It was good that I went to Mass Saturday evening, and also that I didn't bother with the beach the evening before. Yesterday it was overcast and cold in the evening. Today was absolutely beautiful. It was still a little cool in the morning, but there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. I went to the beach and had a nice relaxing time watching the gentle waves come in. There was a group of rocks to sit on. The beach itself was mostly sand though there were patches with stones.
The water was quite cold. The only people who were actually swimming were wearing wet suits. I walked in the water a bit, but remembered my experience in Washington and Oregon in mid August 2008. It was so cold then that I developed cuts on my legs and feet from walking in the water.
When I had left the Oregon Coast back in 2008, I took one last look at the Pacific Ocean, thinking I might never see it again. (And I really didn't get to enjoy it because by that point it was foggy and cold along most of the coast in Washington and the northern part of Oregon.) I expected between costs and other things, I might never get to the West Coast again. Never say never. It was great to see the Pacific Ocean once again, and this time with absolutely no fog and a picture perfect sky.
I could have easily spent all day there, enjoying the ocean. It may have even warmed up enough to go swimming in the afternoon. But, the Drupal (a web content management system) conference in San Francisco began bright and early Monday morning. That was the whole reason I took this trip. San Francisco is about 6.5 hours from Ventura. I wanted to try to get into my next hotel before it got dark.
The drive was mostly up US 101 North. This is an interstate-like road. I chose this route and stayed in Ventura because I wanted to avoid I-5. I-5 likely would have traffic jams and it was too far inland. I wanted to drive near the ocean.
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For the first couple of hours, US 101 generally followed the coast. Sometimes it was not visible, but most of the time the coast could be seen. Where it didn't follow the coast, the large hills/small mountains were beautiful. Unfortunately, at a certain point the GPS "saved time" by taking me on a road further inland. There were some nice views here too, but I would have rather taken the extra time to have seen the coast line. When US 101 met with this other route, I decided to see the coast just a little bit and drove on US 101 South. The GPS went ballistic and constantly told me to take a U-turn. (There are specific turning lanes on US 101 for U-turns.) The mountain scenes in this area were beautiful. At one point, US 101 North briefly went in a tunnel through one of the mountains.
As I saw the coast line, I noticed that much of it has a railroad track between US 101 South and the actual beach. There are parking spaces right off the road (US 101 is not officially a freeway at that point) and people must cross the railroad tracks to get to the beach.
California is the most populous state in the country. However, there are many areas where there are just no people and no signs of people living in the area such as houses, buildings, or even crops. This is true both in the east (to be expected as there is a lot of desert) and in the west. Sometimes I'd see a city limit sign noting a population of 300 people or so. I think I even saw one noting a population of 67.
An hour or two after getting back onto US 101 North, I was in the wine country. Some wineries had driveways going out into US 101 North (not a freeway at that point, though it was still 65 mph) and invited people to stop in. By that time, however, it was a bit too late. But the most interesting thing I noticed is that many of the wineries had signs with cut outs of people. One of them was designed to show people picking grapes. As I saw it from a distance, it looked like the people were actually moving. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. But I realized that the people were much larger than real people. When I got up to it, they were just still pictures.
There had been beautiful mountain scenery in the first two or three hours of my drive. There were many twists and turns in the road. However, as I got closer to San Francisco, things flattened out quite a bit.
At a certain point, I was suddenly in bumper to bumper traffic. It was like that for at least 45 minutes, perhaps even an hour. As it was Sunday, I assumed this was like I-87 going south on Sunday late afternoon (people go to the Adirondacks and then the Thruway is busy as they head back downstate). I figured people from San Francisco had spent the weekend in the south and then were moving north for the work week. However, as I got into Monterey County, the backup suddenly stopped and traffic was moving again. The change came in an area that did not seem to be all that populated. There were no further backups, even going into the city of South San Francisco (different from San Francisco itself).
I picked three different hotels for the three nights I'd be in the San Francisco area. The reason was that Choice Hotels has their 1+1 = free (as in enough points for a free night) promotion as long as you stay at two different hotels. I stayed outside the city of San Francisco because the prices were much higher there. (At a non-Choice Hotel, the Drupal "conference rate" was $159/night! I think my three nights totaled just over $159.)
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