When this blog gets seriously off the rails - the only way I can get that deep down funk out is to find a beach. There are some problems only the beach can solve. I don't know if it's because I spent so much time there growing up. I used to live on the Santa Cruz side for a while. But almost nothing makes me feel better than being there. It's like a universal reset.
Lately I've been on a quest to find the really unusual beaches for California. And I'd read there was a beach with purple sand down by Big Sur which is really unusual. I didn't think I've ever been to Big Sur before. Monterrey is about as far South as I get. Although I'm planning a San Luis Obispo trip this summer. Over the winter we did the unusual Northern beaches like Glass beach and Bowling ball beach.
We finally arrive at Pfeiffer beach and were told the parking lot was full. Which I completely expected. Did I mention this beach has purple sand? Of course the lot was full. What I didn't realize was that if you don't get to park in the lot - you have to walk two miles to get to the beach. Two miles is not a big deal, but really, you are at 4 miles round trip before you even hit the beach. You could walk at least a few miles on the beach. And I was trying to feel better. Doing a mini marathon was not making me feel better. But we'd already driven almost three hours.
I immediately started to make a bail out plan. I was going to pay our way out of this beach. I mean, the last thing you want to do when you are off the beach is walk another 40 minutes to get back to the car. So we park and set of on the long journey. From time to time we would see beach survivors and would ask them how long to the beach. The answer was always "it's about 10 more minutes". Mr S. was convinced the park service was screwing with everyone, and made a joke about how the parking lot was probably empty. I figured that was ridiculous.
The only thing to see along the way were a couple of shacks and these horses which get an amazing amount of attention. Everyone stops to pet those horses.
We finally get to the parking lot, and wouldn't you know it - there were a lot of spaces to park! It wasn't a big deal for us, but one of the beach survivors we met along the way had kids and that had to suck. Getting kids to walk two miles after being at the beach has got to make you go insane.
We finally get on the beach and we don't see any purple sand. I was starting to get worried because you don't want to make your husband drive almost three hours, walk about 40 minutes, only to find there is no purple sand. We could have driven an hour to Santa Cruz! And Bowling ball beach was a little oversold. So there was that. You never know if this beach was touched by good photographers and the sand was just not really purple. But we did find the sand. And it was indeed purple. Not ambiguously purple. The two different types of sand were weighted differently. The purple sand seemed heavier and was best when a wave had turned the sand.
The other "interesting" thing about this beach we found at the far end. You know how at every beach these days you find a stack of rocks? Well, this place had a rock graveyard. I'd never seen that before.
People got kinda creative. This one kinda has a face, a hat, and a scarf.
A lot of people come to this beach for the peakaboo hole. There are a ton of photos on the net of people getting the sun shining through this whole. It's pretty neat.
Oh, and we did manage to pay our way out. We found a car full of guys who worked for Yahoo and the world was right again.
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