It is not unusual for Kemper to wake us at 6:30, or if he is feeling particularly spunky, at 5:45—rip-roaring and ready to go. Although we thought that he would be jet lagged and might, perhaps, sleep in, this was a false hope. What he did when he came bounding into our room fully dressed, however, took us by surprise. Instead of asking to go watch TV, he asked me if I wanted to go “exploring” (hiking) with him and take pictures. I couldn’t say no, nor did I want to deny him this adventure, so laconically I drifted into shorts and a fleece jacket, grabbed the rental car’s keys, and we headed to Garrapata State Reserve, about 15 miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Kemp and I had never been to Garrapata, so we parked where we already saw cars at 6:45 in the morning, which proved to be brilliant on our part. We found the trailhead and there was a fork in the path, so we took it, a-la Yogi Berra. We went on the right-hand path the first day, which began in a heavily wooded cedar grove, thereby blocking out any inkling of the view that was to come when we emerged on the other side. When we did make our way through the tunnel of conifers, we arrived at a coastline that was simply magnificent.
The photograph at the beginning of this post, and the one in my first post-vacation post on Monday, were some of the first I took. Kemp and I had a few more early morning adventures which continued from Sunday through Wednesday, when the entire reserve had been weighed, measured, and found to be at least pedestrian, and at most menacingly dangerous to a six-year-old whose motor coordination, though developing age-appropriately, closely approximates the pratfalls of the Three Stooges.
Having left Moe (Kemper) at home on Thursday and Friday, I tried my hand at long-exposure photography, which I will post in the coming days. I was quite pleasantly surprised at how even my first attempts turned out. (God bless YouTube tutorials.)
Kemper joined me on Saturday for one last hurrah. We went on the original right-hand trail, as he had deemed the left one to be too dangerous for prudent adventurers like we were. He advised me of this precondition to the hike while we drove to the park, lest I form any inchoate thoughts of taking him to the cliff’s edge for a photo opportunity. I agreed to his preconditions, and we had a lovely (albeit moderately abbreviated by a six-and-a-half-year-old walnut-sized bladder) hike through the underbrush and verdant leaves of a plant with which I was theretofore unfamiliar. Upon some post hoc analysis, I came to determine that the entirety of Garrapata’s chaparral had been carefully seeded with poison oak to keep the riff-raff (read tourists) in their place and on the well-marked trails.
Well played, Garrapata. Well played.
ST. AMAND PHOTOGRAPHY 