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. 

Santa Barbara, You're Beautiful.

So I was in L.A. county and had finally, killed enough time to leave for Santa Barbara. The traffic was kinda bad, but not totally horrible-- not as bad as some other parts of this road trip have ended up being. I stayed with Ruby, Charlie's granddaughter, while in Santa Barbara. She tried to introduce me as her kind of cousin to her neighbor, but I was all, "No way, I'm totally your aunt if I'm anything!" (because what I actually am is awkward and kind of an ass, if anything. So yeah. Sorry about that, Ruby) and then we had to explain how her grandfather is dating my mother, which she maybe didn't want to get into but hey, it happened (again, sorry).

It turned out that weekend was Santa Barbara's annual "Old Spanish Says Fiesta" which is kinda like Old Hallowell Day, but it lasts for pretty much a whole week and also is a lot more Spanish, go figure. I guess it's a big deal, and it was pretty cool that I happened to be in the city for that. There's this whole thing where people sell painted eggs that have been emptied and filled with confetti and everyone buys them and cracks them over each other's heads so that there was confetti everywhere on the streets and sidewalks and many people were walking around with it in their hair.

That first night, Ruby and I walked down into town and got some Mexican food for dinner. It was delicious and I had such a wonderful time talking to her and catching up. After dinner we watched a movie on Netflix and headed off to bed. In the morning I accidentally woke up stupidly early (because I suck at sleeping in these days, it turns out) and made some coffee to take out onto the porch. Now, Ruby and Jamie (her boyfriend) live in a cute little apartment that has a balcony porch that looks out over pretty much all of Santa Barbara and out to sea. But the thing about Santa Barbara weather is that apparently every day starts off sort of misty and cool and then the fogginess burns off by late morning or early afternoon. So I couldn't actually see much of the view as I sat there that morning, but it was lovely all the same. I painted my fingernails. I enjoyed the luxury of quietness and restfulness and not having to be anywhere.

Jamie was out of town the whole time I was there and Ruby was headed down to L.A. Saturday night for a wedding, so she took off after breakfast and I headed downtown to check out the farmer's market. It was so great. I got there only like ten minutes before it ended, which was barely enough time to walk through everything, but it worked out perfectly for me to get some (delish!) strawberries and some cosmos.

After the market I met up with Maddie, a friend of mine from Gordon who lives in Santa Barbara too! We went to a cute coffee shop and then she walked me around a bit of the city and showed me some sights (Ruby had done a bit of this the night before, too, but it was dark then and with my already terrible sense of direction it was virtually impossible for me to retain any of it. Thank God for google maps and smart phones!). We headed over to a temporary mercado that had been set up just for the festivities and I got some tasty Mexican corn on the cob for lunch. Yum! Then we went to the beach and hung out with some of her friends. It's weird how much the temperature can change when you get close to water. I mean, all day I'd been fairly close to water already but it was so hot until we actually got to the beach and it was much cooler and nobody actually ended up going for a swim or anything. It was enough to just be down there and cool off like that. Maddie and her friends were making pizza and watching the Olympics for dinner, so I joined them for that. We stopped at Traer Joe's for supplies on the way, and because I've never lived very near one it's always sort of a treat for me to go to one. I get really excited about it. Anyway, the pizza was delicious. I wasn't really involved with the pizza making process so I can't take any of the credit, but they did a fantastic job.

I headed back up the hill to Ruby's apartment and went straight to bed. I was exhausted! Watching Michael Phelps win a bunch of gold medals will really sap your energy, I tell ya!

On Sunday morning I stopped at a cafe type place called C'est Cheese (Pronounced like "Say Cheese" but in French it means "It's Cheese" because they're so punny. Actually the french for cheese is fromage, but I guess you have to make some sacrifices if you want to name your place something that cute.) on Maddie's recommendation. They had breakfast grilled cheese on the menu! I ordered that because duh, although I got it without the egg it was supposed to come with. It was so freaking good. Holy smokes. I wrote some postcards and headed north to drive up scenic route 1 towards the Bay Area.

Overall, my stay in Santa Barbara was wonderful. The city is so beautiful with all its Spanish architecture. Think red tile roofing and white buildings and palm trees and bright flowers everywhere. Seriously, so picturesque. One thing that kept bugging me though was that for such an iconic look, it didn't seem familiar from when I used to watch the show Psych, which is set there. Now, it's been years since I watched Psych and I don't remember any particularly distinct views of the city at all, so it's not like Santa Barbara looked wrong from the show, it was that it looked so distinctive and unfamiliar. I felt like if I watched that many seasons of a show set in such a beautiful place I shouldn't be so surprised by the look of the city when I visited. I mentioned it to Maddie and she said, "Oh, yeah, but it wasn't filmed here, right?" and of course I'd suspected as much but I was glad to have her confirm it for me so immediately. I'd always assumed that it was depicted accurately in the show, but after visiting it just kept confusing me that it all looked so new and different. I felt much better (although slightly disappointed) after learning that. (Also, for the record, I looked it up later and discovered that most of the filming took place in a few different places in Britsh Columbia including Vancouver which I also visited and it didn't look familiar to me either, so there you go. I just suck at that game, apparently.) So yeah, mystery solved.

Like I said, Santa Barbara was beautiful and I loved it there and I greatly enjoyed visiting with the people I got to see. Two thumbs up.

I Went in the Pacific and It Wasn't That Cold. (You're Just a Bunch of Weenies.)

So I left the desert. I was looking like a hot mess after camping for two nights and sweating my butt off the day before. I was on my way to Santa Barbara, but didn't really need to leave as early as I ended up leaving the desert, because the person I was staying with wouldn't even be home til 6pm, and it was only about a six hour drive from Joshua Tree to Santa Barbara. So I thought, okay, I'll stop in L.A. for a while.

Now, I've never been to L.A., (obviously. I'd never been anywhere on the West Coast until I started this trip) but it sort of overwhelms me just on principal. I get the snooty, extremely-well-put-together vibe from that city, and as I've just said, I was a hot mess. Also, the thought of driving through downtown Los Angeles gives me agita. I was on my way there, when I was suddenly like, "Why am I doing this if I don't want to? Hey, I wonder where Venice Beach is, I wanna go there!" Guess what guys, it's in L.A. (ish? I don't really understand where the cutoff lines for places is, so whatever. It was in the general area that I was headed towards)! So I reset my map for Venice Beach.

Because it was only like 9:30am when I got to the beach, there weren't that many people yet and I found some really easy access parking and just took it, realizing after I got out that I was actually like fifteen blocks away from Venice Beach still and was actually at Santa Monica Beach. But I was like, "Meh, the beach is the beach!" and went down to lay on the sand and read my book anyway.

Fear not, though-- I didn't just sunbathe and read; I also went into the Pacific (for the first time)! Now, whenever people talk about going into the Pacific, they always ALWAYS mention that it's cold. Always. And I've always kind of been like, "Well, duh! The ocean is cold. It's the ocean!" (In my head though, because I'm not totally rude all of the time.) But then I also sort of figured that because everyone feels the need to mention how cold it is, it might just actually be colder. I mean, the Pacific is a considerably larger body of water than the Atlantic. So it makes sense that it might stay colder. So I told myself that at the very least I was going to stick my feet in, but if it was really that cold I wouldn't go in any more. Well, folks, I got my feet wet and let me tell you...it wasn't very cold. I mean it was chilly, but it's the freaking ocean! What do people expect?! It was considerably warmer than the beaches I used to swim in as a kid (or as an adult, my point is just that I'm talking about Maine beaches). And admittedly, I was in Santa Monica which is waaaaay further south than Maine, so it's totally believable that at comparable latitudes, the Pacific is colder than the Atlantic. I think that is probably true. But it wasn't a temperature that prompted me to remark on its coldness. In fact, after my moment of pleasant surprise, I decided to wade out further and go all the way under. I mean, who needs a shower when you can have a salt water dunk instead, am I right?

After that, I tried to move my car further to Venice Beach (which was a mistake. I should have kept the good parking spot that I had.) and ended up driving around that whole area for like fifteen or twenty minutes. At this point it was like 11:30 on a Friday and Venice Beach was swarming with people. I finally found a parking spot and had to walk like fifteen minutes back to where I wanted to be. Lame. I found a cool coffee shop and got a tasty latte and read some more. I watched people walk by outside. Then I walked around outside myself. It was a beautiful day. But Venice Beach was a zoo. So after a couple hours I made my way back to where my car was parked, which was right next to a branch of the L.A. library and I decided to go in there for a while. Of course.