Long Time No Blog

This is my first post in a few days--my family is currently on a road trip up the California Coast with our final destination being Palo Alto for my cousin's wedding.

We started our journey early getting to Santa Barbara for lunch with some family friends in Carpinteria. We proceeded to walk around downtown Santa Barbara and then headed to the Cleary's house (family friends). The Clearys live near Los Olivos inland of Santa Barbara with golden rolling hills that are framed by dramatic hazy mountain peaks and dappled with green trees and rows of orchards and vineyards. We celebrated the fourth with them, eating a spectacular barbecue, watching fireworks, listening to patriotic music and sitting around their fire pit.

After their house and the surrounding area everything kind of blurs together for me. We drove through some beach towns which I have no recollection of as I was asleep. I woke up upon our arrival in Morro Bay where we walked around but were not enchanted by the town. It was very touristy and a typical waterside boardwalk town but also a little depressing.

From there we headed to Cambria where we were going to spend the night. We went into town for dinner and then walked around for awhile. We met a man who was walking around with his Bernese Mountain dog Max. He was hilarious and we talked to him a lot. I can't even fully explain what we talked about it was just so random, weird, and so funny. Anyway we went back to our hotel where my sister and I watched Sex and the City (that movie is so long, it like seriously never ends) and then went to sleep.

The next day we woke up and had breakfast and then watched along the beach and fed some CRAZY squirrels, they had no fear and would run up to you and they were hugely fat, While on the beach I collected pretty rocks and shells and my dad found this really long hard piece of seaweed that we used as a fake whip and kept hitting my sister with...not as violent as it sounds, I promise...I was however annoying teenage boy behavior.

After Cambria we toured Hearst Castle, went out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant and the continued on our way. We drove towards Big Sur stopping at a hidden cove with aqua water and a waterfall and at a place with GIANT elephant seals. They are so gross looking.

In Big Sur we slept at a really quaint hotel named Deetjens. Its all old wooden buildings with old stove fireplaces nestled in a big red wood grove. The hotel was having a celebratory bbq which we joined in on and then my mom, sisiter and I went on a hike. We walked up this hill through a forest that seemed just like Cullen/Twilight territory...

.At the top of the hill you could look down on the ocean below and the coast highway winding its way into the distance. We watched from the hill at a turnout where a car had pulled over and a man was shouting curse words. He three something across the road, hit his car and then started throwing rocks in a very mad way. Curious, we watched for a while and deducted that we thought he had a flat tire. After a while a woman got out of the car and they stated talking. Then a car pulled up as if it was going to help them and then pulled away in the opposite direction it had come. It was very strange...I then decided we all should shout in unison from out hill top "Do you need help," because there is no cell service in Big Sur and the people seemed really upset. We shouted twice but the wind was blowing towards us and they did not appear to hear. We continued on our walk speculating what had happened and imagining that they were drug dealers and or murderers and then worrying that we had shouted at them and given away our position at the top of the hill/mountain. We went off the dirt road onto a little trail that curved around the side of the mountain and was hidden from the main road. While there we heard the crunch of tire on dirt and rock and began to unrealistically imagine and question "What if they are coming up to kill us!??" My Mom didn't buy into the for lack of a better word conspiracy theory/hysteria but my sister and I snuck around the corner to try and spy the road, the car that had approached and perhaps the imminent danger.... We grabbed weapons in the form of sticks and made our way back onto the path to find that unsurprisingly all was safe!

That was all two days ago. I will have to continue this later as we were supposed to leave Monterey (where I am now) ages ago. Will continue my narrative luego and add photos.

TaTa for Now!