James Dean

Gonzo and I are still trying to get acquainted with this very weird state of California...and the way we do that is by driving to see it.  Since we have been here, nearly every weekend we talk of driving up to San Francisco, and nearly every weekend since we have been here it's been raining either up in San Francisco or where we are at in Southern California (yes rain in Southern California).  Neither one of us really cares to drive in the rain so we haven't really made it to San Francisco yet.

But on February 8th, Gonzo actually had a day off from work and we decided to take a drive up north.  I don't think either of us actually intended on making it all the way to San Francisco but our intentions were to go north.

I'll spare you the details, but let's just say neither one of us checked the weather before we headed out and when the storm clouds started getting darker north of us, we scrambled to find a road that would direct us off of highway 5 and get us closer to the 1.

 I don't want to tell you where we were, or what road we got off on, because it was such a neat surprise to find this road that I felt like some higher power had guided us that way- it would be too easy to tell you which road it actual was (you can do the research yourself if you want to find it...or not, if you just want to one day happen upon it like we did).

We stopped at a cafe, a little ways away from a fork in the road, which just so happened to be a winery as well.  While getting a glass of wine to go with my lunch, Gonzo was busy researching why there was so much James Dean paraphernalia on the walls.

This cafe is located very near the James Dean memorial, which is several hundred feet from the exact place of James Dean's fatal car accident.

 It was an odd feeling realizing we had stumbled upon this place, when earlier in the day I had seen a post of Facebook about it being James Dean's birthday.  We weren't looking for it.  I don't think Gonzo or myself had even thought to seek out his memorial, but we found ourselves there on his birthday.

Even odder, what had started off as a bright sunny day of driving, suddenly descended into rain and then dense fog, while winding on rolling hill roads.  I felt awful that Gonzo was having to endure the driving on this escapade, but if I had been behind the wheel, I would have pulled off at one of the zillion wineries we past and drank until the rain stopped...begging the owners for a bed for the night so we didn't have to get back into the weather.  But Gonzo was driving, so we forged ahead.

 I'm very glad he did, as we were at the perfect altitude to be just under the fog layer as it brushed the tops of mountain peaks, making for eerie pictures to be taken, and my imagination to run wild with stories that need to be told.

 Gonzo and I kept joking about the random rock formations being still ogres/trolls waiting to animate to life once the traffic died down.

 Eventually we made it to the coast which was churning from the storm that was blowing in.  We only stayed on the 1 for a few hours before deciding it was probably safer to stay on the 101 to get home...good thing too, there was a mud slide blocking a section of the 1, which we wouldn't have gotten to until after dark.

So we didn't make it to San Francisco yet, but we definitely fell in love with the area we stumbled upon and will definitely be returning to the small cafe at the fork in the road that is close to James Dean's memorial.