, it happens that at the time directly after the trip (or even during), I convince myself that the details are not that important. Years later, these details are that important, and pulling them out of foggy memories is difficult. The photos help and often leave clues, and then Caroline’s memories are usually far clearer than mine. With that said, here goes.

North of San Simeon (home to Hearst Castle) on the Central California Coast are a number of beaches that are home to colonies of cows. Depending on the time of year, you can see adult bulls battling for harems, newborn calves squawking next to mothers, juveniles lounging about, and gobs of tourists. Oops, that description was meant for the elephant seals.

If you want to avoid the throngs of tourists, visit early in the day or late in the afternoon – or visit on weekdays for the best viewing. Motels are relatively inexpensive; we paid $75 last night for three of us on a Saturday. Oh yeah, depending on the season, you won’t just see a few seals; there are hundreds of them soaking up the sun.

There are also squirrels that we were feeding bits of our granola bars apparently…this is obviously before we learned better and stopped feeding wild animals.

Maybe you are thinking that this picture looks a lot like the photo from the day before. Well, the seals definitely lay around a lot; they also scratch themselves and fart a lot.

The views along the coast never grow old.

We delight in every perspective and only wish we could move slower on our treks up or down the Central Coast of California.

Here at Gorda By The Sea, my mother-in-law walked out of the shop with this flower (after she paid for it, obviously); it turned out that this was a gift for Katharina back in Germany. Our niece was five years old back then; I wonder if she still has this.

We can linger at the sea all day.

What are those on the rocks? They are California condors and, just like with a bison jam in Yellowstone, the traffic jam of cars and people gawking as if a whale had just beached was the giveaway that something was going on. This is just as rare a sight in some ways as these birds of prey were almost extinct before California made a huge effort to save the species.

After pulling over, we were bowled over to see this condor couple not more than 20 feet (7 meters) away from us. I was certain that raising my camera would scare them off; instead, they bored us off. Like wax figures, they sat there, no stretching the wings, no swooping down on some hapless bird for a wee bite, not even a giant condor poop. We waited, waited patiently, then impatiently. The people noises did not interest or disturb them, and barking from the stupid bearded fat man didn’t do much either, besides annoying his wife – uh, sorry, Caroline! And so, without an action shot, we got back into the car and continued driving north. I bet they really were wax figures meant to fool us tourists and that they are still sitting there.

The coast is about more than the sea as contrasts stack up along the way.

Lunch had to be taken at our favorite cafe in California, right here at the Big Sur Bakery. Can you tell that I’m still working on getting Jutta to make nice for the camera?

Over the years prior to this visit and in all the visits since, we never tire of the sound, the smell, the colors, the weather, or the way it all comes together to strike us with how profoundly lucky we’ve been to witness this grandeur with our own eyes.

A simple thorny thistle that is as wondrous as any of the other sights we’ve seen today or are yet to come across.

Adding something new to this coastal visit with a stop at the Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Río Carmelo.

Things look tranquil, but I can guarantee you that just an hour earlier, I was working hard to keep my mother-in-law awake, and she was working hard to catch a nap.

We try to go slow to allow Jutta to read every marker and examine every plant and detail.

But before we know it, we’re in Monterey, shaking hands with monkeys.

So our stop in Monterey, more specifically, our stop at the wharf to introduce Jutta to clam chowder in a bread bowl, didn’t go as planned. Oh, she ate it even though she said it wasn’t her favorite. Turns out it was so not her favorite that she’s in the bathroom vomiting it out while I’m over here taking photos of the boats.

Good thing we didn’t have any more driving scheduled for the day, so we headed over to Pacific Grove for a short walk in some surprisingly strong winds to let Jutta’s stomach settle.

And soon afterward, she’s fit again and ready to enjoy the rest of the day.

Nothing left to do but chill out by the ocean, watching the glistening water catch sunrays, hypnotizing us into wanting to live right here. Our room for a mere $69 was at the Thunderbird Motel in Seaside, as we’re too cheap to splurge for those $120-a-night rooms in Monterey.