We woke to the sun and elephant seal banter. Once we packed up camp and started driving, we quickly learned we were about a mile away from national forest territory, meaning camp anywhere. There were the world’s best camp sites minutes away and we missed it. It was disappointing, but it was dark when we got there anyway so we wouldn’t have seen the beauty. We should have gone for a hike, but we had a lot of ground to cover so we moved on. We did two days of California in what should have been done in two weeks.
We stopped constantly just to gawk, gaze, and take some pictures. We stopped at Ventana for breakfast. This place looked too good to miss so when asked if Henley was a service dog, his trained only to be pet therapy dog status got upgraded.
We stopped at the Pfeiffer waterfall. It is not a tall or gushing waterfall, but it is the prettiest scene a waterfall could be in. Big Sur is right up there with Crested Butte as most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I wonder if Henley realizes or cares how beautiful it is there. I’d be surprised if the trash eater and butt sniffer saw beauty the same way we do, but what do I know?
We drove through Carmel, Monterey, and Santa Cruz and stopped for some local cherries to snack on while Sarah read Travels with Charley aloud.
When we got to San Francisco, we went straight to Hayes Valley. Really cool neighborhood with art covered buildings and shops out of shipping containers. We stopped at Blue Bottle Coffee in one of these containers. Sarah then took me to Haight-Ashbury. Hmm, how do I describe this neighborhood? Weird as f*ck. Drugs, homeless, weirdos. Still had some great houses and a few funky and cool shops and restaurants, but I’d be okay with never going back.
San Francisco has a certain way with some people. I’ve heard people say they love that city, it’s their favorite place, they want to live there, they were jealous I was going. I didn’t dislike (the very little I saw) at all, but I didn’t fall in love with it like it seemed others have. For one, the weather. It was a cloudy, foggy, misty sixty two degrees in late July, which is normal. Just like everywhere else on this trip, I didn’t get to know San Francisco nearly well enough, but I won’t be applying for jobs there.
We left the city to go back down south a little to Pacifica where Sarah’s boyfriend Niles lives. We were dying to shower. We stopped for Mexican at Guerreros Taqueria and got a case of Pacificos to bring back with us. We were locked out of the house and our dream of hot showers, hot Mexican, cold beer, and lounging in front of the TV was crushed. We drank the beer under a blanket on the front stoop until the boys started coming home from work. We had plans to go for a run. That got downgraded to a walk. By the time we were done discussing, we settled on not moving from the couch and watching a movie instead. Sitting in the car all day staring at pretty things can be exhausting.
<3
No comments:
Post a Comment