Life: Idiotropic

This week has been too relaxing already. From day one I felt fully rested. Without the activity of my home to keep me up late and the kids who still like to wake me up at night, I wake up each morning to the rhythmic tapping of the woodpeckers in the white oak trees feeling great and ready to tackle a day of play. Today's agenda: the beach.

Just an hour away Santa Cruz was our first destination, not for its beaches or famous boardwalk, but for the food. And it was totally worth the drive. Vasilis Greek Restaurant served up the best Greek food that I've had in a while and the pita is the best I think I've had anywhere. Delicious!

Sprinkled along the unspoilt California Coast are a beautiful collection of old lighthouses, still in use to warn ships away from the rocky coastline. Regal trademarks of the sea, I can't help but stop and photograph them when I see them. I've been inside this one, I think, a long time ago. Now, it's enough to just stand outside and admire it. The Pigeon Point Lighthouse rests between Santa Cruz and my favorite beach - Pebble Beach of Pescadero. I make that distinction because most people will hear Pebble Beach and think of that posh overly popular, but not as pretty, seaweed covered beach where the golf coarse is just between Monterrey and Carmel to the south. MY Pebble Beach is just barely south of Pescadero, a speck on the map so small that most will pass it without even knowing it's there. But that too, is part of its beauty.

This Pebble Beach is, for me, the ideal beach. It is the beach combers beach. A beach for explorers and dreamers. You can't surf there. You can build sand castles. It isn't a place to be seen by the masses. It's just there for those who would take it in and it's still my #1 place to go every time I'm home. The mosaics that my grandfather made years ago that still adorn the walls in his home are covered, partially, in pebbles from my beach. So, it's kinda in my blood, I think.

The parking lot, sitting level with the highway, rests above this small section of coastline splitting it into two halves that could not be more different. Half, and always the first half I visit, is a cozy cove down a small flight of stairs covered in thick layers of tiny pebbles in all colors and a few teenie shells - snail shells and little hats. I used to sit and sift through them with my fingers looking for tiny agates that would allow the sun to shine though and small pieces of a green stone that looks a lot like jade. I still do, actually. And all my girls have done the same.

In the photos over the years, we have decades of photographs of the same beach, the same shoreline, and the same rock formations that remind my dad and I of a fish. We still take those same photos every time we go there. It's a tradition.

The other half of my beach is one innumerable tide pools nesting among gigantic hunks of rock that we must climb over and around in order to make our way down. The tide pools, over time, seem to have lost much of the life was once abundant and common. I used to see starfish and sea anemones. Today I didn't even see a hermit crab at my beach. That worries me.

The tide was out today enough for us to walk down further than I'd ever been, past where we always see the sea lions basking in the sun and playing in the water just out of reach. We walked until Tiara screamed. Then, without a way to continue without passing by an old dried out seagull carcass, we had to turn and go back.

Nothing like a large cup of coffee and something sweet to warm you up and keep you going. After one beach, we were ready for a rest before tackling another and Peet's Coffee was exactly the thing. This chain has sprung up all over California and it was great. The coffee and food choices were delicious!

Moss Beach, Half Moon Bay
Here's another childhood memory revisited, but it too has changed. Dad used to live right across from this protected beach where the most beautiful sea shells littered the beach and the tide pools were so full of creatures that many of them we had to look up in books to identify. Today it was beautiful still with it's crashing waves, splatters of seaweed covered rocks, and warm hills along the shore, but it's changed too. There were very few shells at all and certainly nothing special. We saw sea anemones and a large jellyfish, but that was about it. Tiara jumped off of a rock and lost one pink flip-flop in the fast moving sand, so she hobbled back to the car early. Dad and I walked until we saw more sea lions and, this time, the rocks led from the sand, all the way to where they lay. If they weren't skittish, I could have walked right up to them. So, I tried. I got within about 10 feet before they jumped into the protection of the cold salty Pacific.
California beaches are so special. Actually, I think all the West coast can boast amazing beaches. They are rocky and varied. So picturesque and never dull. I love that the California coastline is relatively undeveloped. Between Monterrey and San Francisco (and farther in either direction), there lie long untouched portions of beach with an occasional public beach or a farm house sprinkled here and there along the way. There are a couple towns, but between those is just raw beauty. It's perfect.