19/7: Point Lobos State Natural Reserve is a small, slightly odd but beautiful park just south of Monterey.

 

The trees in this rugged piece of coastline is an endemic species, the Monterey cypress.

 

There is something with the wind in these trees, how it is a part of them.

 

 

Some of the trees were covered in these bright red orange lichens. It looked queer and mysterious.

 

 

I do understand that a coastline like this might seem unfriendly, yes, even hostile. But there is just something about it that attracts me. I can’t really put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the harshness, and how all this life still has managed to live here, on the rocks, through the wind and the salt and the winter storms. It fascinates me and enchants me. Point Lobos is truly a beautiful place.

19/7: The name Moss Landing written on the map made me think of King’s Landing in Game of Thrones. We stopped to eat lunch there, and I’m sorry to say, but Moss Landing didn’t seem at all as magical as the King’s Landing of the TV show and books. But the name is pretty, all the same.

Moss Landing is an old fishing town. We ate as Phil’s Fish Market. I had some seriously delicious grilled calamari with sautéed vegetables. Is there any greater happiness in life than good food?

 

Driving out of Moss Landing, we passed field upon field of artichokes. I would have loved to stop and take a photo of it, for Natalia. It became our thing in Bolivia, Natalia’s and mine, to eat artichokes, drink port and watch Bones and Scrubs. But the highway was heavily trafficked, and I was scared that I never would be able to get back on the road again if I stopped. So no pictures of growing artichokes.

19/7: Understandably, mom wanted to see some coastal redwoods. So we drove up into the mountains north of Santa Cruz to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.

An incredible chronology. This tree was older than Christianity, before it was felled in the middle of the 20th centry.

Mom was amazed. I thought: Wait til you see the giant sequoias in Sierra Nevada…

This is what the coastal redwood needles look like. So tiny, on such big trees.

Big tree. At least a thousand years old. More than 80 meters high.

18-19/7: The night we spent at the Pigeon Point Hostel, just by the lighthouse. We arrived just as the sun was going down, and when the girl who checked us in heard that we were from Sweden, she told us that we just had to try the hot tub next to the lighthouse. As it happened, it wasn’t booked for the next half hour.

North Americans don’t really believe in saunas, but they do have hot tubs. And it might be considered a betrayal towards my Finnish heritage, but I don’t believe there are many saunas out there that can beat the view from this hot tub. Floating there in the hot bubbly water, all the driving tensions just drained out of my body. After that, I slept deep.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse.

 

The hostel. I’m willing to say that it was the best hostel that I stayed at during my North America trip. Thanks to the combination of the dramatic coast surroundings, super nice staff and the hot tub.

 

Look at the conglomerate, similar to the bedrock in parts of the Namib. Sadly, mom has no particular passion for rocks and geology.

18/7: By afternoon, we arrived in Santa Cruz.

I had heard so much nice about Santa Cruz. It was supposed to be this really cozy little town. And sure, it was cute. But not the amazing place everyone had tried to make it out as. Maybe we just got there on the wrong afternoon, and walked on the wrong streets.

But the ocean front walking path was beautiful. The houses by it flaunty.

Imagine having that as you’re reading spot. I could see myself reading “A Clash of Kings” right on that cliff. All of it. In the spray and breeze.

18/7: I arrived in San Francisco at the 10th street Hertz office, returning Hanna’s and my silver Toyota Camry. This was also the location of my departure, in mom’s and my yellow Chevrolet Aveo. Not a very inspiring part of San Francisco. Maybe that made it slightly easier sitting down behind the wheel and getting on the freeway.

It went better this time, leaving. Arriving had been on the edge of catastrophy several times, the intense city traffic scaring me like nothing else. Not that the traffic was any less leaving the city, but I guess I felt more relaxed.

As soon as we turned off onto Highway 1, though, the cars became fewer and the road more interesting to drive.

And just about thirty minutes from downtown San Francisco, we reached this amazingly wild and windswept beach.

These lovely pink things covered the ground up on the bank. They are called Farewell-to-spring.

Feeling the sand between my toes. Magic.

The water was cold. Mom was screaming.

Now, in the end of August: I keep on writing these posts, as if I have to live up to someones expectations. I feel like I made a commitment, and now I want to see it through. But, to be honest, I think the only one who will notice if I stop the retelling here, at the point when I left San Francisco, would be me. Most of the people that have been reading this blog have already met me and have had many of these stories told to them first hand. I could just quit.

But no. It isn’t as easy as that. I do this writing as much for myself as for everyone else. I need to write things down to remember them, and I already feel like the things are slipping away from me. For my future self, I feel it’s important that I finish this. I’ll keep writing.

It might take a while, though. Life is a constant roller coaster, and I have a tendency to make everything even more chaotic than it needs to be. I found an apartment in Uppsala, where I’m going to study for the upcoming fall semester. I have things to pack and loads to drive up to Uppsala before Monday, when life starts for real again. I bought a new computer, which I have to get started. I still have to go to work, I have laundry to wash and utensils to buy. I already finished “A Game of Thrones” and am halfway through “A Clash of Kings”.

It’s not easy being an overachiever.

Leaving San Francisco might be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a traveler. And I don’t really know why. It’s not as if I haven’t liked other places I’ve been to. La Paz will always have a special place in my heart. So will the Namib Desert, Iceland, Vancouver Island and Seattle. But for some reason, I left San Francisco with the feeling that I wasn’t done.

There’s something with the life, the rythm, the energy. I felt like I fit right in, which rarely happens with me. I felt welcomed.

I think I wrote it before. San Francisco is like the one that got away. The place that in another life would have been the perfect fit for me. Now, I can only listen to Annika Norlin’s lyrics in the Hello Saferide song “San Francisco” and agree.

San Francisco! We’re going. Don’t you know you’ll never ever want to turn back.

July: For most of us, the only things that remains after we’re gone are the memories that we’ve left behind. Whatever we left with the people we met in our lives. The memories are our legacies.

This was a thought that grew big in me during my last days in San Francisco. Leaving a place that you’ve grown fond of and the people you met there behind, not knowing if you’ll ever return again, is a strange thing. And I felt that I needed to do something, give something back to this place that had given me so much. And the easiest target was my San Francisco hosts.

Eric got a cold the last couple of days of my stay in San Francisco. So, even though I didn’t really have the time (mom had just arrived, we were supposed to see the entire city in two days), I went to his apartment one evening and made him soup. Fresh ginger and garlic for the cold, vegetables for nutrition and a whole bunch of cilantro because I knew he loves that. When I left, with the soup simmering on the stove, Eric coughed and called me an angel.

As for Sarah, she had seen me knitting a hat for my cousins baby girl (who hasn’t been born yet) and she thought it was adorable. When I said that I was planning to make baby hats for all my friends future babies, she said that she would have a baby, like, right now, just to get one of my hats. So, just on a whim and some late night knitting, I managed to finish it and on the morning when I left Bernal Heights with all my bags, I gave her the blue baby hat. Sarah started crying. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a more honest and sincere person.

These were just two tiny gestures to two wonderful individuals, but for me they also became symbols. Sarah and Eric got to embody the entire city of San Francisco and the wonderful times I had there. My parting gifts were a way of thanking not only them, but also the time and the place in itself. And I can only hope that the memories that I left behind are as good and warm and exciting as the memories I took with me back home.

18/7: One of the most touristy things you can do in San Francisco is to ride on the cable car. They are the old, mechanical trolleys that ran up and down the hills of San Francisco back in the day – but now there are only two lines still active. And only tourists ride on them.

 

I felt I could live without riding on one, but mom really wanted to try (“It’s a once in a lifetime thing, Katja”). So, on the morning before going to get our rental car, we got up early and made it to the cable car stop before the line had started building up.

 

We went up and down, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and really, riding in this open cable car was a nice way of getting acquainted with this part of the city.

 

 

 

I still think that riding a cable car in San Francisco is a touristy thing to do – but I do not think it’s a waste of time. It was pretty cool, actually.