California, Why Did You Let Me Leave You?

I suppose we always think that someone or something should throw its arms around our ankles and beg us to stay and never leave. Somehow I've never had that experience, and maybe it would be awkward instead of awesome. But it's quite a fantasy. I'm having a little trouble figuring out how I ever left California, and never went back. There are so many places here that I love with all my heart. Especially the Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Napa Valley areas. Why did I ever leave Santa Cruz? (Oh yeah, I couldn't find a job.) But right now that seems ridiculous, like I should have done ANYTHING to stay.

In the meantime,while I'm doing the angst about that, we had a lovely drive up the coast. We spent a few nights in the Santa Ynez Valley, which is quite lovely, and where the town of Santa Ynez seems like an obvious place to live, so long as I'm fantasizing about the Audition of Places, and then we spent the night in Cambria,  which is the new Cottonwood, Arizona in my fantasy life, and where I would love to spend a few months a year. The water shortage during this extreme drought is so serious that the state campground there has closed its showers, and brushing your teeth and washing your face is the most they will give you. At this spectacular location for dinner at Moonstone Beach, where we saw the sun go down in one of the most amazing evenings of our trip, we had to pay 30 cents for water at dinner,   and which came in a plastic bottle. That seemed kind of contradictory, but we heard that every residence and business is on a limited usage meter, and I guess a bottle of water that you sell to a customer won't hurt you the way letting water out of the tap will.  We heard it's  a 500% surcharge for going over  your limit the first time; 1000% surcharge the second time, and they will cut off your water after that. I guess this makes the problem of a plastic bottle to recycle no problem at all.

After dinner at this remarkable place, we walked down onto the rocks, and watched the sun sink into the water as the tide was coming in and crashing around our feet, and I can tell you for sure we won't forget it. That William Randolph Hearst owned everything for miles in ever direction is really awe inspiring and awful, unless you are feeling glad that a lot of it ended up as public land when his story was over.

Sun going down, Bob at the edge

Yes it really looks like this

This is what it looks like before it starts to get dark

After we got up to Santa Cruz, lots of amazing stuff happened. For instance, Santa Cruz is even more beautiful than I remembered. The redwood forest is even more majestic and shockingly holy-feeling than I expected. The roads into the redwood forest were more windy and scary than I remembered. And it was all quite wonderful. Henry Cowell Redwood State Park may be about as beautiful a place to camp as might exist in the world. 

Then today we left for the Napa Valley and briefly drove through San Francisco, which might just be the only city I like better than Boston, but where we didn't stop, and we are now at the northern end of the Napa Valley, where we will settle in for a while and be drunk on the beauty of this place even if we don't go wine tasting, which of course we will.

Would I trade my life in Boston, where I met Bob, and so many wonderful friends, and raised two beautiful daughters? No, I would not. And when people ask us where we are from, I answer "Boston," without a second of hesitation. But my heart sings when I am here. My heart says " I am home." It even says, "this is my planet." I'm not sure why I left, but Boston is my home. The Bay Area still has my heart.

Next: a couple of weeks of wine tasting, beautiful weather, and more soaking up the beauty that is California. Why is California just so much more beautiful than every place else? It just ain't fair. But I'm going to take it in, and love it, every day that I am here.

The beginning of the Napa Valley 

In the vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley

Campground spot in the Santa Ynez Valley