I was gone for about three and a half days and it wore me out! Today was a day of recovery, although I had two appointments that couldn't be missed. I did unload the car and my suitcase, but then I napped and read and napped again. Yesterday's drive home from San Juan Bautista was about six and a half hours and included a stop for coffee, a stop for gas and two stops to walk around a bit to hopefully avoid leg and hand cramps - darned arthritis.
Isn't this a weird and beautiful image? I took it while driving (very slowly in heavy traffic) along Monterey Bay. In the foreground are the sand dunes topped with patches of ice plant between the road and the Bay. Beyond that the dark blue water, then a thick layer of white fog topped with a layer of dark grey fog. And over it all the clear blue sky. Way off to the left, and barely discernible, where the ocean meets the fog is the point where Asilomar is located.
Quite a different landscape just at the beginning of the road toward Mary and Joe's house near San Juan Bautista. This is surely an ancient fence, constructed of oddments of limbs and sticks gathered locally, with just a few metal fence posts inserted more recently here and there.
This is the view ahead as the road twists through open fields that are drier than dry and coastal live oak trees that are starting to die from the lack of rain.
On the way home Hwy 152 skirts the San Luis Reservoir which is surrounded by beige hillsides. They are covered with wild grasses which dry to this shade in the summer.
The Reservoir has receded until little islands are poking up from the bottom. All of the foreground of this image should be covered with water, right up to the fence you see at the bottom of the picture. After three years of drought everything in sight is dried up.
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