Long Ridge Off Palo Colorado Rd In Big Sur, CA
A hawk against a backdrop of Big Sur hills and the Pacific Ocean shrouded with fog.
I wanted to open with that shot as it was my favorite of the day. I am borrowing an actual camera with a telescopic lens so I will be able to get some better wildlife shots now.
The sun was out today and it was pretty hot, so I wanted to check out somewhere in the woods. I remember driving past Palo Colorado Rd on Hwy 1 a few times and it looked heavily wooded. Theoretically, it goes to some camps where there is some hiking. I say theoretically because there was a sign saying the road was closed 3.3 miles up and I wasn't sure how far the camps were. The road is slow going, one lane a lot of the time following a stream through the woods with a bunch of cabins along the way.
It ended up that the road was closed prior to the camps I was thinking about hiking at. In the end it didn't matter because there was a nice hike up Long Ridge that started right near the road closure. It wasn't shaded in the trees for the most part, but what are you going to do?
A nice valley filled with trees and a mountain way off in the distance could be seen during the beginning of the hike.
At the top were views of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding hills. You can actually see the National Forest Administration Site down in the valley and Brazil Ranch is up on the hill directly behind it.
Here are the maps with GPS data. I forgot to turn it on until after heading back so it's not the full hike, but shows most of it one-way.
I always wanted to go to Big Sur since i read Kerouac as a kid. Thats what literature does for you. One day....
Everyone keeps mentioning this Kerouac character, never read any of his stuff. I only have a few more weeks here but I've been trying to make it count.
Here's a passage I really love, it's got this crazy energy to it and whenever I run down a hill or a mountain i think of this passage (not that I do that often) - i'll probably be picked up for plagiarism coz the dam bots can't pick up the bits where I say: 'hey not my writing, this is JACK KEROUAC' ... but here it is anyway....
Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides of the world and in that flash I realized it's impossible to fall off mountains you fool and with a yodel of my own I suddenly got up and began running down the mountain after him doing exactly the same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, and in the space of about five minutes I'd guess Japhy Ryder and I (in my sneakers, driving the heels of my sneakers right into sand, rock, boulders, I didn't care any more I was so anxious to get down out of there) came leaping and yelling like mountain goats or I'd say like Chinese lunatics of a thousand years ago, enough to raise the hair on the head of the meditating Morley by the lake, who said he looked up and saw us flying down and couldn't believe it. In fact with one of my greatest leaps and loudest screams of joy I came flying right down to the edge of the lake and dug my sneakered heels into the mud and just fell sitting there, glad. Japhy was already taking his shoes off and pouring sand and pebbles out. It was great. I took off my sneakers and poured out a couple of buckets of lava dust and said "Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain."
Awesome shots man. You're really making a lot of progress!
Thanks! So are you working somewhere now?