Blown Away at Half Moon Bay : California

Friday I drove to explore Monterey and Carmel, which are actually the sites of where my grandparents honeymooned 68 years ago! Monterey is usually booming with tourism in the summer, but in December it is only locals.  My sister's previous roommate Susie lives in Monterey as well, so I wanted to pay her a visit.

I first arrived and parked near the fishing wharf and walked most of the coastline of the city. I explored the fishing wharfs, the cannery, and Lover's point. It was the first clear blue sky day of my trip, but also the coldest. 

Susie, her boyfriend, and I went to lunch at a local brewery and then Susie and I left to do the '17 mile drive,' which is famous for the high concentration of beautiful beaches and vistas along the ocean. We enjoyed stopping anywhere we pleased to enjoy a view or look over a cliff.

Next we rode bikes to get an ice cream and walked around the park some more.

a local coffee cart

The weather shifted and all the birds converged

It was time for me leave before I knew it, and I went to pick up Kate from her work so that we could go camping north in Half Moon Bay. On the way, there was a huge 4+ car collision immediately behind us, we had to call 911 because several of the cars flipped on top of each other...there was no safe place for us to pull over, so we had to keep driving...

At the campsite, we were freezing! We soon learned why there was no one camping around us.....There were wind gusts of almost 30 mph blowing our tent half over and the temperature was ~35 degrees. A man from Arizona, named Dave, came over to us and let us borrow some heavy duty tent stakes to keep everything on the ground. We could hardly get to sleep the wind was so loud!

the moon over the bay and above our tent

In the morning we packed up our frost-covered tent and accompanied Dave to 'the best chai place in the world' as he refers to it. It's called Raman's Coffee and Chai, and it's owned by a very grumpy, but still hilarious man. I made the mistake of asking if he makes a 'dirty chai,' or chai with a shot of espresso, which incited a lecture for Kate, Dave, and myself about the purity of Chai and how my generation just loves to mix everything that could be beautiful on its own together. I should also mention that the entire time this was happening this :

girl was in the corner standing on a sofa and singing/chanting to herself. She was laughing and dancing in a circle with butterfly wings on her head. I should also mention the group of elderly who were having some sort of meeting (discussing flowers, the church...) while this girl was enthusiastically telling me that I 'need to get in touch with my star sign' and that I 'seem like a Sagittarius'.....

We talked to Dave for hours while our toes were defrosting and while this girl stood in the corner (although we had plans to go hiking early). He was so interesting! He has been camping in his van in California for weeks, although his wife went back last week to their home in Arizona. He once sailed with his wife from California to Mexico and back without any technical navigation equipment and spent some time living in Alaska too. His son did a Geology degree and then decided to go back school, a Circus school, in the Northeast.

We said goodbye to our new friends and went to begin our day of exploring. Kate and I did a brief walk on the California coastal trail and then drove down Route 1 playing a game where we impulsively stopped at every last thing or viewpoint on the side of the road that we wanted to see and would hop out of the car and run around the beach, cliff, berry farm, or whatever it was, before hopping back in the car, driving 60mph,  only to stop in another 1/2 mile. We did this for hours.

Our last major stop was at Kate's favorite beach, where you have to climb down from a cliff into a cove to be on the beach. Once you're there, if the tide's low and you can move fast, you can run through an archway into another beach. This beach is technically a nude beach.
We realized that we had a blanket and all of our food we packed for camping, so we had an impromptu beach picnic and laid there enjoying the views for hours.

At the end of the beach, there was at least one male nudist dancing with a white sheet stretched between his arms like a cape behind him. There were also two men sword fighting in medieval dress.

Sunday I went to breakfast with Kate and her boyfriend Jordyn in Santa Cruz. We planned to go to their friend's christmas gift exchange that afternoon, and spent the morning looking for gag gifts on Pacific Avenue.
Santa Cruz has a little bit of a reputation for being "weird," there are even "keep Santa Cruz Weird" bumper stickers on cars. We spotted a man playing music in the street. He used the bow of a violin, but on a saw...and he was sitting in front of a statue of another saw-player.

After our gift exchange, I caught the red-eye flight home to Richmond at 10:30 PM!
I have absolutely loved my time in California, and I would love to live here someday!