PART 3: The Coast Goes left, right, left, right, forever.
This is part 3 of our road trip from LA to San Fransisco - via Big Sur.
Part 2 is here: https://steemit.com/travel/@danedebeau/mismatched-travel-diaries-1-big-sur-a-coastal-drive-part-2-cambria-sleepy-seals-seal-the-deal
Day 2 of our Journey and we leave the windswept town of Cambria and join the tourist trail once again.
The weather is trying to hide most of the coastline from us, with a thick fog shrouding most of the early morning. So we just continue driving, stopping every now and then to wander.
We stop in at the reception area to go up to Hearst Castle, but rather than making the trip up to the castle, we just mill about the museum area while I fiddle with my camera, waiting for the weather to get better.
Back in Los Angeles, I dropped my camera. After picking up our car, the first thing i did was a stone-cold camera drop onto the car-park ground. I had no one to blame but myself. I absolutely demolished my normal lens, and am committed to the next few days (at least) to use my 55-200mm lens. It wasn't until I entered the Hearst Museum that I realised the limitations of having such a big lens for small spaces.
I leave with only one photo, of an old firetruck... and what a truck!
But, in my view, the most creative things in history have come not from an artist having absolute freedom, but from having harsh constraints put upon them. So I take this idea and run with it. I decide I will go as long as possible on our American tour with this lens, and I will use it to hone my limited skills.
It helps with squirrels though. As an Aussie, it is good to see a critter running around and not fear immediate death.
The decision to stick with the lens ended up with a lot of weird looks from fellow tourists, especially when I'd be standing inside a small room with such a huge lens, though its still a million times better than walking around with an Ipad filming every moment of a trip. I would be fine with Ipad tourists (to each their own), if only I saw even one of them that actually understood how to use the camera on it, or that the Iphone they held in their other hand took better photos. I actually heard a woman in New York say: "I use the Ipad because I want to see what the picture would look like on my wall." Her daughter saw that I had heard her say that and shook her head. We both understood that we were in the presence of an immovable force. A force who was taking a blurry photo of giant Coca-Cola sign in Times Square... To each there own. To each there own. A mantra I now repeat in all tourist hotspots.
For now though, we just continue along the Cabrillo Highway, stopping whenever something that looked like something appeared out of the mist. A bridge, usually, or even just a group of people pointing at something, or to test the strength of some Californian flora.
Finally, the fog starts to lift, and I get a better idea of what the next few hours of driving is going to be like. Fun, but repetitive. Left, right, left, right, like a soldier marching.
Soon we will get to put the top down on the car, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but I've never even sat in a convertible, let alone had one to drive for a few days.
We stop every now and then, getting hungrier and hungrier, until finally we see the sign for Nepenthe. "Nepenthe!" I said loudly. "Maybe thats the place that the guy in the restaurant was telling us about." Meg takes a deep breath and says nothing about my being an idiot (as outlined in part one.)
Part 4 will be coming in the next two days.
Thanks for reading!
Danedebeau