Apparently we do.
Our flight left at a leisurely mid-morning, with a brief stop in Dallas. We said goodbye to the cats, loaded up my camera gear, and headed to GSP.
The flight to Dallas was uneventful, just as we like. Hanging out in the Dallas airport we sat and watched the crowds, mostly consisting of self-absorbed business-types with cell phones firmly implanted. One woman boarded the next leg of the flight with us, spewing a constant stream of business babble that sounded like it was created by some automatic online jargon generator. Please airlines, never allow cell phones on fliights. We need some escape from this.
The flight from Dallas to San Jose took us across some spectacular scenery. We had great views of the Grand Canyon, Lake Meade, and the Sierra Nevadas.
We arrived to absolutely beautiful weather in San Jose. The airport is under construction, so finding our way around was a challenge. When we got to our rental car location we had another surprise. The only car available for us was a Chrysler Sebring convertible. How terrible. Instead of the Chevy Malibu we had expected to drive around the coast of California, we had to take this convertible.
We got settled in our hotel, had a quick dinner, and Laura decided she needed to see ocean. We dropped the top on the car and took highway 17 southwest to Santa Cruz. The road from San Jose to Santa Cruz is beautiful, but a challenge to drive, especially at rush hour. We made it to Santa Cruz, then faced the challenge of finding beach access. Our first attempt took us to a large seaside amusement park, but not what we wanted. We did find one overlook, but decided it was a bit crowded. We were also on the south side of a peninsula, so a sunset view wasn’t to be had. We decided to continue up highway 1 north toward Half Moon Bay.
Highway 1 is known for its spectacular views of the Pacific, and this stretch is especially scenic. There is very little development along this stretch. Farms spread out all the way down to the ocean, and there are cliffs overlooking the beaches. We stopped at several overlooks, and found us a place to let the sun sink into the ocean.
We continued on up to Half Moon Bay, then took a road back across the mountains and back to San Jose. By this time we had been traveling for hours. We collapsed back at our hotel.
Since I don’t have Photoshop on this laptop, I’m only uploading one or two photos at a time. There will be more when we get back and I get a chance to process the images.