...when I went to California.

Episode One: Attack of the Clams (or "The Cove")

I mentioned a few entries back that I had gone to California.  I also talked about how illustrating the trip terrified me with its visual complexities and sheer awesomeness.  Ok, I may not have mentioned the sheer awesomeness, but trust me, it was awesome.  Sheerly. 

Anyway, my hostess and friend Stephanie has inspired me to conquer California.  I've broken it up into pieces.  This is the first.

I will preface this whole saga by saying that I've always been a pretty meticulous and detail-oriented person.  But when it comes to travel, I don't know, something in me snaps and I turn into Kumbaya Katie.  Seriously.  I think I am who I was meant to be when I travel.  So when Steph said "you should visit me," I decided then and there to take her up on it.  I got the vacation approved, bought my plane ticket the week of (I do not recommend this - they will GOUGE YOU DEAD), and early that Friday morning I was out the door.

From the plane, I saw Arizona.  It is breath-taking and I absolutely can not draw it.

The Phoenix airport took my breath away, too, but mostly because all those people smelled extremely icky.

Once I got to California, it was all good.  Stephanie suggested we drive out to nearby Abalone Cove.  Now, there's just something about nature.  I get out there, and I become full-on Noble Savage Katie.  (Yes, in addition to Kumbaya Katie.  I can be more than one Katie at a time, you know.)

Stephanie didn't actually say anything like that.  She endured my romanticizing and waxing poetic with admirable patience.

Once we had made our way in a sort of controlled tumble down the mountain (Stephanie insisted it was a hill, but I know what I saw), I indulged in a frolic along my first Pacific beach, leaping from rock to rock like a freaking gazelle.

Luckily, I only overbalanced once, soaking my jeans leg and tennis shoe in one of the multitude of tide pools.  Or maybe twice.  I can't quite remember.  You know.

There was SO MUCH LIFE.  In all the tide pools nestled neon anemones and speckled starfish.  Hermit crabs scuttled in slow motion along the bottoms.  Which reminds me - do hermit crabs breathe air or what?  I mean, those guys aren't especially speedy.  How did these hermit crabs survive on the bottoms of tide pools?  It's not like they could just pop up to the surface whenever they started feeling low on air.  Amazing.  And completely baffling.  But I digress.

After inspecting the tide pools, I made my way to the water's edge via the increasingly massive rocks covered in dried-up sea gunk and empty clam shells.  I had never been on a rock beach before.  I was mesmerized by the rhythmic wash of the waves against the rocks, the way each wave sprayed high and then tumbled between the crevices, filling the tide pools and washing small creatures out to sea.  Surrounded by the push and pull of the ocean, I slipped into a trance.

All that communing kind of distracted me, and when I came to I realized I had no idea where Stephanie was.  I turned at the waist to find her, and that's when I realized I wasn't alone.

Now, these crabs were everywhere.  But they are fast.  And skittish as all get out.  Stephanie or I would make a single move, and they'd go racing off to hide under a rock or something.  But I guess, in my trance, I had been so still for so long, that the crab kind of forgot I wasn't a rock myself.  Maybe.  I don't know.  I'm not a crab, so I don't really know what he was thinking.  Regardless, the two of us stared each other down.

Once he had decided that I must indeed be a rock or something equally unthreatening, the crab went back to picking moss off the rocks with his little pincers, shoveling it in and generally ignoring me.

After a while of the crab eating and me watching the crab eat, I leaned forward a little and accidentally scuffed my foot against the rock.  And that's when I realized that not only was I not alone, I was surrounded.

It was a little eerie, suddenly realizing that I had been in the midst of a vast crab army, and that I hadn't even known it.

I got the heebie jeebies and left the water's edge to catch up to Stephanie, picking her way along the smaller rocks further up the beach.

On the other side of the beach, there were even bigger tide pools with even more colorful starfish.  Live starfish, mind you, not those hard starfish skeletons.  These things were living and breathing.  Actually, I don't know whether they were breathing.  Do starfish breathe air, too?  I didn't realize I had so many concerns about sea creatures and oxygen.

Anyway,

At first, we got over the strange spurts of water.  I stuck my nose in every tide pool and resisted the urge to poke things, and Stephanie took pictures that would turn out beautifully.  But after a while, the mysterious mini-geysers would not be ignored.

Wiping clam spit from my face, I looked up to see that Stephanie was heading in from the edge of the rocks.  The tide was coming in and the sun was setting - time to go.

We passed the rest of the evening pleasantly.  Stephanie took me to a Peruvian restaurant.  Oh my gosh.  Y'all.  If you've never had Peruvian food, GO EAT SOME.  Now.  Go eat some RIGHT NOW.  It's amazing.  All the smoky flavors, the grilled meat, the vegetables.  They have this green sauce that smells like grass and kinda tastes like it at first, but after a while, after pouring it all over 10,000 rolls and a heaping plate of rice, it is like crack.  Green Peruvian crack.  I don't really know what crack is like.  But this stuff was really, really good and I couldn't stop eating it.  By the end of the meal, I was ready to move to Peru.  It was that good.  All the food, not just the sauce.

A glass of red wine in Stephanie's apartment knocked me out, and that was that for Day One in California.  Suffice it to say, I forgot all about the clam spit.  And then remembered again so I could tell you about it.

NOTE: My crabs' legs look like spiders' legs.  Sorry about that.