Part Five
Thursday, August 12, 2010
I'm nearing the end of the Around the Bay Area in 10 Days (on a motorcycle) wrap up report but August 12 and August 13 were probably two of the most interesting days so put on your reading glasses and get excited.
Thursday we woke up very early in Carmel because, as you may recall, we went to bed at 8pm. Ok, we stayed up until 9 watching "America's Got Talent" but that show is so mind-numbing that we can count our brains as being asleep.
We got our *free* breakfast at the Normandy Inn around 8:30 and were surrounded by more old people. They were even talking about cliched old people stuff like medicare and social security. For real. One of my favorite quotes was when one of the oldies saw the another oldie's USA Today byline about a new Youtube singing sensation and said "you know, America really does have talent." Apparently she watched the same Youtube special edition that we did the night before. Needless to say, we packed up as quickly as we could and got back on the bike by 9. We did a Carmel coastline house tour on the way out. Damn, there are some amazing ones. This one was particularly amazing and props to Tim who called it as a Frank Lloyd Wright. I guess it's pretty obvious in retrospect but I didn't know for sure.
And off we were to the Land of Younger People due south on Route 1 to Big Sur. After being rejected by an angry old hag of a park ranger in Andrew Molera State Park at the tip of the Big Sur region, we drove deeper in and chose Big Sur Station as our launching point because it was home of the trail that leads to the legendary hot springs.We loaded our backpacks up with trail mix and Clif Bars and stuff to make S'mores and a pot and a mini-propane tank and burner so we could boil water. Our backpacks quickly became really heavy. Especially when we added two bottles of wine to the mix. And then they became even heavier when we added on our sleeping bags and Tim added the tent onto his.
We were finally all geared up and on the Pine Ridge trail around 2:30pm. The trail was really fun and easy at first but started to get really hot and steep pretty fast. We were adamant about making it 10 miles to Sykes, home of the hot springs, before sundown anyway. No sweat. I'm not sure exactly what we were thinking though. I guess we both figured that we can walk and run 10 miles with just a little bit of effort and thought that hiking up a mountain would be essentially the same. It's not. Hiking 10 miles directly up a mountain while wearing a ridiculously heavy backpack turned out to be pretty challening. We really thought we were booking it too- we were passing people left and right. Ok, that's an exaggeration because the trail was pretty desolate but we did pass people and we were pushing ourselves as fast as we could go (on a side note- I'm in way better shape than Tim and was totally kicking his ass on the climb. Had to keep stopping for him. Seriously. Just wanted to throw that in.) Imagine our surprise when we realized that after 3 and a half hours we had only gone 4 miles. That's like a mile an hour! WTF? At that point, we realized there was no way were going to make it to Sykes before sunset and decided to call it at the site, Ventana, which is only 5 miles in. We hiked down a ridiculously long trail along the mountainside and chose a spot right along the river. Since there were a few other campers in the vicinity, we decided to cross the river and camp on the other side. The location was amazing and completely private even if we did have to take our shoes off and cross the ice cold river every time we went to the bathroom and to set up our camp. Whatever- we found a private sandy beach along the river and a beautiful gorge that was actually still and deep whereas the rest of the river was moving pretty fast.
These were our rocks for sunning:
And this was our secret ravine.
It was so amazing.
We made S'mores for dinner which is one of those things that sounds fun because you're not supposed to do it, but when you're as old as we are and your metabolism is not like a child's any more, S'mores for dinner actually makes you a little bit sick. No matter, we washed away our stomach pains with a great bottle of a Napa cab.
I didn't sleep at all that night because I was the Watchdog. A certain someone must have been tired from the hike because he just snored all night while I panicked and freaked at every sound. It's funny that I'm not actually scared of bears or mountain lions or snakes, I'm afraid of being murdered by some California meth heads hiding out in the woods or some stragglers left over from the Charles Manson cult, just itching to kill again. Not that I would be excited if a mountain lion came over to us, but it just seems like less scary or realistic for some reason. Anyway, no animals or meth heads attacked us and I finally fell asleep when the sun came up. Great timing. Tim woke me up a few minutes later and it was time to wake up and get out of the tent. I was a tad bit exhausted, especially because the River Water Sickness was just starting to take form. But more on that later...
Friday, August 13, 2010
*Friday the 13th, wooooooo
We ate a really nutritious breakfast of Big Sur bars and banana walnut muffins before playing around the campground for a while. We thought about spending one more night there but I think we were both too exhausted and wanted to sleep in a bed that night so we decided to take the 5 mile trip back during the day. Also, we were both starting to feel really dirty- our socks were black and our armpits were starting to ripen. It was time.
We hiked back and honestly didn't realize how hard our hike there was until we came back- our trip back was effortless and easy because it was all downhill. Which means that on the way there we went uphill the entire time. This made us feel a little bit better about how ridiculously long it took to get there. We cut our time in half on the way back and even stopped for lunch under a trickling waterfall where we had salmon jerky on everything bagels. Salty. Yum. (More carbs than I've had in years in one day. My butt is huge now.)
We were back on the road by 2pm and drove south all the way past the small town of Lucia then headed back up Route 1. We stopped for a brief dinner at NEPENTHE which boasts amazing views and good but totally overpriced food. It was a nice change from S'mores however as we had meat and vegetables. Vegetables never tasted so good.
We were going to head all the way back up to SF but it started to get really bitter cold on the bike again and we stayed at a snazzy Holiday Inn Express in Monterey instead. There was a car show in town so there were Ferraris all over the hotel parking lot which made it seem much fancier than it actually was. We weren't fooled. After a sleepless night in the woods however, I didn't mind the ol' Holiday Inn Express. We even got really nerdy with it and rented Date Night in our hotel room rather than go anywhere. We justified it by saying we were saving up for our last day- our final fun and amazing day in San Fran! Plus, my stomach was just starting to turn. I knew something was wrong when I couldn't drink my glass of pinot noir. Alert. But I was okay until morning.
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