You know the saying about the calm before the storm? Can't get much calmer than Route 1, California's Pacific Coast Highway (PCH).
Normally we don't go out of our way to find good food, but today we'll make an exception.
(I feel like the sarcasm didn't come through there. Just for the record, we ONLY go far out of our way to find good food).
Tuesday morning activity: move a house
It's hard to see, but that cape says "Honk if you're happy!" I honked. Then 100 feet down the road we stopped at the same place. It was awkward. We saw them rummaging through the dumpster behind the bakery we went to -- they ended up with five day-old loaves of bread, wrapped in plastic at least. Apparently they're riding from LA to San Francisco over a few weeks. All we really cared about was the bread.
Cheap wine: check.
Mexican cola: check (not that I have any idea what Mexican cola is...)
And, most importantly, the reason we made this side trip at all: garlic great with artichoke hearts and cheese cooked INSIDE the bread. Amazing.
Only five birds were shooed in the making of this photo.
First true coastal stop: Santa Cruz. Known for their beach, seaside amusement park, and their pier.
...and possibly this ghost.
"What's that honking sound?"
"No, seriously, don't you hear that?"
"It's like a honking? Like barking, kind of?"
"What's that honking-barking sound?"
Oh THAT'S what it was. Harbor seal naptime.
Actually they don't really spend much time sleeping. Mostly they just crawl around on top of each other barking "GET OFF!" a lot.
"Oh cool look at that bird flyi--- Oh wait. No. Yup. Yeah, it pooped."
This guy crawled around on top of everyone, pissing every single seal off for like ten minutes...
...before finally finding a place to take a nap.
Then I rubbed my arm in bird poop (actually, I'm pretty sure the white stuff is pee and the brown stuff is poop. I've heard it comes out of the same hole though. Can anyone confirm?) I felt it through my shirt. It was cold and flu-ridden.
Oh god... somehow this makes the arm thing seem much worse. I originally took this for the humor of the sign and the poop, but now I can feel the crap on my arm... a month later... Must...get...clean...
Oh, hey.
Hey guy.
"Hey, you guys like artichokes?!" After the artichoke bread, we actually said yes. Then it quickly began to feel like an adult version of a sketchy van pulling up and offering a kid candy out the window...
Winter ponders a lifetime of days spent waking up at 11 a.m., surfing until sunset, and living off fish tacos while she writes the great American dog novel.
Cannery Row, Monterey. Sadly, totally touristified. Note the tiny logo in the lower right corner.
Supposedly the best aquarium around. Supposedly also $65 for us to get in... Nope.
Trying to stomach "real" beef jerky... Shrute farms may sue, and it's hard to believe, but the big-name brand stuff actually tastes better.
"Really? That's pebble beach?" Jack Bannister shout out.
This is my favorite picture of the trip. I was actually arguing with my parents at that exact moment, but Winter darting off in the wrong direction Hobbes-style like a rabid mountain lion totally redeems the entire moment.
We have about five thousand pictures of the coast, but ultimately we have to just scale down to the best few and accept that none of the other pictures we take for the rest of our lives will ever compare to this:
This is the closest we managed to get to catching a picture...
...of this, at 70 miles per hour.
Big Sur Country. Side trip to McWay Waterfall
This is what a sunset looks like if you put your sunglasses in front of the lens. Not too shabby.
Paradise.
Worth a second look.
Anyone ever see the Mothman Prophecies?
First fresh fish (sort of) in a long time.
Camping on Pismo Beach. Like literally right on the beach. We think?
Best gadget of the trip: Winter's LED collar -- best way to keep track of your dog in the dark from long distances.
"Yeah, I'm TOTALLY fine with it being below freezing when we wake up..."
Nighttime fetch
New screensaver-slash-therapy
Trying to sleep, but it's just not working
But we made it through the night...
So cold...
Sometimes Winter is a pain in the ass.
Oh THAT'S the view from our campsite (water on the other side)
This is where things start to go wrong. Really wrong. You know how things come in threes?
#1: During a game of fetch, Winter doesn't calibrate her turn carefully enough and slams head-on into a picnic table. Injury number 234,501 for the poor dog.
Screw it, we need something to make up for nearly giving our dog a concussion. Time to consume all our calories for the entire week.
Remember the map at the border with Alberta that already had Baltimore and Hartford, CT covered up? Not this time around. Only they didn't have any stickers left. Fail.
#2: Giant Monarch Butterfly Grove next to our campsite is closed. Actually, not closed, just empty. The sub-zero temperatures killed all the butterflies.
There were supposed to be thousands. There was one.
Couldn't even tell you where this was. Things got real hairy real fast after this. Like, potentially-ending-the-trip hairy.
So beautiful, yet so treacherous.
So naive, so unencumbered by anything, so unaware of the disaster about to transpire...
Next up: California hits back.
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