Beach combing and Big Sur

Tuesday 15th October

A lovely comfortable bed coupled with total peace and quiet still I couldn't sleep, so annoying! Martin, of course, slept like a baby whilst I tossed and turned and my brain raced around in all directions. Finally, at 5am, I gave up and caught up on sending some emails home.

The hotel gave us complementary vouchers for breakfast at Jeanine's Bakery so we strolled down there for some buttermilk pancakes and coffee before packing up and moving on. We already seem to have amassed quite a lot of extra "stuff"......how does that happen?

 Our first destination today was just a short drive away - Leadbetter Beach. On a previous visit we had walked along the coast to Hendry's Beach and it had made such a lasting impression on us that we wanted to repeat the experience.  Today the tide was still quite high and we had to do some wave dodging around rocks to begin with. The sky was cloudless blue, the sun was shining and I felt an incredible sense of well being and happiness that only strolling along such an amazingly beautiful beach at the beginning of a long holiday can inspire.  After a couple of miles walking along barefoot, splashing through the shallows we decided to stop for a swim. The water had some shock factor at first but was not as cold as I had expected and it was lovely once adjusted to the temperature. 

Our legs were feeling much less stiff and tired today and immersion in the cool Pacific waters could only speed their recovery. We relaxed on the beach for a while before continuing another half mile or so to Hendry's Beach. This was more crowded and as we still had a long drive ahead of us we decided to turn back and retrace our steps.   Just when we thought our morning couldn't be any more perfect we were delighted to see some dolphins out in the bay. A couple of brief glimpses at first but later they came much closer in and wheeled and circled in full view over and again. 

Almost back at our starting point we climbed up from the beach to enjoy our picnic on the cliff with the most fantastic views of the beach, Santa Barbara harbour and beyond it the bay, Stearn's Wharf and the backdrop of the Santa Ynez mountains.  It was with great reluctance that we left Santa Barbara behind and headed north up 101 towards San Louis Obispo. We had booked a site at the Pfeiffer Big Sur camp for the next 2 nights and had a 200 mile drive to complete.  Our plan had been to arrive late afternoon but after stopping for provisions in SLO, we realised that we had continued on 101 instead of Highway 1 and had to back track.  It was already much later than we had intended and the twists, turns and climbs of the coast road slowed us still further but we tried to enjoy the stunning views of the sunset over the sea and banish our anxiety regarding our night's accommodation.

Eventually we reached the campsite at 7pm and checked in. The next hour was rather stressful as we groped about in the dark trying to find our site and get set up in pitch darkness with only head torches to help us see what we were doing. Fortunately our tent is simple to pitch and we were soon able to turn our thoughts to supper. We must be the worst equipped campers in existence and we struggled to cook salmon burgers on our tiny stove - one at a time! Washed down with red wine and sandwiched in lovely sour dough bread with liberal dollops of salsa they tasted fine and the jury is out on whether or not we get food poisoning. The corn on the cob never did cook, eventually we abandoned it and turned in for the night.