Year of Travel

Ok. I definitely didn’t see this coming. Nor did any of my friends or family. Ross got a job offer literally out of the blue for a company in Seattle about two months ago. He accepted it and we moved back to Seattle about a month ago. But before we left California we had a couple of adventures.

Big Sur being one of them, we drove to San Jose to meet up with our friends who were going with us. From there we embarked upon our journey listening to road trip music (I don’t really remember what it was). We stopped in Monterey where we had cookies and explored some art galleries. There was this one where an artist made sand pictures. Literally pouring sand and creating scenery in a frame. That was pretty cool! We ate at the Cannery Row Brewing Company. I am sad to say I did not enjoy the fire roasted caesar salad but I did enjoy my beer.

With full bellies we headed to Big Sur. Granted, we did not have directions assuming there would be signs. So we are driving along a curvy narrow road with the ocean beside us the whole way from Monterey. We see a sign for a Big Sur Lodge where a huge line of cars trailed into the road in both directions. We kept going because we didn’t want to see the lodge. We drive for about 20 more minutes and pull over not having found Big Sur and it’s huge waterfall. None of our smart phones are able to access the internet/google maps because we are in the middle of nowhere so we head down the nearest trail towards the water.

We run into a small fork and some ladies. One lady kindly tells us there is a bathroom down one trail. We take it and it leads to forest. She meant a natural bathroom. Since we all have to go after driving for a long period, we go the way nature intended, squatting or standing respectively.

We continue to find two routes. We take one and go through a tunnel under a hill. We discover this lovely small cove overlooking the ocean and a cave. We go back and take the other route to find a larger cove with rocks, sand and the tide coming in. We of course roll up our jeans and get our feet wet. BTW the water was very cold.

The adventure ends there and we head home. We discover then that the lodge everyone else was so keen on going to was where the waterfall was. Oh well! We discovered a nice alternative. I still don’t know it’s name even though there was a sign on the way to nature’s bathroom.