Ok, here’s a little review of our vacation a couple weeks ago. Again, Tracey has more details and actual names of places, but I’ll do my best. We left Sunday morning, August 10. We stopped in LA and went to Sonic for lunch. We then spent another 2 ½ hours in our hot car (no AC) trying to get through LA and on up just north of Malibu. Finally, in the late evening, we arrived a state park right on the beach north of Malibu by like 15 miles. It was a great camp site, and we got a slightly private one down on one end, away from everyone else. We set up camp and grilled out some hot dogs. The only issue with this place was the bees. That’s right, good ole bumble bees, attacking us all night, they sucked. Anyway, we had a nice dinner, played some cards and had a fire. The moon that night was full and bright and looked great over the ocean. We almost didn’t need a latern at night. We got up early the next morning, got attacked by more bees. I took a quick shower under a little outdoor deal and we hit the road for San Luis Obispo, which was like another 2 hours or so, I think.

We got to the next state park near SLO on the coast. This time Tracey got us an “environmental” spot, which meant we had to hike up a small mountain a ½ mile to get to our site. We had to minimize what to bring from the car, cause I didn’t want to carry much, or take multiple trips. We got set up, our site had a magnificent view of the ocean and surrounding mountain side. There was a porta potty near us, so that was good. We later went to the beach and just relaxed. We also saw some sea lions, and went into the small town we were near and tried to get phone service, which we did not. That night was pretty cold, but not too bad. We played some more cards and then went to bed.

Next day we had the best drive of the trip, up around Big Sur. It was the type of scenery where you don’t believe it’s real, it’s that amazing. And we’re driving on Highway 1, huggin coast line, overlooking the great big, blue ocean on our left, and Colorado like mountain on our left. At this point we were very excited about Big Sur. We got to our camp ground (which we had to hike an ¼ mile to, geez Tracey, all this hiking, just to camp!!) and set up. We got a nice site under a huge tree, so we had some good shade. We then decided to walk to the beach, which was a mile hike. So we get our crap together and make hike. Once we get the beach, which is actually a bit of a bay, we have to wade through some knee deep water to get to the beach. Then we discover that the wind is gonna be an issue. The wind is so strong and constant that the sand is whipping around and is actually hurting us. Our skin is burning from sand blasting on us. We are just standing there, trying to figure out what to do. We then notice that there are many driftwood and rock shelters lining the beach, we walk down and find an empty one and camp out. Also, the joke we ended up having was that we were told we could take as much drift wood from the beach as we wanted for our camp site, well, as I mentioned, the beach is a mile from our campsite, so what are we supposed to do? Carry wood a mile one way just for a camp fire? Right on. I got bored just sitting in that shelter, being miserable because of the sand blasting that I decided to take the drift wood challenge. I ended up taking 3 loads of drift wood back to our camp site, for a grand total of 6 miles, round trip of hiking just to get fire wood. But it was fun and I got a great work out. The fire we had that night was epic. Ask Tracey, I got really obsessed with having big fires at night, and watching over it, and tending to it. I think Tracey was getting jealous of my fire tending. Every man has a little pyro in him, they understand how it is. That was one of my favorite parts of the trip, having fires every night. Anyway, we were supposed to stay in Big Sur for two nights, but the wind was ridiculous, so we decided to head out the next day and take our chances in Santa Cruz. We only had one night booked up in SC, but we just wanted to get out of Big Sur and the stupid wind. That wind sucked cause it was so beautiful there, and we wanted to do more hiking, but it just was unbearable. I’ll write more tomorrow, I’m tired of typing. I’m just glad I got this out today. Gotta go meet up with Tracey and our good friends Heidi and Ken, then just called, so I’m leaving work now. Or, to put it like one of my favorite lines, “work was hard, so we quite” or something like that, I don’t know. I read your blog mom, so that’s why I got this out today, hope you enjoyed. Go Inidans!