I don’t like hot weather. I don’t like cold weather. I don’t care much for warm weather either. I like cool weather. And I especially love cool, foggy, Members Only jacket weather. When I lived in LA, I hardly ever went to the beach during normal beach hours. I went in the evenings or at night. I went for a drive. I went to the pier and wore sandals and a hoodie.
So when we woke up from our excellent stay at the Anderson Inn B&B in Morrow Bay off the Pacific Coast Highway, I could immediately sense it was going to be one of those days. Cool. Crisp. Not too dark, not too bright. No clouds whatsoever. The famous Morrow Rock, which had been our breathtaking balcony view the night before was completely gone in the morning, enveloped in a cool mystical fog.
The night before:
The morning after:
We decided to rent kayaks and paddle around the bay for a couple of hours, watching the thick layer unwrap itself from the rock. It was happening quick. Pretty soon the entire rock was once again exposed and the fog seemed to be heading north. It was starting to get hot, so we decided to exchange our paddles for steering wheel and go after it.
The next few hours passed with us spiraling down narrow coastal lanes with the ocean to our left. I looked over at Kelly and saw her gripping the bottom of her seat. “I feel like we’re in Sonic the Hedgehog,” she said, laughing. The ocean was a cloud. We climbed cliffs. We fell into valleys. You couldn’t tell if the water was 5 or 5,000 feet below us.
It was not a good day to lie in the sands. It was windy as hell. Or windy as the Pacific Coast Highway. Jackets blew, hair blew. Camera straps needed to be wrapped around body parts.
Still the fog laid ahead of us. When we came upon portions of the road where you couldn’t see beyond five feet, we stopped and took photographs. I recalled the great E. L. Doctorow quote when he compared driving to writing.
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
The fog was our night. We drove on.
Related posts:
Through your eyes (and lens!) these views are even more magical than in my memory. And you’ve now pushed me to get my own misty PCH pictures up. Tonight!