On the road again, and now back.

There are those who love road trips and there are those who don't like to drive. Some like to scurry down roads they have never seen before and some like to stick to the comfortable large highways. Many drivers want to get to their destination as quickly as possible and many others don't care about the immediacy of their journey, they are happy to toodle along and get there.... eventually.

As mentioned previously, I took a week off and rented a car and drove down the coast. That entire journey could have been done in one day down, one day back. It took me a week and in that week I drove more than a thousand miles and I only made it to Santa Barbara! My rental car had an even 1200 miles on it when I hopped into the driver's seat last Tuesday morning and now it has a ragged 2344 miles on that odometer and that clean little Toyota Corolla is dirty and tired. Guess I broke that baby in. It was a good car, great pep, comfy seats and there is nothing like a new car to take on the open road.

Out of the six nights, I stayed near the ocean four of those nights. Two were in Pacific Grove at a basic one star motel just across the street from Monterey Bay. That location compensated for the sadness of the motel. Yes, the place was clean: sheets, towels, floor, all were clean. But no hair dryer, a tiny bar of soap the size of a postage stamp, no shampoo, bad TV reception. The only reason to stay there was the location: the view was perfect and I fell asleep to the sound of crashing waves, a healing and soothing sound. Two other nights were in Santa Barbara, a Hyatt hotel across the street from the ocean, fine room, nice balcony looking out to the ocean.  My goal was to be near the water and those two places gave me that.

I thought I would read several books, figure out my life, eat great meals. None of that happened. One afternoon I spent several hours walking a path along Monterey Bay and sitting on a bench just watching the waves. Another afternoon I spent wandering through the over-priced shops in Carmel, shocked that people still shopped in that village and bought paintings of flowers that cost more than I make in six months. Every place I visited was lovely, every walk I took was fun and enjoyable, but my favorites were those that took me down different paths, where I had to stop and look around and figure out how to retrace my steps to get back to my hotel. For me, getting a little bit lost is part of the joy of walking in a new town.

In Paso Robles I was fortunate to see an amazing light extravaganza:  Sensorio, Field of Lights. What an amazingly brilliant display!  I got there a bit before sunset, when there was no color. Once the sun went down, the colors slowly began to appear. When it was finally dark, the field of color was astounding. If I can figure out how to get photos from my iphone camera to this ancient laptop, I will share some with you.

When I left my home on Tuesday, my mind was in a dark, depressed, sad place. Now my mind and myself feel like there is less darkness and more light sneaking in. I hope I can hold onto that. 

There's more to say about my week, and I will say some of it tomorrow. Below is a photo from the Sensorio website and it is even less grand than what one sees in person.