Days 8 & 9: Northern CA "Californication and Road Warriors are Born"

Day 8: Crescent City, CA -- San Francisco

Our first view of California was thrilling! Oh wait we couldn't see literally anything. #foggybottom

Anticlimactic AF

A quick jaunt through the Redwood forests offered breathtaking views. Here we see a wild, indigenous species: the rare North American Tree Quaker:

Liz speaks to trees...they don't listen

As we drove down the coast toward San Francisco, a winding journey through miles of hairpin turns left us both pretty carsick...it was not really a treat.  We rallied though and made it through the 6-hour drive to arrive in San Fran.

Big ups to Salome and Ryan for hosting us in their awesome apartment.  Sal led the way to a variety of awesome bars, including one that literally was Lux. We traveled 3,000 miles to go to a Rochester bar.  After some delicious drinks, we had a scrumptious Burmese feast at Burma Love. Honestly the most revelatory part of our time with Sal was her introducing us to the show "My Big Fat Fabulous Life." We watched a few episodes and nearly died with laughter. THANKS SAL.

Day 9: San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey

After an awesome brunch we made our way south to Santa Cruz, where we got a quick visit with our Futurpointe cross-country family at the Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center (a dope artists' living/studio space).  We popped in to watch the end of an awesome African dance and live drumming class. This community and space is magical -- you can feel the love and energy in the air!

The Tannery!

It's worth noting that we hit the first major-ish problem of the trip. For those that don't know, the Soberanes fire is burning in California right now and has been for three weeks...it is currently raging in Big Sur, where we were supposed to stay tonight. Our hotel canceled, and they closed Highway 1 due to smoke and fire.  The fact that this was a human-induced fire and it's burned 60,000+ acres of drought-ridden land is tragic.  We ended up booking an awesome last-minute Airbnb in Monterey...fingers crossed we can make our way south via Highway 1 tomorrow, and that they can get this fire under control.

We spent the majority of the day walking around Santa Cruz, along the river to the boardwalk and then a couple miles along the cliffs.

We never miss an opportunity for a workout:

Squeak squeak tighten those obliques

Astute comment from Liz as we strolled along the cliffs:
L: "Wait, isn't there something about Carmel that is something?"
K: "......."

Boardwalk people = hell on earth

Stumbled upon a fantastic antique open air market downtown and bought a stellar jean vest, Jimi Hendrix shirt, and crochet tank top. How thoroughly Santa Cruz of us.

A note on Road Warrior status:
We have become experts on living out of the car. Our stuff is literally splayed everywhere amongst millions of bags, but somehow, we can still get it together in about 5 minutes before making our way to our place for the night.

Liz is a pack mule.

We had a real (literal) meltdown tonight on the way from Santa Cruz to Monterey. Starving, exhausted, and borderline delirious, we desperately needed some fancy bread and nutella to pull through. As Kathryn was rooting blindly through a bag in the back seat for the "black knife" (the one elusive sturdy plastic knife we have), her hand drives straight into a pile of slimy, sticky sludge in the form of a pile of rotted oranges. Disgustingly, her left hand stinking of vinegary orange piss, she still has no knife and must resort to finger-painting nutella onto fancy bread with naught more than the aluminum foil clinging to the jar. It was a low point in the way of dirty/homeless status and we're not even halfway through the trip. All's well that ends well though because our pain au chocolat was high-brow AF.

 A lil poo-tella ne'er hurt no one

This week, we make our way lazily down the coast toward LA, hitting one beach town at a time. Stay tuned, friends and fiends!

L&K