Pacific Coastal Highway (May 17)

May 17 - Alright so here's the final installment of the "West Coast" part of our trip in which we travelled the famous "Pacific Coast Highway" we didn't go the whole distance but we went kinda far on it. We started up out of Sunnydale and headed south down the road. Our final destination was a little clifside cafe known as "Nepenthe" where the view was astounding. On the way down we passed Gilroy, California the "garlic capital of the world," where you could literally smell the garlic from the car. From Gilroy we went past Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea, and stopped along the way for some great pictures. The coastal section of the drive gave way to the forest section of the drive where we saw an "albino" redwood and then continued on to lunch at Nepenthe. From there we took a little nature hike to an excellent view of the coast and waterfall in Julia Pfeiffer state park. After the park we headed on back to catch our flight in San Fran to head on over to the east coast but not without a quick stop to put our feet in the Pacific Ocean.

On a personal note I'm not quite sure how anyone who lives that close to the sea gets anything done. For me the hypnotic lure of the ocean makes it difficult to focus on anything productive. If I lived close I could only forsee myself just sitting on the beach relaxing or maybe writing or reading but work, I don't think so. I assume that eventually I would learn to live with it but I'm not sure I would want to.