chase the light

Yesterday we left on the road trip up the coast to San Francisco. I’m pretty sick so we didn’t leave until the afternoon. We stopped briefly in San Luis Obispo to get a bite to eat and I couldn’t stop shaking I was so cold. Ugh, feeling awful. We got up to Cambria late and looked for a place to stay in the dark along the coast. All things considered I think we chose wisely. Nice place and they still had some late night tea and cookies set out. Shhhh… I pocketed some cookies to take back to the room.

We got up this morning and had some complimentary breakfast in the tea room. Free is frequently good. Much like expensive is frequently bad. Make your own waffles and things. So we set off to go see some seals. Not your ordinary run of the mill lazy harbor seals, hah, we’re talking the seal monsters of seal monsters. So big they went, “hey they’re seals, but they’re like elephants!” Elephant Seals! Brilliant! You don’t see them saying Elephant Mongoose do you? No, no you don’t. They don’t even say Seal Elephants when elephants are having in bath in their watering hole. We first got to what we thought was Piedras Blancas but then noticed Liza’s jacket was missing, so I called back to the hotel and they went and looked for it. While we were waiting for a call back we checked out the seals bobbing their heads in the ocean right of the coast. Frankly I was kinda disappointed there wasn’t more flopped up on the beach. The ones out in the water were making funny snorts and stiff so that was cool.

While we were there we got a call back from the hotel and they had found the jacket so we hopped back in the car and went and got it. After the little back track we headed a mile or so farther up the coast then the original seals and came across the real Piedras Blancas. OH, look at that! Elephant seals galore!! Now we’re talkin’! Big floppy blubbery snorty fightin’ awkward swimming elephants! We spent about an hour out there watching them and got a whole bunch of info on elephant seals from a docent that was out there in her jacket with buttons on it. You know the kind… “I brake for elephant seals” and such. She pointed out a couple of big males but the bulk of them were scheduled to arrive in the next month to start mating. In a one question interview I asked Liza if she had a good time and she said yes very much.

OK, so long elephant seals! We have a long day of driving up the coast ahead of us. We wound our way up stopping occasionally for some photos here and there. Pfeiffer Falls being one of those spots. A waterfall! Into the ocean! And not a pain in the ass to get to! Took requisite photos and documentation and continued on. We finally got to Santa Cruz kinda late and drove around briefly but everything was closed. Liza liked the spookiness of it all and of course the Lost Boys connection. We spied a chinese place on the way in and stopped there for dinner. Rhyme ahead. Not bad for just pickin’ a place when pickin’s were slim. I had some chicken.

After dinner we headed on up to San Francisco and got checked in but then went for a little drive around the city. Headed over the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island to take some pictures of the skyline. At that point I was just too tired to go on so we headed back to the hotel. Lovely long day.