Friday

Dan: With a good night’s sleep, we were on the road at 6:30 a.m. in raw, windy, rainy weather. We were glad that it was rain, but snow was still a possibility ahead in the Tehachapi Pass on the way to Bakersfield, about an hour away. In fact, however, the rain let up and we had sunny, but windy, weather from Bakersfield on. As we continued toward the coast we were greeted with rainbows and palm trees! We heard Curly in the back mumbling about being greeted with “flowers and candy” but we just ignored him. Paso Robles was vineyard country, so we stopped for a tasting, then we moved on up the famous Route One coastal highway. The surf and waves were extraordinary, probably the result of the last few days’ storm. The road hugged the coastline, twisting and switch backing up and down steep hills. Every mile or so was a new, more spectacular view. We stopped for awhile to watch giant elephant seals sunning on the beach. We drove through the Big Sur area and I made a mental note to visit again with Frances. Our plan was to spend the night with my friend Steven in San Francisco, but as we got to Monterey the traffic increased dramatically. By Salinas (John Steinbeck territory) we decided we would be pushing too hard to try to make it all the way to San Francisco. So we stopped for our last motel night in Gilroy, on Highway 101 south of San Francisco. We made phone calls, worked on the blog, and hit the sack. Tomorrow – San Fran!