When I woke up in Cameron's Inn, I immediately realized that I was incredibly sunburned. Having hoofed around San Francisco for hours the previous day without a drop of sunblock, my arms and neck were bright red and sore. I filled up my thermos from the coffee pot in the hallway by my room and took a shower before heading into Half Moon Bay.
I ate breakfast in a bakery in Half Moon bay and wandered around for an hour or so before realizing that there was very little of interest to me there. Half Moon has the vibe of a quaint fishing town that probably pleases tourists that visit. In the heavy morning fog the whole town had a sort of timelessness to it, as though it was frozen from the dampness of the ocean air.
I drove south on the 1 through the grey haze past countless cold beaches until breaking free suddenly into the Santa Cruz county limits. Almost immediately is was though I had breached a totally different ecosystem; the fog cleared and the color of the ocean changed from churning grey to bright clear blue. Great coastal cliffs slipped for miles into the cool surf, and on the beaches the sun illuminated windsurfers beginning their day amongst the white sand and jutting ragged rocks.
Around noon I stopped in Marina, filled up my thermos with coffee again, and ate what remained of my ration of walnuts and smoked what was left of my Golden Deer menthols. I ate some fried cod at a seaside diner and gathered myself. The plan that was forming was that I try to make LA by nightfall. I stopped in Monterey, spent about 20 minutes in the aquarium before becoming listless again. I had to head north along the U-turn of coast and off the 1 to get there, and something about breaking away from the highway made me restless to return to it.
I drove entirely too fast through the Big Sur along the 1, weaving along the cliff's face until I reached Ragged Point, the ocean on my right and the mountains to my left. When I parked and got out the car, I noticed a car of the same make and model parked in the lot. On a whim, I walked over to see if it was possibly also from Arizona, and was surprised to find that my car's doppelganger had been abandoned for what must have been months, if not years. The mirrors had turned pale white and cobwebs wove under the body of the car. Every inch of the car was weatherworn and tired. It was a little unnerving- a moment in a horror movie yet unmade.
I hiked down the Ragged Point trail in the hopes that I could get down to the shattered shoreline and watch the churning white sea up close. Halfway down the trail, however, the path vanished- a fissure brought on by perhaps heavy rain. There was no further navigating the already steep and overgrown path without serious risk to life and limb. It was easy to imagine falling the hundreds of feet down to the unforgiving rocks below. I looked up and saw a middle-aged woman watching me. When I climbed back up, she watched me the whole time, and as I reached the top, she stopped me.
"Did you go to the bottom?" she asked. I shook my head and told her the path was destroyed.
"Did you see a woman down there? I saw someone go down 15 minutes ago, but she hasn't come back up yet." I hadn't seen anyone down there, and when I asked what she looked like (assuming maybe it was someone much more athletic and daring than myself), the woman described the mysterious hiker as "older, kind of heavy set, with short brown hair." This description would have easily described the woman I was hearing it from. She had watched her doppleganger vanish into the overgrown cliff face. I shook my head again. If someone had gone down there, they had quite a climb to return. If they were hurt, there would be no way to hear their cries above the cacophany of the ocean assaulting the rock face.
"I didn't see anyone." When I left, she stayed and watched the trail in silence, the wide brim of her hat and her dark sunglasses obscuring her face. I got in the car and drove south past the Hearst Castle (which was so busy cars were queuing just to get into the parking lot) and spent sometime hovering the speedometer at 85. I entered the town of Harmony, population 15, and within seconds exited the town of Harmony, population 15. I imagine it's much more difficult to maintain Harmony with more than 15 people around.
I switched to the 101 south after San Luis Obispo
When I first pulled into the city, I watched a fleet of 20 scooters roll by and stop at the light in front of me and head down the beach side road of downtown. I ended up getting a room in a hotel that was a converted apartment complex near the beach, owned by a Russian woman who barked orders at her son. I deposited my belongings and wandered out onto the pier to watch the sunset.
There were two British girls, each about 20, sipping paper cups of wine on the pier and being flirted with by a local fisherman. He laid it on thick- offered to show them the town and invited them to his family barbecue the next day. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but his enthusiasm was powerful. The sun set and the girls vanished into the night. Seabirds flew in to steal whatever scraps of fish they could find on the pier, and I headed back to the hotel with an empty stomach to sleep on. That night, I listened to the audio-log I'd been keeping for the first time since I'd started it, then passed out.
COME BACK TOMORROW FOR PART 6!
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