I’m back from a place I didn’t know I was going. Yes, you read that correctly. As luck would have it, I found myself traveling to the California shores last week. It wasn’t a planned trip, mind you, and not a photo trip, but I did manage to drag my camera out that way and wrangle a few shots along my travels. This is one from an excursion to Big Sur. I wound up going to Carmel-by-the-Sea (or just Carmel as I gather the locals call it) for a bit and I made the drive down to Bixby Bridge. I also managed to find myself in downtown San Francisco at a place called, “The Exploratorium.” (Here’s a link for the curious.)
I must admit, I rather loved Big Sur. It was an incredible place! As you can see from this image, it was very green. Recently, they had a lot of rain out that way and the ground reflected it-very lush and green. At one point, we joked it looked like Scotland although, I must confess, I have yet to visit that place the locals call, “The Greatest Country on Earth.” It really did almost feel like I imagine Scotland would, had I ever visited. Lush green rolling hills with mist and fog in points afar, it was like a postcard in spots.
While I was out California way, it did rain a lot and it was quite windy. So much so, in fact, I almost blew off the top of Big Sur. Yes, you read that correctly. You know that Bixby Bridge? I almost blew away underneath it. And Pebble Beach? Yeah, I’m not going to lie about it. That was “Pebble and Gale Force Winds Beach” the day I was there. Phew! Hang onto your hat, friends, it’s windy out that way. They also had the golf tournament going on which, if you know me, you know I do not do sports very often and, for some reason, golf especially is not my bag. This was made even worse by the fact that they had closed off a lot of the roads and had “golf people” roaming in a sort of free range pattern along the coast. Oh, they were almost worse than the packs of free range roaming tourists in the hot spots of Europe. What a mess! And each with their own golf poles. Euf. (While we drove past one of their barricades, I stuck my tongue out at them. Actually, it was just as we were driving past a big TV tent. If you were watching the Pebble Beach news coverage on ABC channel and you look very carefully, in the background, you might have spotted it. My tongue sticking out, I mean, not the barricade although, if I’m being honest, you might have been able to spot that too, in-between the golf poles, rainbows, and gale force winds!)
Big Sur was a fine visit, even given the crazy winds and sometimes rain. Totally a place I would revisit and it’s on my bucket list of places to see again someday. If I ever win the lottery, you might find me hold up in a little cottage down in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a place where they also had some really great coffee. Here are a couple of early shots from the first round of post processing.
Until next time…
