Hitting the Road

After installing the Thule Carrier no less than three times... too far to the back, crooked, backwards you name it... My friend Iain and I piled the camping gear in for our desert portion of the trip and hit the highway. Our first intended stop was along the coast north of San Francisco in search of a Harbor Seal rookery of which I recently learned.

As it turned out our first stop was the graveyard in Sebastapol. We had an amazing graveyard in the town where I grew up. It was full of old stones that my mother and I would make rubbings from, there were tons of old trees to sit beneath and one side had a great hill for sledding in the winter so far from eerie, graveyards have always been a place where I went to relax and enjoy the quiet. I kept this in mind as I slowly wandered through the tombs, admiring the trinkets people had left for their loved ones. Green plastic snakes, ornate crosses, Christmas Tree decorations, bracelets, teddy bears and more. One grave in particular caught my eye - a marble woman sitting in thought. The morning dew clung to her eye lids and ran down her cheeks. She looked so serene, quiet and peaceful that I had to take time to study the angles until I found a shot that I feel captured her beauty.

We piled back into the car and headed toward the coast again, intent on capturing the cute faces of the harbor seals. Instead, we found a raging sea that was boiling and bubbling over the rocks and crashing onto the beaches below the cliffs. So of course we had to stop and attempt to capture the moment.
When we finally arrived at the rookery we discovered that all access was closed off... not as we had feared because of the seals but rather because the surf was too rough and unpredicable. The rangers feared people would be swept from the beach by sleeper waves and out to sea, never to be heard from again. I think they were more afraid that people would try to surf and the coast guard didn't want to have to fish people out. So no Harbor Seals for us. :0(( Better luck next time.

So on to Tahoe we drove arriving after nightfall. We settled into our rooms and I promptly passed out for the night. A pretty good start to the trip even though it wasn't what we expected.