Taking a day off in Monterey

After working without a real day off since early 2019, I finally took a day off and didn’t even check my work email once. Since there’s still a pandemic happening, I spent the day walking around Monterey and enjoying the nice fall weather.

It’s great taking a Monday off. There was hardly anyone else walking around in town. It felt like a mini vacation.

Riding down to see the elephant seals

Another PCer came through Monterey on his way south on a rented bike so I tagged along with him all the way to the elephant seal vista point near San Simeon. We then went to Cambria for lunch before I turned back north.

On my way back north I encountered a significant headwind that was rapidly depleting my fuel supply. Rather than chance it getting to the next gas station in Big Sur, I pulled over in Gorda to fuel up. This is one of the most isolated gas stations in the Lower 48 and the price really shows the isolation. They were out of regular and plus but they still had premium at $8.499/gallon. This photo even ended up on some nightly news show because the price was so high. Such is life along the Big Sur coast.

Mid October at Forked Meadow

I spent a few days up at Forked Meadow in mid October. The leaves are starting to change color and we got our first good dusting of snow.

Here comes a dusting of snow! This might be the first snow of the year. I’m not sure if my parents had any earlier when I wasn’t here.

Everything is damp and wonderful and it feels like magical fall!

Doing some work to get a pile ready to burn later this fall. This is in preparation for the underburn that we’ll be doing next year. We did manage to jump a track on the bobcat and had to reinstall it in the forest. That track is HEAVY.

Down at Camp El-O-Win checking out the fall colors.