Half Moon Bay, CA - Thanksgiving Week 2004
Leaving Sacramento for Half Moon Bay was a comedy of errors - in hindsight. At the time it was just a pain in the hinny.
We had planned to leave Cal Expo Monday morning, avoiding the rush hour traffic in Sacramento and the Bay Area. We unhooked, pulled in the slides, gave Chad his "kitty Valium", secured all moveable objects and went to hitch-up the rig. This was the point at which we discovered our trusty truck had a broken parking brake cable. Well no matter, travelers have to be willows and bend with the changing winds.
Bill threw his bike in the back of the truck and headed to the Ford dealership to get the brake repaired. Since we didn't have an appointment, they said the repair could be completed until about noon on Tuesday.
While he was gone, I discovered that Chad's earlier front leg injury had abscessed and broke. He needed to get to a vet, and wasn't likely to walk himself. We called our friend Claire to the rescue, and many dollars later Chad was loaded up with antibiotics and very unhappy. Little did he know things were going to get worse. Tuesday I was shoving another Valium down his throat, chasing it with liquid antibiotics and forcing him into the kitty cage.
The truck was finally ready about 3:00 PM. By the time we pulled out of Cal Expo with a screaming cat it was 3:30 PM the Tuesday before Thanksgiving - just in time to hit rush hour traffic in Sacramento, Stockton and the Bay Area - 10 million people on the move. Did I mention the screaming cat? After three hours of constant screaming Chad was introduced to traveling in a moving fifth-wheel.
We pulled up to the closed entry gate of Half Moon Bay State Park about 8:00 PM. Since we had called the camp host about 40 minutes earlier we thought we must have used the wrong entrance, so we backed out and accessed a road that runs alongside the park. BIG mistake. It was a horse trail. Getting back out to the road in the dark required all of Bill's skills and patience. After rousing the very friendly camp host, we opened the gate and were assigned a perfect camp spot with fabulous views of the beach and sea. It was picture perfect, and the park is beautiful and very well maintained.
The next four days erased all the agitation and tension experienced trying to reach our destination. We had four days of beautiful sunshine, biking seaside trails, walking miles of beach in the breezy sunshine and in the light of the full moon, watching surfers, browsing art galleries and book stores in the village, eating fresh Dungeness crab in the sunshine while listening to the surf, watching the sea and shore birds, and even spotting a pod of dolphins moving south.
We drove south to visit the Pigeon Point Lighthouse and hiked out to see the elephant seals and Ana Nuevo State Preserve. The seals were just arriving for their annual mating ritual. The young males hangout in the willows and are not visible, but can clearly be heard. Bill said they sounded like a struggling, one-cylinder diesel farm engine. An apt description.
During the day Chad didn't enjoy the beach environment and was overawed by the mighty Pacific; but in the moonlight that boy could move. I later realized that he was just trying to run as far away from his new home as he could.
The trip east to Sacramento was very easy compared to our earlier trip west - for Bill and I. Unfortunately, this trip made it clear that Chad wasn't going to adapt to travel and life in a small environment. Several friends were very willing to adopt him and we selected Jan and Frank for his new caretakers. He seems very relieved to be in a home that doesn't move, and with people that care very much for him. We are extremely thankful to Jan and Frank for giving him a loving home.
