I moved to California in the summer of 2015, at the height of a prolonged drought. The winter of 2015-2016 was my first “rainy season” in this area and although we got some rain and it marked the beginning of the end of the drought, the rain ceased almost entirely for the month of February and I spent the month wandering around in a state of awe, wondering at the mild temperatures, beautiful skies, budding trees, and early wildflowers. I may have done some bragging to my family about how amazing California February was, February being the absolute worst of the winter months back in Maryland and Virginia. Based on my rapturous reports, my brother and his girlfriend subsequently decided to spend Michael’s February birthday here with me in sunny California this year. After his first visit in 2015, Michael had planned to visit Yosemite the next time they came out. Unfortunately, after he had purchased his tickets I remembered that plan and had to inform him that Yosemite’s climate was nothing at all like the Bay Area’s and would be “tire chain snowy” in February. Not liking snow any more than I do, Michael eventually decided we would skip dealing with that nonsense and asked what I recommended we do instead, to which I responded with an incredibly long email containing about 50 suggestions, many of them activities I’ve been wanting to do and haven’t yet gotten around to. From that email, Michael and Sue came up with a rough plan of several activities they wanted to do, the highlight of which was a multiple-day road trip through Big Sur, stopping at Hearst Castle, visiting Pinnacles National Monument, and kayaking with otters in Monterey.
Their first full day here was Michael’s birthday and it rained quite seriously all day, making my claims of “amazing February” seem invalid, although as I pointed out repeatedly, IT WAS SNOWING BACK IN BALTIMORE AT THE TIME. We didn’t do much all day until it was time to go to dinner. While Michael and Sue got ready, I started plotting a specific itinerary for our road trip, which we planned to embark upon the next morning. Things rather went downhill from there. “I have some bad news,” I announced. “What, is the restaurant closed?” Michael asked. “Worse,” I said, “Highway 1 is closed in Big Sur.” Due to mud and rockslides in at least 5 different places, and later reports of structural damage to a bridge, Highway 1 – the only road through Big Sur – was closed through almost the entirety of the area. We had to abandon the idea of leaving the next day and figured we’d try the following day. However, although the weather was very nice for the rest of their visit, road reports from Big Sur only continued to get worse and we were never able to make the trip. In fact, road conditions deteriorated so much that the day Michael and Sue flew back to Maryland, Hearst Castle had actually closed. I suggested we go to Pinnacles anyway, but Michael was very set on doing the whole circuit he had planned, so we ended up shelving all of it for a future visit.
We were able to do another activity we had planned, though – sort of. They wanted to go to Muir Woods. I said we had to get there as soon as it opened to get a parking spot, but we were an hour late and didn’t get parking. Despite their protests I dropped them off and collected them a little while later, then we headed off to check out Cataract Falls in Mount Tam, but we were thwarted once again when both ends of the road that led there were closed. This left me driving north on Highway 1 with no other backup plans, so I announced, “well, we are going to Point Reyes!” Which was okay because Point Reyes is my favorite place. I told them we could either go to the Tomales Point trail to see the tule elk, or we could do the lighthouse and the Chimney Rock elephant seal overlook. Michael ended up choosing the latter because it was “two things”. All of which is a very long intro for these photographs of the Point Reyes lighthouse, which wasn’t even in the original email list of my suggested activities…
SO MANY STAIRS.
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