CELEBRATE!
Over the past 3 months and a bit I have worked very hard. I lost 20 pounds in weight during that time. It took a lot of discipline, exercising 6 days a week, and not eating any extra snacks/desserts at all (except for 1 day per week when I allowed myself to eat anything I wanted). It worked! Mission Complete. Now I am back at my ideal weight, I feel in great shape, and I am ready for backpacking season! Except that it is winter and we still need a lot more snow! As of Feb. 1 the snowpack in California is at 170% of normal (north), 209% (central) and 252% (south). Rain is at 136% (north), 173% (central), 169% (south). This is good of course but we are still in a drought and we still have 2 months of winter left. A lot more is needed to end the drought. In fact, to be honest, we really need about four good winters in a row to get back to normal in CA. Not sure that will ever happen but let’s just take it one year at a time.
Anyway, it was time to celebrate! And gain all that weight back in one single weekend. Ha ha! It was my wife’s and my birthday and we decided to go to Monterey for the weekend. The ocean is my wife’s favorite place to be. I did not have much on the agenda for myself (ie. waterfalls), except for Saturday morning I said I wanted to go see a couple falls. There really wasn’t much in the Big Sur area that was open (everything is still closed from the storms), so I thought we should go north instead to the Santa Cruz area. I wanted to go to three waterfalls and we had very little time because it was supposed to be sunny and all these falls get early sun. I had 30 minutes to get to the three of them. Thankfully they were all very close to each other, but unfortunately I only made it to two and it was not because of the sun.
Elliot Creek Falls was the best one of the two, a very gorgeous 56 ft. high waterfall along the beach. It was easy getting down to the beach and it was very beautiful and we were the only ones there at sunrise. Except for a dead sea lion. Eck.
I should have made it to the third waterfall. The tide was well on the way out. I thought it would be easy. It should have been easy. However, the waves were still crashing up against the cliffs. There was no way to get past them and to the waterfall. It was a bit disappointing but nothing I could do. Well, it was a very lovely weekend in the Monterey and Santa Cruz area and my wife was happy.