Day 8&9: Big Sur-Santa Cruz

Took a beautiful drive up from Jalama to Big Sur traveling just as fast as the Mello Cello would carry us. Ave speed 20 uphill/faster downhill. Actually speeds are relative since the odometer and seedometer have taken a rest since Huntington Beach. Relax, take the bus...

Drove San Louis Obispo and felt the deep Ridder vibe.

Highway one is truelly stunning from San Simeon to Big Sur. Twisty, turny and hundreds (a thousand?) feet above the rocky Wild shore. Moro Bay and Cayucos were beautiful, cambria looked good too.

The drive to Big Sur really is beautiful.















Big Sur itself is so written about, painted, extolled, rumored, fantasized and poetic... so much hype it is something that initially turned me off from the place. We stayed only one night at the Big Sur Lodge because of my little humbug.













I was wrong, the hype was right. There is definitely deep magic in the place. Tasha felt it too. The size of the redwoods, the pounding of the ocean, the ancient smell of the place combines into a beat of unimaginable intentionality.
































It is good that we stayed only long enough to feel the depth of the place. It is good to know there are places like this. We walked under the redwoods and climbed all over the rocky shore of the river running through camp. Amazing place and definitely warrants much more time if for no other reason but to participate in the midnight mineral bath pagan rituals at the Esalen Institute.

After Big Sur we ventured on and into Carmel and Monterey. Tasha read a little blurb describing the evolution of the town of Carmel and it stuck in my mind. The military moves in first, the bohemians move in after that and the rich run them out of town. Carmel is beautiful, picture card perfect and definitely cute.

The Aquarium at Monterey was amazing. The kids could have spent the whole day the looking at fish.




























Carmel Point
by Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Santa Cruz is great, if not a bit like the West Coast's answer to Atlantic City.
I'll look for a quick surf tomorrow AM before we leave.

As for suburban fathers day bliss:
Hoola hooping on fathers day on the green of the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum.















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Location:Big Sur, CA