CA trip: The fog of bore

Bad situation: Driving along a windy road in the dark.
Worse: In the fog.
Worst: The only radio station you can get is playing opera.

But let's back up.
(As an aside, in honor of this retelling of my journey, the cool clip is an old music video by Journey. Watch them rock the air instruments...)

(If this were a TV show, this is where we would switch scenes and the subtitle would read: "14 hours earlier")

I left San Diego bright and early and headed north in my sporty ride for a trip up the California coast. I hurried through Los Angeles as fast as anyone can hurry through Los Angeles, as the area wasn't really of interest to me. I did, however, hear some radio DJs talking about a celebrity's engagement ring, which was worth $200,000 to $300,000. Their comment: "That's worth a down payment on a house!" I busted up laughing, telling the radio, "Or an actual house!" Crazy Californian housing prices...

I also skipped through Hollywood -- my apologies to any of the celebrity women whom I passed up the chance to meet and, no doubt, begin a torrid romance with. We shall meet another time.

I had lunch with a friend from high school a little north of L.A. and had a lot of fun catching up with her. Then I hopped on to the Pacific Coast Highway (or "The One," as I believe the Californians call it.) It was sunny and beautiful for a bit, but it wasn't long before the theme of my day began to creep in -- the omnipresent fog. It just sort of sat out there along the coast as I drove in and out of it, depending on far inland the highway went.



I had planned on taking two days to drive up to San Francisco, so I was in no hurry, figuring I would stop where I wanted in order to hike or go to the beach or whatever. Unfortunately, the conditions weren't really ripe for that sort of thing. I did stop a few times, one of them to go explore an area full of tidal pools. Unfortunately, most of what I found was seaweed and lots of flies.

I thought about stopping in Cambria about 6:30 p.m., but decided to press on because I wasn't tired or hungry and didn't feel like stopping. I could stop in Monterey for the night, I figured, an easy 90 miles or so away.

That's when things got a little complicated.

First, it got dark. And then the road, which had been a pretty regular highway up until this point, got really windy as it twisted and turned along the coastal hills. It was like driving on a mountain pass -- for hours. And then it got really foggy. Like, visibility-of-15-feet foggy. It was the sort of conditions where you expect to encounter someone along the side of the road and find out later they've been dead for 20 years.

And then, about the time I was really getting sick of the tedious drive on the windy, fog-enshrouded road, I stopped getting any radio stations except one. It was playing opera music.

God has a cruel sense of humor sometimes.

I got into Monterey, exhausted and starving, at about 10 p.m. What I thought would take me about an hour and a half actually took three and a half hours. I hadn't been so happy to see a city since Shutterbug and I pulled into Moab at, like, 3 in the morning after a late night drive from Salt Lake City.

On the bright side, there were a few moments where the highway pulled above the fog bank and I got to see part of the sunset (follow the picture link for that and other photos). Later, I was witness to a beautifully starry sky. You could see the bands of the Milky Way and so many stars it made you dizzy. Breathtaking would be an understatement.

When you're in the middle of the drive from hell, it's nice to be able to glimpse a bit of heaven.