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| Our first stop was at the Cold Spring Tavern in Santa Barbara, an old stage coach stop, built in 1865. |
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| California poppies in abundance. |
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| looking up at giant hawks gliding overhead. Wearing an embroidered dress that Pete thrifted for me. |
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| our cabin for the weekend in Carmel |
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| Pete chillaxing on our cabin porch, wearing a vintage Hang Ten shirt that I recently thrifted. |
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| Cypress Tress in Point Lobos State Reserve, Carmel. |
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| cheesy tourist pose with my large pine cone pals. Figueroa Mountain, Santa Barbara |
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| my hiking boots and happy flowers. |
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| listening to a George Jones cassette on our cabin porch in Carmel. |
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| Big Sur |
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| tons of elephant Seals, San Luis Obispo, CA. |
It’s always a heartache when another country heroes passes on, so I’m glad to now be able to associate the passing of George Jones (he died on my birthday, April 26) with the beautiful time I spent along California’s Central Coast. I was even more stoked that I packed a cassette of his tunes, and this was before I even heard the news of his passing. As I listened to him sing from my Moving Sound cassette player on the idyllic porch of our cabin, overlooking a canyon filled with old growth oak trees, I felt that, in my own way, I was saying farewell.
Reached by a dirt road lined with redwood trees, high above the clouds, we found our cabin; we pretended for the time that our cabin in Carmel was home. Time, refreshingly languid, afforded us the opportunity to breathe, to let go. I watch a bluebird in an oak branch from the antique claw tub on our porch, where I bathed in lavender two mornings in a row. The smell of jasmine in the air, the soft rustling of the leaves from a tender breeze, the brilliant fire from our wood stove, the quiet stillness of the canyon, I let go.
And outside of our home, it is just as pleasant. Along the coast, the wild flowers are everywhere. The cypress, redwood, and oak trees signal life and longevity. An old lady, a local, has never seen so many elephant seals in San Luis Obispo, and she’s lived there her entire life. And my word, the pine cones in the Figueroa Moutains of Santa Barbara are plump and healthy!
