You can rest assured that I had yet another photo of Caroline in the Nest that could have been posted here, but after more than half a dozen images of our perfect lodging on the coast, maybe those were enough. That begs the question: how much of enough is ever enough? When it comes to being out at the edge of the sea, we apparently have an insatiable need.

We are trying to make better sense of why this is only the third time in 10 years we’ve chosen to be out here on Highway 1. The reasons are multiple, but now that we’ve been on the coast for a week, we understand we’ve been missing out on some immense beauty. About those reasons that kept us away, the first, which I think I’ve shared before, maybe even on this trip, are the driving conditions as they relate to other drivers. While the road is twisting and narrow with not many places to pull over, there are so many aggressive drivers using the road to challenge their mettle that those of us out here to soak in the beauty are abused by having them on our asses. The second reason is that the Oregon coast has pulled us up to its more casual, more accessible, and equally beautiful shores.

In the intervening years since we first started driving this incredible stretch of scenic road, I’ve learned to go as slow as I want and pay a lot of attention to people behind me. If I see a car on the straighter segments a half-mile or so behind us, I start looking for a pullout right away. This has turned out to be a great strategy as by being proactively defensive and rarely driving faster than 30 mph in a 55 mph zone, I can maneuver into the smallest pullouts that would be too dangerous to pull into if we were moving a little too fast as the gravel and lack of guardrail next to the ocean can be intimidating. This has allowed us to discover natural springs, drinking fountains, and overlooks we would have never stopped at 20 years ago.

All the same, I can’t help but feel that I’ve already shot almost every ocean view out here ten times before. If we are lucky, we’ll travel this road another ten times during our remaining years.

We found a parking spot in a crowded curve and decided to take the hike anyway. This is the Salmon Creek Trail that is supposed to lead us to some spectacular waterfalls.

Sadly, we didn’t make it to the waterfalls and had to satisfy ourselves with this small cascade. The combination of a big crowd and people playing piano music (because the natural environment without such accompaniment might have been boring?) sent us in the opposite direction back to our car. If we didn’t know we were old earlier today, this would certainly be an indicator of our intolerance for the selfish shenanigans of youth. On the other hand, maybe it simply signifies that after so many days in remote locations listening to the surf, wind, birds, scurrying lizards, barking sea lions, and encroaching squirrels looking for snacks in settings of cliffside, ocean, and fog, we’ve grown comfortable with the tranquility that is a large part of the Central California Coast.

Instead of making the theme of today’s Closer Examination, maybe I’ll change it to The Lament. Here we are at Ragged Point. We stopped for lunch and decided to walk over to a trail that leads down to that beach. I was already uncomfortable at the restaurant as we were mostly among people our age and older. So, it wasn’t that they were our age; it was the difference in attitude when compared to those our age back at Treebones. This place is for the cruise ship crowd having passive experiences while we enjoy at least a hint of being among adventurous people. That’s it; I’ll quit right now with any more complaints or negative observations, I hope.

San Carpoforo Creek pullout has space for three or four cars; we were the second one. It was a nice walk out to the beach past the creek that is pooling out there. For a moment, we weren’t sure we’d be able to pass the creek until we reached the point where we were able to walk around it because it wasn’t actually flowing into the sea. The other car belonged to two young women setting up a tent on this windy beach. A smile came up on my face thinking of their adventure of trying to sleep in the howling wind. Certainly, the days of building grand memories.

Another new spot for us to explore here at the Piedras Blancas State Marine Reserve & Conservation Area. It’s dawning on us out here that we’ve never before taken the luxury of having so many consecutive days on this short stretch of the coast. This grants us a level of granular scrutiny that is similar to what we experienced on our 20-some-odd days up in Oregon this past November.

California and some of the wealthy here who made it their life work to protect the coastal regions should be commended. These areas are outstanding in their natural beauty and no amount of manmade architecture could add an iota of value to what nature has sculpted out of the landscape. There is nobody else out here, not a single person. We know this because there are few places to pull over and park, and we’d not passed another parked car for miles. Further south, there were no other cars parked along the road, just the ever-present circuit racers zipping by.

Happy to slow things down even more, I get down on my stomach to gain a ground-level view of the low-lying plant life hugging the windswept earth.

It’s colorful down here, crawling upon the tough plants, looking for the tender ones that solicit my eyes to take notice.

I wish I could have pulled out a notebook and pen while I was looking at this succulent because here I am a day later at Lily’s Coffee House in Cambria, sitting in the shade while a nice breeze washes over me and Caroline has taken a walk back to the car to fetch a knitting item and I’ve got nothing but an empty mind that’s enjoying the down moment to listen to the birds. And then Caroline walks up still holding a bag she was going to drop at the car. She found herself distracted in another nearby shop and is now walking over to where we parked. I wish her luck at not being drawn into another shop, telling her I’d see her in 10 minutes to an hour.

So, back to the plant life and something witty or insightful about this beautiful specimen. Well, I still have nothing and will have to just leave it here as an example of a color scheme we were both taken by.

Scroll back up half a dozen photos to the one with a trail leading to the edge of the land and check out the grasses; there’s not a lot to see in a broad overview. But take your gaze away from the ocean and blue skies and look down towards your feet, and that’s when this other universe becomes apparent. What I didn’t share with you is that as we got closer to the sheer cliffside, there were deep cracks in the dirt where it looked like runoff from rains was draining through widening openings in the earth. While I’m not a geologist, it looks to me like more of this coastal land is heading into the sea.

Our car sitting there next to the road is significant to the two of us. You see, so many travels we’ve made up and down this highway and often short on time, we’d see those lone cars pulled over at the narrowest of places just barely off the road, and we’d wonder, what is so interesting out there? With so many named sights to see, who just stops at random spots along the coast and then disappears from view? Today, we are those people.

This is an old farmstead home just south of the Piedras Blancas Motel we’ve mentioned on so many other opportunities. We’ve stopped out here due to something we missed as we were driving north last week. As we passed the motel, we were looking for a low spot on the road where I took a picture of a large wave crashing well above the highway, but we couldn’t figure out where it was. We told ourselves that as we came back down this way, we’d be sure not to be distracted so we wouldn’t miss it this time. We still couldn’t find it. So, we pulled into the motel parking area and went on a walk.

Seeing a trail over by the ocean without a No Trespassing sign, we walked that way, and the path went south behind the old farmstead. Well, this was interesting enough as I saw that, at first, I thought was a coyote but then realized it was a bobcat. I’ve never seen a bobcat in the wild.

We found part of what we were looking for; no, it wasn’t this snake, nor was it the greasy black skeletal remains of a seal that were scattered about. Before getting to what it was we were looking for, let me satisfy anyone’s curiosity that might be wondering. Yes, Caroline picked up one of the vertebrae, asking, would I have a problem bringing it home? Gack, yes, I’d have a big stinky problem with that. We agreed that if she found the skull, we’d have to bring it with us. Lucky me, we didn’t find it. I’ll bet the caretakers at the falling-down motel took it with them to boil the rancid meat off the bones. The fur that was shredded in small pieces stunk too, but even I had to examine it closely and touch its bristles, as the hair was way coarser than I could have ever guessed.

Back in January 2002, we stayed overnight at Piedras Blancas during a pretty fierce storm. As we left, driving north, there were some frightening large waves breaking over the highway; click here and scroll down to see a couple of photos from that day. In front of the farmstead, we started walking along a paved section of road that I finally realized wasn’t the access road to the old house; it was a two-lane highway with a double yellow line on it. At the end of the pavement in front of the motel, it dawned on us that we were walking on an older version of Highway 1, and where it was cut off, the old road had been removed and realigned further inland. To the right of these coastal cypress trees, where there is no longer any ground at all, is where the highway had been. We were incredulous.

While it’s a bit difficult to make out, the old Highway 1 scar is on the right of the photo, and the wave photo from 2002 is breaking over a bridge that crossed the drainage. No, the ocean was NOT that close to the road before. After figuring out the mystery and getting back to an area with cell service, we Googled things and learned that back in 2017 and 2018, when the realignment took place. When we get home, we’ll be looking for other old photos that were never published that we might have shot while taking this part of Highway 1 that no one will ever drive again.

There’s an unmarked driveway about 1/4 of a mile north of Vista Point, where a large parking lot welcomes visitors to see a giant colony of elephant seals. This photo of seals is not from the main location but from this unmarked smaller lot. But we are not here to see more belching farting elephant seals; though we do enjoy their scratching, sunning, and rude sounds as much as we ever have, we are going on a hike.

We are on the Boucher Trail, walking north. How it should work out that on a Friday afternoon, we are the only people out here is beyond my wildest imagination. Okay, it could be the howling wind that is contributing to the isolation as others enjoy comfort more than beautiful oceanside walks among the wildflowers.

Twenty-five years ago, when we first learned of the elephant seal colony while on a drive north during my mother-in-law Jutta’s first trip to America, we were directed to a spot we had sped right by. There was no parking lot, no marking, or anything else, giving a hint of what was out of sight just below the cliff. We were able to walk right out on the beach to get fairly close to these enormous creatures. Now, all these years later, the colony has grown and inhabits many coves along the coast here in the San Simeon area. While we can’t go down to the beach, it was nice to be here away from the crowd.

We continued on the trail, continuously hoping for a better shot of the lighthouse, and then, all of a sudden we were at a junction with the road that travels right to it. From the road, a gate prohibits access, but from the trail, we were able to walk down the gravel driveway to get to this secondary gate. A sign asks that we do not enter without being on a guided tour; we heeded their request and were quite satisfied to have been this close.

The walk back was as wonderful as the walk out.

This is the last photo of the day where we covered 22 miles of Highway 1 in 8 hours instead of the 35 minutes Google suggests it should take. What an absolute luxury it is to have the time to do a slow crawl, taking a closer examination of a small section of coast we’ve usually mostly driven past.