Late Big Sur Pictures

The weekend after Labor Day each year some close friends host camping in Big Sur. It's a perfect time for us to get away. We are close to harvest, but being away keeps the panic down as everyone else starts picking and just makes us focus on something else.

I've got a new computer so guess what? These pictures are in reverse order of the weekends events, so I'll tell the story backwards. :)

Nature really is great. Here's new baby redwoods starting out from a tree burnt out in the fires last summer.

Stef and I hiked on Sunday morning up to about 2200 feet above the Big Sur Gorge. It was an impromptu hike, we hadn't brought a lot of water with us. Just about two hours and 5 miles total.

Stef looking out at the ocean about 3/4 of the way up. We'd like to go back and finish the total 8 miles, but we just didn't have enough water with us this day to finish.

Me at the fork between the trail to the waterfall and Manuel Peak. The waterfall trail is still closed from landslides.

On Saturday we played in the river for a few hours and Stef caught about two dozen crawdads for dinner. Then we headed up the gorge to see how far we could get with the very low water.

This is the end of the trail. We had to wade through the creek a couple times to get this far but at this point we would have to go waist deep so we stopped for the day.

We were on the hook for cooking for 12 that night. Here I am ready to cook with a glass of our 2006 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and my special shirt for the weekend.

Stefania boiled up the crawdads and I started in on the potatoes. Wrapped in foil and thrown in the hot coals for about 75 minutes. Turn them every 20 minutes so they cook evenly.

Then on go the Prime Rib Steaks. 13 in all over open flame. There's no hair left on my hand :)

Sunday night was a bit of an adventure. We had about 1/2 inch of rain with us in our little two man 7 foot tent. We made it through though with just a little damp and mud and headed home the next day.