Big Sur

When we lived in Goleta, California I went on a short trip with a three girlfriends. For some odd reason, I never made a blog post about the trip until now. So, be warned that this post might be a bit weird. The recount that follows will be my memory of what stood out from the trip, rather than an accurate and complete account of the events that transpired.

The destination of our trip was Kirk Creek Campground, near Big Sur California. I drove the entire way, obviously, since Mitch didn't go on this trip. Somewhere around Pismo Beach, the 101 (US Hwy 101) divides and there was a huge boulder in the middle. For some reason, roads built around rocks, and mountains or hills cut to allow road access, always leaves an impression on me. I think the appeal is that it's a real life example of Man vs. Nature that's more subtle than, say, an earthquake or tsunami.

Traveling in Ludwig is pretty different than traveling in other vehicles, in a very practical sense. Slow driving, slow turning, slow braking, slow accelerating, and pulling over frequently to allow faster traffic to pass are all par for the course. I was extremely self-conscious and apologetic to my traveling companions, feeling as if I was expecting an unreasonable amount of patience from them, given that they might not have known what they were getting themselves in to agreeing to carpool in a 1974 bread-loaf Volkswagen Campmobile. Nevertheless, my nervousness was unwarranted as they were  relaxed, and seemed to actually enjoy the ride. However, the crappiness of our old tires was painfully obvious on the PCH (this trip happened before we upgraded Ludwig's tires to the Hankook RAO8s). He handled like I was like driving a bread-loaf on a waterbed.

This was our campsite. And this is Maura. She's wielding a ginormous bottle of booze she got for Mother's Day from her sons. Such good boys.

This old bus was parked directly across from our campsite. The bus wasn't a "real" camper. That is, it wasn't sold as a camper. It was a bus that someone gutted, and made some whacky interior and stuffed it inside, and then used the bus as a camper. It's lovely that VWs are so easily customized. Attached to the front of the bus is a wooden box, whose only purpose as far as I could tell was to hold a sauce pan as seen in the photo above. The bus's only occupant was one unkempt 50s-something man that seemed to spend most of his time hiding out in the bus. He exited the bus once to dump some gasoline in the fire pit, light a match and throw it down, WHOOOOSH!, eat something from the sauce pan, watch the flames for about 5 minutes, place the sauce pan on the wooden box, and retreat in to the back of the bus. The event was extremely short-lived and memorable.

This was the lot of us. Erin, Thuy, Maura, and me (L to R). I'm not really the tallest, Erin actually is, the ground was sloped. The four of us are now scattered across the country in four different states.

This is the view of the campsite from one hike we took. If you click on the photo to view a larger version, you can catch a glimpse of Ludwig. I remember thinking that if I slipped and fell I might fall and roll and roll and roll all the way down in to the ocean. Scary.

This is Maura and Erin, on a different hike from the bird's eye view of Ludwig. See how crazy steep the hill is? Don't lose your footing, ladies.

This second hike led to a beautiful beach. The sights and sounds were incredible. I took a short video so I could share a less awesome than real-life version of the world's largest rock tumbler with Mitch when I got home.

At our campsite, I was horrified to find this:

a hideous creature, the mole cricket. Gross. We found these in our condo TWICE when living in California. They are horrifying, giant, and make a hell of a lot of noise when scratching around behind a bookcase. Disgusting.

But ocean + mountains + sunset always makes for a pretty ending to a camp-out.

On the way back to Goleta, we stopped at the beach near San Simeon where elephant seals are a popular tourist attraction. It was strangely awesome that the beasts were performing so near a giant permanent viewing area.

Yea, it was a pretty good trip.

THE END