Hi Gram,

I woke up in Mojave, CA on my birthday to sunshine and warmer weather than we’d had the previous few days. I got up early and organized some things, then opened a present and card from Zibby. She made a cute little bear out of crochet, and wrote a heartfelt card. We packed up and headed over to the spaceport for some pictures. Tommy has been there before for some of his competitions, and it was cool to see some of the planes they have out front.

After that, we headed over to a little coffee shop and grabbed some doughnuts and tea, then pointed the car toward the coast. It was fun driving along two lane highways and avoiding the interstate. We listened to some podcasts and music and took in the beautiful blue skies. She’s never been to Carl’s Jr before, and we kept seeing them each day, so we decided to stop in Paso Robles where she finally sampled their food. With the rain and winds, they reported some road closures along Rt 1, the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), but we sought it out and headed north to see how far we could get. Huge waves were crashing against giant boulders along the coast, which made for some spectacular views as we drove along. There are a lot of spots to pull over and take a short hike to the coastline or sometimes pull right up and look down from above. We took advantage of one of the first spots we came to. Since it wasn’t raining, we got out and walked along the path to get a better view. In addition to the waves, there was a bird that just didn’t care when he saw us walking his way. I think it was a blue herron, and I imagine people feed him a lot because he let us get with a few feet before just calmly walking a little further out of reach.

We got some good pictures, then headed back to the car to continue our trek north. The views were almost as amazing as the conversation while we drove along. One minute, we were driving past wind farms, full of massive windmills. The next, we were in a field full of oil wells and trucks. We’d cross over a hill to see fields of solar panels as far as we could see. Conversation would take over and one of us would look up to see cows all around us, or a hillside full of sheep. There were even real tumbleweeds blowing across the road. With no agenda or schedule, we just drove along and enjoyed each others company. We got as far as Ragged Point before the road was finally closed. We briefly considered driving around the “road closed” signs, but didn’t know if it was closed out of overabundance of caution or for more serious reasons.

We turned around and worked our way south until we could find a road that crossed over to the 101. Before we found a cross road, we stopped at another lookout point and were astounded to see elephant seals on the beach below. Less than a hundred feet from us were probably eighty to a hundred elephant seals, clustered in families of nursing mothers, baby seals, and proud papas posturing on the beach to scare off attackers and occasionally slipping into the surf to frolic. Being a rainy Wednesday, we were the only ones there to appreciate this show of nature.

A little further south, we found a road that would take us east. I was expecting a country road that rolled gently across fields, but what we got was just short of a roller coaster. Almost immediately, the car was chugging up a steep incline cut from rocky hills with trees on either side. The road would hug the hill through a hairpin curve with solid rock on one side and a steep drop on the other. The road curved back and forth like that, climbing for a while, then descending down the other side before climbing another hill, weaving back and forth. We were lucky to hit 35mph on a short straightaway, but often we were reduced to 10-15mph through the tight turns, hoping a car wasn’t coming around the curve in the other direction. After about an hour of that, as it started getting dark, we found our way to the 101 to head north. Exhaustion set in around King City, so we pulled off to find a hotel. We settled into a clean, comfortable motel just off the highway. Our room was right next to the swimming pool, but with the temperatures in the upper 30’s, we decided to skip the evening swim and headed to a diner for my birthday dinner instead. King City is a farming area, so there were a lot of blue collar workers and truckers there. We got a seat and decided to split a quesadilla since we’d been snacking on the drive all day. It was full of flavor, but couldn’t compare to the apple pie we got for my birthday dessert. The pie was flaky and moist, warm with a scoop of ice cream on top. Sitting in a diner, surrounded by rough workers at the end of their day, eating apple pie a la mode just felt like we should have been in a Norman Rockwell painting titled “Americana”. We headed back to the hotel, watched a little TV, and got to sleep, ready for more adventures tomorrow!