Link to Up the Coast Facebook Pictures

After a terrible night’s sleep, we continued driving up the coast.  We were all disorganized after having spent most of the prior week indoors – our cooler was out of ice, we didn’t have any lunch meat / sandwich supplies, our car was all types of disorganized.  In short, we weren’t comfortable.  We were both cranky, and Molly mentioned being homesick.  That was the first time that I started realizing that I might be homesick as well.  We then started talking about how if we were both homesick, we would inevitably rush the rest of the trip, with the excitement of wanting to be back home.  Then, we came to the conclusion that maybe we should just go home until Molly’s cousin’s bachelorette trip was finished, then head out.  Split the trip into two 3-week sections, as opposed to one 6-week or more section that we had been planning originally.  This led to action – we actually started driving about 20 miles east before I started thinking rationally.

This obviously would have been a rash decision, and it’s not exactly a little feat to drive 2,500 miles home just to get some creature comforts on which we’ve been missing out.  I asked Molly if we could stay for a couple more days to see if these feelings pass.  I largely think they are due to the fact that we’ve been splitting up the normal routine for the past week or so – first it was 3 nights in Vegas, then 3 nights with Matt, then a night with Reera.  In that time, we lost the morning routine – sleeping in the tent, the routine of waking up, having everything we needed inside the car (instead of being dependant on stoves / restaurants / etc for meals).  Maybe if we can get back into the swing of living out of the car, camping every night, and sleeping outdoors, things will improve.  We didn’t have these feelings until recently – I think the key was that we essentially deprived ourselves of our routine, with it our way of living.  So we are going to try it out for a few days, a week maybe, then reassess the situation.

We headed back to Carmel and drove around a bit to get a general feel of the city.  Then we wanted to head more north to be closer to San Francisco, for Wednesday.  We had lost a lot of time deciding whether or not to drive back to GA, with the whole back-and-forth ordeal associated with that, so the day was going to end soon.

We decided to head towards San Francisco, so we wouldn’t have a far drive in the morning.  On the way, we were trying to find a place to camp for the night, so we wouldn’t have to sleep in the car yet again.  We ended up going to Big Basin State Park to see how much they charged for the night.  When we got there, we were amazed and disgusted to see that they charged $35/night to CAMP.  We were already getting eaten by mosquitoes just standing in front of the ranger’s office – no thanks.  The ranger gave us a sheet of local state/county campgrounds with prices, and we saw that one was only $12/night – that’s more reasonable, although it still goes against my core beliefs that camping should be a free activity.  Nobody “owns” nature.  I will make a blog on that later, though.

It seemed like a good idea to try our luck with the other campsite, although it was about 60 miles away, and partly in the opposite direction.  We drove until about 9:30-10:00 at night, got there, and were looking at the signs when a different ranger came out.  I asked him if he had any more $12/night campsites available.  “That must be an old publication,” he says.  “It’s $24 a night, and only $12 a night for seniors.”  We would have to find a different place to camp for the night.  That’s too much!

We ended up at the local Wal-Mart parking lot, yet again.  This time, we tried everything we could to make it a more comfortable stay.  We took the suitcases and stacked them against the rear window.  We put up the sun shade over the front windshield, and put the smaller sun shades over the side windows.  We used the sleeping bags and blankets to make comfortable little pockets to sleep in.  Nobody bothered us, aside from an unnecessarily loud domestic dispute in the next parking lot over for the first 30 minutes.  We slept quite well after that, and woke up in the morning having had a decent night’s sleep.  We went inside Wal-Mart to get some food and ice, and the lady behind the counter was talking to us about our trip.  We gave her one of our business cards, so I hope she has the chance to read this!