Big Sur, the weekend that didn't happen

I had everything mapped out. Three locations along the coast, sunrise and sunset at each. The kind of itinerary you write when you have not been on the coast in long enough to forget how the coast works.

The fog held for two and a half days. Not the photogenic kind that drapes itself decoratively over the cliffs; the actual fog, the kind where you cannot see the cliffs at all, the kind where the ocean is a sound, not a view.

What I did instead

I read a book in the car. I drank an unreasonable amount of bad gas-station coffee. I drove the coast road in white-out conditions at fifteen miles an hour. I did not take any photographs for thirty-eight straight hours, which is unusual for me on a trip.

And then, on the second afternoon, the fog lifted for forty-five minutes. I took six frames. The one above is the one I kept. The other five were me panic-shooting because I was certain the fog was about to come back, which it did, ten minutes after this frame.

A trip with one photograph is not a failed trip. It is a trip with one photograph.

I drove home Sunday in the rain. The itinerary was unused. I am not sorry I went.