Saturday, February 20, was cold and cloudy, but the sky gleamed blue behind to clouds. We had a leisurely morning, working on email and Sudokus, except for Phil and Peter, who had a run along the beach. I'm still trying to build a rapport with Dixie, who mopes around hoping her master will show up. After lunch, we piled in the car and headed south toward Monterey. Peter especially wanted to see Point Lobos, but since we got off to a late start, we weren't expecting to have much of a hike.
We stopped for coffee in Cannery Row at Cafe La Strada overlooking Monterey Bay. It's an upscale cafe attached to the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa, and we enjoyed the comings and goings of the well dressed crowd over elegant white cups of delicious coffee and a sweet roll shared between the three of us. A bride posed for wedding photos with the ocean as her backdrop, which reminded us of Peter's daughter's wedding last summer and got us to talking about all our children and how they'd grown up before our very eyes. We looked out over the bay and watched the waves mark time.
We drove south and stopped again at Lover's Point in Pacific Grove. We got a great parking place and walked out to the rocky point with a great view of another wedding in progress, or was it the same one -- the bride's gown did look awfully familiar. The men went right to brink of the rugged outcropping, and I stayed behind watching a couple with their pants turned up to their knees standing in a tide pool and eagerly studying whatever the waves brought their way. The water eddies and swirls around the rocky point with beautiful, almost translucent aqua patches brightening the dark surf. When we got back to the car, the windshield was doused with sea gull poop. Now we know why we got such a good place to park.
Riding past the cypress shrouded campus of Asilomar Conference Grounds, I remembered staying here with Phil when we visited Mark Anderson over 30 years ago. It was such a magical place and we were so young and ready to believe in magic. The area has been developed since then with several well appointed ocean view homes, but the insistent rush of waves remains the same, bringing the power and the secrets of the Pacific deep up to the stony beach. There always seem to be people here strolling on the boardwalks looking out toward the horizon absorbing those secrets -- conference goers, kite fliers, and kids with plastic pails.
The land rises as we approach Point Lobos State Natural Reserve with tall eucalyptus and evergreens making the ridge seem even more foreboding. I've read somewhere that Robert Louis Stevenson used this area for inspiration for the pirates' lair in Treasure Island, and even now the demarcation between the minimalls of cozy suburban Pacific Grove and the wild abandon of the nature reserve is very clear. A deer crossed the winding road on the approach to the entrance, but luckily the car in front of us braked in time for the graceful creature to clamber up the bank and disappear into the underbrush.
Many cars huddle along the road just before entrance. Tourists walk into the park to avoid the $10 entrance fee. Peter generously paid for us, but I still resented the price until I saw how patchy the asphalt road was and later how eroded the footpaths were. Then I felt the money to maintain this place was well worth it. We had to drive in a ways past Whaler's Cove and the cypress grove before we found a parking place near the piney woods.
As we walked along the path above the rocky shore, I thought of the subtitle of the Point Lobos website -- "the greatest meeting of land and water in the world." The water catches your attention first as it writhes and twists, forced by opposing currents into frothy swells far offshore. As the water crests and billows toward the land, it crashes against dark ragged rock, sometimes breaking into explosions of salt spray reaching up a hundred feet and sometimes disappearing into unseen hollows with supernaturally deep booming sounds. The eroded land formations are almost as fascinating as the everchanging water. Gradations of many colors -- from goldenrod to brick red to coal black -- make beautiful patterns on the rock, and every now and then, weird eroded shapes loom up, pocked with smaller stones embedded in the surfaces.
Peter had read about the Devil's Cauldron and we searched the shore for it. Finally, we saw what appears to be steam emerging from a hole in the rock about ten feet above the water level. A larger wave rolled in, and after a few seconds delay, we heard a boom and then water gushed out of the hole like gigantic insolent spittile. We watched the show several times and Peter got a good video. We moved on toward the sea lion rocks, but were disappointed to find that the path was closed to get a close look even though we could hear the barking and make out the sleek black bodies lumbering around on the small group of islands about fifty yards out in the ocean.
Soon we turned back and Phil and Peter climbed up on a high overlook. Peter got soaked when one of the waves splashed high enough to reach him. Both men took lots of pictures of the moody sea, now made even more dramatic as the setting sun broke through the clouds from time to time and made bright patches in water and shadows in the craggy rock. We were all quiet on the drive out, a little drained by the walk in the cool weather and full of images of the beautiful scenery.
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