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Big Sur and Death Valley, Nature’s Best Exfoliant

How do you catch up with documenting your travels and other experiences after you’ve taken a two week break from writing and life has gone on and therefore many experiences have come and gone is a question I’m not going to try to answer here but instead illustrate through a series of photos, captions, short interludes, and possibly bullet points.

Hopefully that isn’t too disappointing, but this isn’t really a travel blog (and it’s definitely not a “how-to” travel blog). It’s more of a “how I life” (not very well)–not quite a diary, definitely not instructional.

In my last post about travel, I think I was at Pismo Beach, learning how to clam as a verb, as in, “I’m goin’ clammin. Wanna go?” Then I scrammed north to the relative solitude of Hearst San Simeon State Park, my third time there on this trip. San Simeon is much quieter than others on the Central California Coast, including Montaña de Oro State Park, Morro Bay SP, and Pismo State Beach, though not as quiet as Kirk Creek.

Those places are great if you want to be closer to city amenities, restaurants, people, etc., but at San Simeon I became obsessed with beachcombing for pebbles (I’ve always loved rocks and do some stonework as a hobby), and I’m not sure that I have been more at peace on a daily basis as picking through what the waves bring.

The Stones of San Simeon

Bean stonesWill it go round in circles?The blureensTurquoise!That tree wall art everyone had in the 80sMe artistMy fren This started as a grouping of colors, which turned into a kind of machete blade that I then outlined with the pastel stones of Pismo until it kind of looked like a viking ship maybe? Me artist.

Back to Big Sur
After San Simeon, I headed north for an official week of vacation. My friend Nate, a South Dakotan by origin like me, has made a home for himself in California’s north by way of Arcata. Nate was in Santa Barbara for a fish conference (he does something with salmon habitat), and so we met up for a week at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.

Nate and I and sometimes his wonderful partner Nancy would, for a number of years last decade, take semi-annual hiking trips, including the Lost Coast Trail and the West Coast Trail, to name the two most beautiful, memorable, and challenging (for me). And so Nate and I had hoped to hike to some hot springs, 11 miles each way with an overnight at the springs, only to realize we are now too fat and too old, but mostly too fat.

I’ve talked here before about how I have a quite a bit of misplaced self-confidence when it comes to my body image. When people with eating disorders appear to be wasting away to any observer but literally see themselves in the mirror as overweight—and I don’t mean to make light of that issue; it’s a serious mental health challenge—I have something like the opposite of that.

Because I travel mostly alone, I also don’t have many photos of myself, so when Nate took a few photos on our trip and I saw myself, I wondered for a second who it was that Nate had taken a picture of. Like a fancy trailer home, I looked considerably wide, and my too small shirt revealed a slice of midriff that could have passed for a generous corporate Christmas ham bonus. And so we settled for numerous short hikes along the Big Sur coast, variously among the redwoods, the beaches, and the tide pools teeming with life.

My arch anemones!
Nature’s palette: patterns in the tide pools
Life on the trail: a purple iris
Death on the trail: whale carcass found on a hike. Probably 40 feet long. Did not smell good.
Purple sand (somewhat common around Big Sur, caused by erosion of manganese garnet )
Tiny starfish (leather starfish). Looks like a toy.
Sea nettle. Nate and I stopped by Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the world’s best. To see this thing move was mesmerizing.
San Simeon Pier had been closed for two years but opened my last day there.
My rig
Bixby bridge, 1932. One of the most beautiful parts of Big Sur, a little bit wild, a little bit human.
All those layers of time fit right into the palm of your hand. You can’t deny the power of stone.
What is my purpose? What is life? Where pretty lady squirr?
Zebras, left over from William Randolph Hearst’s days of basically having a zoo on his property.
A droid lookin light at Nepenthe restaurant where Nate paid $13.50 for a beer (he bought me one too!). But the view was fantastic.
Bust a move
Lichen on a tree at Point Lobos

Onward Toward Death… Valley, Nature’s Best Exfoliant
After Big Sur I headed for Death Valley National Park*, the largest national park in the lower 48 and one of the hottest places in the world. My intent had been to stay there a week, but it turned out to be too deathy. On Saturday, despite it being unseasonably warm even for Death Valley at 90+ degrees, I was able to explore the park and go on a few hikes, seeing the Devil’s Golf Course salt formations, as well as the famous Artists Palette and Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.

But on Sunday, the wind was blowing 55 mph, and with nothing to stop the sand my camper and my pores were being pulverized, so I fled 160 miles to Lake Mead where I’m at for the rest of this week, at the exact same campground I was at last year. Am I already repeating myself?

Artists PaletteDevil’s Golf Course Watch out for Tuscan Raiders

I promised bullets:

Star Wars, along with many other films, had multiple scenes in Death Valley
On a hike, I saw an old nerd imitate a Tuscan Raider while his daughter filmed him
The NPS has a nice Star Wars audio tour in its app
I did not see any Jawas

*I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I saw (former) parks employees protesting at Death Valley while I was there. They had over 400 protests across the nation that day. I’ve been to dozens of national parks and forests, and one thought I’ve never, ever had is “gee, they sure are overstaffed.” These are good people and they don’t deserve to be treated how they were. No one does. There are humane ways to do things that treat people with dignity, and this administration has rarely shown kindness.

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