Nov 2 - Day 24 to Day 33: Mountains, Desert, Mountain Lake, Cities, Ocean
- lukeleeburton
- Nov 2, 2018
- 4 min read
Day 24 of our trip we had breakfast with Deb and Dalen and The Boy and headed west. Delightfully, we made plans to come back in the spring for another month to this paradise in the mountains. We stopped for lunch and a bike ride in Moab, Utah - dazzled by the red rocks.
That night we slept at this magical site just outside of Salina, UT. The moon was full, cows roamed the hilly fields around us. (there is a photo of this site in the Driving Ev blog post and in the gallery).
Day 25 was our longest day of driving so far. We left our site at 7am and arrived at our airbnb in Reno, NV at 7pm. The drive was spectacularly beautiful the whole way. A good part of it was on hwy 50, which is also called, The Loneliest Road In America (this is the actual road name on our GPS). We ate lunch at a random pullout and marveled with a longer look at the landscape.
Day 26 we bought Margo a new pillow at Sleep Number, an upscale mattress store. I demoed an $8500 bed that had foot warmers and an anti-snoring head tilt feature. Some groceries at Whole Foods and a charge at a free EV charger and we were on our way to the serene Lake Tahoe for lunch. From Lake Tahoe we descended for the next couple hours, through Sacramento rush hour, to Oakland, CA to Patrick and Meredith’s house where we would stay for the weekend.
Day 27 We made the 15 minute drive to Berkeley for day 1 of an incredibly heart-opening workshop called, “Yoga of The Voice” led by Silvia Nakkach. Margo will write more about this in another blog entry. It was deep, playful, powerful, connective, creative and on and on.
Day 28, the second and final day of the workshop was capped off by a lovely dinner made by Patrick and Meredith at their house. These are people we met on a half day kayak trip in Tofino, BC in the summer of 2017. They were generous and welcoming and we felt blessed to have their home as a base for the workshop.
Day 29 we headed down to Monterey Bay, about a 2 hour drive. This was our first real taste of the ocean. We ate lunch on the wave-battered rocky shoreline and celebrated life in the massive energy the ocean brings. We decided to get some groceries and head to our airbnb early because we were tired from our prior busy few days. In retrospect, the disaster of our airbnb experience makes me laugh, though in our tired state, it was not fun. To make a long story short, we had our first ever negative airbnb experience and ended up getting a refund and staying in a motel, which we are so grateful for. The young girl renting the room had very different ideas of cleanliness and honesty than we were used to. Things were not as advertised. She promised to refund us to our faces and then refused to do so after we’d left the property and were on the phone with airbnb. Amazingly, they agreed to pay our refund without taking money back from her, keeping everybody happy.
Day 30: A little back story… 2 weeks after I graduated high school in the year 2000, 7 friends and I bought 1-way tickets to Monterey. The day we arrived we walked from the bus station to the beach and slept. Later that day we met a neat looking and incredibly kind guy named Andre who had been homeless as a choice for 20 years, who traveled around living in the trees. He said, “the trees protect me. I love the trees and the trees love me.” This was a time of massive awakening for me, and Andre was a new example of how to be a human that had a major impact me. Our first night he showed us a place to sleep under one of the buildings of the famous Cannery Row. He also said we ought to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. At the time the thought of paying to do something seemed ridiculous, when I was already feeling so blessed just be out in the big world. So now I’m back to honor Andre’s suggestion, in gratitude for the seeds he planted in me by being himself, and because I LOVE marine biology and the boundless enthusiasm of marine biologists.
After an incredible 4 hours of awe in the aquarium we drove back to Oakland for a last minute, 3-day house sit to give ourselves time to rest, do some computer work and prepare for our next adventure.
Day 31: Halloween! We spent the day settling in to Jesse and Therese’s comfy Oakland apartment and getting to know Spartacus, a ridiculously cute Maltese Terrier mix. We had intended to dress in each other’s clothes and hit the town, but instead, caught up on much needed rest.
Day 32 we went back to Berkeley (now even closer) to do some errands and had lunch at Gather, rated in the top 15 farm to table restaurants in the world.
I should note here that Spartacus not only slept in bed with us, but slept under the covers, all the way down under Margo’s feet. This guy raised the cuteness bar to new heights. He even slipped into the bed unnoticed somehow and surprised me there in the morning when I rolled over to cuddle Margo and brushed against his furry body with my feet!
Day 33, (the day I am writing this). We welcomed the wonderfully friendly and kind Jesse and Therese home, exchanged stories and hugs and headed to a beautiful campsite 30 minutes outside of the city, up in the hills. It was full... That’s ok, there are lots of campsites in this area. They are all full! ...on November 2!? Well, luckily airbnb saved their reputation because we would have missed out on this last minute score in San Leandro, 20 minutes from our intended campsite. We are at Robin’s house, a beautiful, wonderfully set up room, looking forward to a deep sleep before a week of camping in Big Sur (unless they are full!).
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