#57 - Drive to San Francisco... or Further North

I set an intention for this trip before I even started planning: savor the journey.  I had to remind myself a few times.  There are so many places along the coast I'd love to visit, to spend some time, to really explore.  But this trip wasn't about any of the destinations.  It was about the journey.

I could have started the Pacific Coast Highway here in San Diego, but I had to make it all the way to Grover Beach the first night, and I got started a little late...  intentionally.  I managed to fit in the first week of my new Sunday beach volleyball league with Vavi before heading north.  I was happy to meet my new team, and two hours in the sun in perfect San Diego beach weather was a lovely way to start my vacation.  

I drove up the 5 to the 73 (I think I'm a real Californian now) to drop by Newport Beach for a little happy hour with Amelia, Carlos, Grandma Gomez, and baby Alex.  I've known Amelia for 20+ years, and though we go many years sometimes without seeing each other, it's always comforting to see her.  I guess camp friends are just like that.  Last time I saw her, I was able to meet the man who would become her husband.  This time, I got to meet her son for the first time.  We were able to do a little catching up over happy hour snacks.  I hope to pop up to Newport again soon for a longer visit!

I then headed up the 405 to the 1 and managed to catch Santa Barbara just before sunset.  I was so excited to stop in this beautiful town and to take some pictures for my imagined instagram tag #weekofsunsets.  I then realized that the coast curves a bit there, and Santa Barbara mostly faces south.  So I couldn't really see the sunset.  I did have a great dinner and wrote about my short pit stop here because visiting Santa Barbara was a list item in itself.

I then jumped on some curvy hill highway that took me 2 hours into the night to Grover beach, where I stayed at this lovely little beach cottage that I found through airbnb.  My host Juliet made everything so easy and even left me a bottle of wine and Netflix.  

In the morning, I realized that in my excitement to be in a sweet little cottage with Netflix, I had forgotten that it was Sunday and I should have watched Game of Thrones.  I had to really talk myself out of staying an extra hour to watch it.  I promised myself GoT could wait a few days but I only had so much time to be in Big Sur.  Thank you, past Megan, for your strength.  It was worth it.  

Grover Beach runs right along the 1, so I popped back to the coast and drove north.  I knew it would be pretty.  I had no idea it would be as pretty as it was.

I absolutely love road trips: the opportunity to see pieces of the world I might not otherwise have ever seen, and there so many surprises along the way.  My favorite always is the drive from Syracuse to Brant Lake, New York.  That's partly because I love driving those curvy mountain roads, but it's mostly because everytime I make that drive, I'm heading to Camp Michigania, where I will see dozens of people I consider family.  It feels like going home.  My second favorite drive of all time is I-80 through western Colorado.  I mean, wow.  I've done it twice now, and both times, I was in awe.  

The 1 trumps both of these drives.  The area around Big Sur and Los Padres National Forrest is the most beautiful strip of road I have ever seen.  It's in the top 3 for most beautiful places I've ever seen period.  (The Swiss Alps and German Alps being the other two.)  The route even has places to pull off all throughout because the awe the views inspire is inevitable, and without those spaces to stop, reflect, and snap pictures, there would be a LOT of accidents along the 1.  It is hundreds of miles of all of the blues an ocean can be -- deep and dark, turquoise, sea green -- filled with craggy dark rocks, surrounded by beaches, wildflowers, rolling hills which turn into mountains and cliffs.  Every stop I told myself, you need to pull over here and take this in.  It won't get prettier than this.  But then it did.

Elephant seals

I shouldn't have been, but I was shocked about the sheer amount of wildlife I saw along my drive: elephant seals, wild turkeys, deer, maybe elk, rabbits, and California condors.  I say "maybe elk" because at one point, there was a sign that said "elk viewing."  I decided to keep going because I wasn't sure how far out of my way I'd have to go, and when I glanced left, I saw cars lined up and some dark spaces standing in a field.  Maybe they were elk.

The most incredible wildlife spotting was during a stretch where I thought the ocean views were the most impressive thing around.  Then, I saw these huge birds circling, and there was a turn off where people had pulled over to watch, so I pulled over too.  As I watched, I realized the birds of prey, just ten or so meters above me, were huge, with wing spaces of 4-6 feet.  Then I realized they had white heads.  Then I realized they were condors, our state bird, the California Condor, which is also endangered.  They were magnificent.  This guy nearby gestured in wonder to me, and then he muttered something about his girlfriend not wanting to get out of the car... again.  It was really incredible to see them soaring over the ocean cliffs.

Once I was nearing Big Sur, I noticed the marine layer was hanging heavy over the coast.  Sometmies it obstructed the views, and sometimes it added to them.  At one point, I was so high up on the mountain roads that I was driving above the marine layer.  When I stopped for a view, it looked like the view from an airplane, just a sea of white, fluffy clouds around the rolling mountain tops.  

I had a hard time enjoying the last few miles into Big Sur because I kept worrying that I'd missed it.  There's no reception in that area with the mountains and very, very few people, so I couldn't GPS it.  I had my map and kept reassuring myself that I had not missed my turn, but, since I had stopped a million times, my time estimate of my arrival was completely off.  Eventually I saw some gigantic signs that led me easily to my campsite.

As visiting a new National Park was also on my list, my time in Big Sur is documented here.

On the way to the bay area, I decided to fit in the 17 mile drive.  I've done it before and remembered it being simply amazing.  I guess my standards of beauty have changed a little.  Don't get me wrong, it's still an incredible bit of coastline, but this time, I was surprised by the charnge and just couldn't get over how much of it had been torn down for golf courses.  This bit of Monterey is the home of Pebble Beach Golf Course.  It's a beautiful course... that was probably more beautiful before it was a golf course.  It was surrounded by these gigantic homes.  There was so much private property that the only views are marked viewpoints with landmarks... surrounded by warning signs about not tresspassing on the golf course.  I haven't quite made peace with this part of my journey.  The rest of the drive was such free, open access to beauty, but this bit is owned and private.




After another beautiful drive, I arrived in the bay area around 6:30pm.  I probably should have thought through the hiking, creek-wading, no showering because I was hungry and so were my generous hosts for the night, Sharon & Justin.  They took me to a lively BBQ place in Pleasanton.  I consider Sharon a friend, but the easiest way to describe our relationship is that she is my childhood best friend's little sister.  It was really nice to catch up and to have some easy conversation after so many hours by myself.  They took good care of me, and I really appreciate it.

I tried to wait until slightly after rush hour to head to Oregon.  I failed.  Instead of repeating my lovely day in Eugene, here's a link to that post, since it was a list item on its own.

I mixed up my schedule a bit that day.  I thought I'd catch lunch with my camp friend Chris, head up to Portland to grab dinner with the Schummers and meet their little one, and then head to the coast to stay for the night.  However, I didn't realize that the track meet I had tickets for didn't really start until 4pm, so dinner didn't work.  I would really like to make it to Portland soon and would be thrilled to actually spend some quality time with my old Chicago friends the Schummers.

"Shhhh... Dreaming of Adventures"

Since Portland didn't work out, I drove directly the to the coast to stay at the Sylvia Beach Hotel.  I went on the recommendation of my parents, who are two of the coolest people I'll ever meet.  And by cool, I mean authentically cool, in that they, like me, are into what they are into, like books, which is actually what the Sylvia Beach Hotel is all about.  While the hotel is on the beach, it's actually in Newport, Oregon.  It's named after Sylvia Beach, a woman who once owned a famous bookstore in Paris.

Notice the tentacle pen.

The rooms each have an author theme.  I'm a grad student, so I knew I couln't get my heart set on the JK Rowling room, which has an ocean view and was thus a bit more expensive, so I requested the Tolkein room, which was also booked.  I settled for the Jules Verne room.  Now that I've stayed there, I would have chosen that room first.  It was hella cool.  The bed has a frame modeled after an old timey submarine, like in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  There is a giangantic tenticle reaching out of the wall through a porthole and another porthole shows the sea monter's bulging eye.  The writing desk sits next to an old, gigantic compass.  The bathroom was huge and had this incredible mural covering the walls and ceiling, all reminiscent of Around the World in 80 Days...  with the sea monster obviously making an appearance.


Since it's been since high school since I've read any Verne, I listened to most of Journey to the Center of the Earth on my Oregon drive.  At first, I was just going through the motions and wasn't very interested.  I'm still not finished, and I'm geeked to hear what happens next on this tale of adventure.

When I booked the room, I had completely forgotten that Jules Verne is all about adventure.  Specifically, he writes about adventures into the unknown.  It was the perfect room for my journey, which was all about the journey and not the destination.

The phone-and-clock-free room gave me the best sleep of my life.  I woke up, went to breakfast at the hotel restaurant: Tables of Content.  It was a great little meal with a ton of choices and I only learned after that it was included in my meal.  It made me wish I had been there for the very affordably priced prix fix dinner the night before.  I wandered into the open rooms that had been occupied the night before.  I just loved that place.

I then got back on the road and headed to Sacramento where I was trying to meet my former supervisor Andrew for a beer.  However, there were a combination of issues that arose: Andrew had to go pick up his nephews, so he needed to leave by 7, but I had miscalculated the time, there were several accidents, and I had somehow set my GPS to "walk," so my GPS kindy kept me off the highways, where walking is not permitted, for the first hour or so.  I knew I should have relied on my maps, but I wanted to get the quickest route.  Since I thought it was a 7 hour drive, I didn't notice when instead it said, "7 days."  I only noticed when it wasn't changing.  Shoot.

So I got to my hotel in the suburbs of Sacramento, just a Hampton Inn, which was definitely in my budget.  It was surprisingly nice and very comfortable.  The only thing that was obnoxious was that there really wasn't anything nearby where I could sit at a bar, maybe get a bartender to chat with me for some socialization after 9+ hours alone, and have some dinner and a glass of wine.  I finally found a lively Italian place, but it was so lively with an older crowd that it wasn't possible to make conversation with the bartender.  The couple next to me said a couple things to me but was also very handsy and not looking for casual chit chat.  Dinner was great as was the wine though.  I then headed back to my hotel and FINALLY watched Game of Thrones.  I can't believe I waited that long.  Then I was dying to talk to someone about it but was unsuccessful.  Oh, Pacific Coast time...

Mt Shasta seemed visible for hours.

In the morning I set off for San Diego.  It's funny.

I know that it is much warmer inland than on the coast, but I somehow don't ever believe it.  It was a comfortable 70-some degrees during my whole trip.  I guess I had just missed the heat in Eugene.  But then inland, it stayed around 105.  It was sweltering.  And there were all these signs about the drought.  I had mixed feelings because the area is obviously a desert, so it seems strange to be angry about a drought that's hurting the farming industry that is really out of place, water-wise, in central California, but it's also hard to see so many areas hurting so hard becasue of the drought.  The weirdest thing was when I noticed that the signs were blaming politicians, specifically Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosci.  I'm curious about how they're responsible for the drought but not curious enough to actually look it up.

Traffic was miserable all through and then south of LA all the way to San Diego.  The last 2 hours of my drive was brutal.  I was ready to be home.  I did get to hear a bit more of my books on tape, but I was ready.

I made it home on Saturday afternoon, just in time to relax, have some homemade dinner, and chill before bed and then getting up in the morning for another Sunday morning on the beach volleyball courts.  It was a perfect vacation, and I'm happy I jumped at the opportunity when I had the time to make it happen.