Big Sur. BIG SUR.

Mostly, the point of this post is just to make you all understand how beautiful this stretch of the country is. For real. So beautiful.

Also, if you can, you should look up "Bixby Canyon Bridge" by Death Cab for Cutie and play it while you look at these. Because that's what I listened to for this part of my trip. Multiple times. And because the pictured bridge IS the Bixby Canyon Bridge (it's actually called the Bixby Creek Bridge in real life, but whatever). 

This is me after I descended the dusty gravel ridge beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge. (If you had listened to the song like I told you to, that'd make sense.)

No, my hair wasn't up. It was just that windy on that cliff.

You know how I said the point of this post was only to show you the beauty of Big Sur and the whole coastal route 1 drive? Well I didn't say that. I said that was mostly  the point. So the next part is the part that isn't for that purpose. And brace yourself, cause it's a bit sad. 

Okay to set the soundtrack for this component you should look up "Grapevine Fires" (also by Death Cab), which is another song I played a few times during this drive because it's about California forest fires which I happened to be DRIVING THROUGH. I mean, not directly through them, but the whole Big Sur area was where those fires were. The state parks were closed to the public, and many of the roadside viewing pull-offs for cars were closed so that emergency vehicles could use them. So sad. So scary. 

In this first picture, do you see the weird orange quality to the light? Yeah, that's not a filter. It was four in the afternoon and the light was coming through more like dusk and I was kinda like, "Wow, this light is really weird right now?" and then a bit later I passed signs thanking the firefighters and it all sort of clicked together. 

In this picture I went into one of the pull-over areas and you could actually see the huge billow of smoke between the hill we were standing on and the next hill over. I mean, the stuff in the sky was just clouds I think, but the stuff in the valley? Smoke. Definitely smoke. Yikes.