I passed a stretch of road where people were parking along the highway and off-road camping on the rocks. It looked tempting, but traveling alone I wasn't nearly as brave as I might have been with a companion. I regretted this decision miles later, at sunset, when all beaches had stern "NO CAMPING" signs. Finally, I stopped in San Simeon at a state park, just after dark. Both campgrounds were full. It was pitch black. I was out of options. 

My car crept past the "FULL" campground signs, onto a quiet dirt road behind the park. I passed another car on the side of the road, its lights off, and its inhabitant clearly having made the same decision I was making. I pulled as far to the side of the road as possible, switched off my engine and tried to get comfortable in the passenger's seat. Even with reclining the seat all the way back, this was a terrible angle for sleeping and I tossed and turned. Clearly, this wasn't going to work. I cleared the backseat, moving my now empty cooler into the far back, and grabbed my sleeping bag and pillow. It would be cramped, but at least I could lay flat. I saw a text from my mom, who asked where I had settled for the night. I texted her back "some dead end road just behind a full campground", and went to sleep.

A few days prior to spending the night in my car along the Pacific Coast Highway, I had spent the day working at my company's Sacramento office. That day, I caught up on emails from the prior week, gave a presentation on resiliency to the office, and discovered that what little food I had left by this point had gone bad after my cooler ice had melted in the 90-degree heat, sitting in the backseat of my car where it had been since departing Minnesota. A group of my Sacramento coworkers were going to a party that evening thrown by several building industry associations in the Bridge District, an up-and-coming mixed-use neighborhood in West Sacramento's riverfront. The venue was a newly completed structure called the BARN - an undulating wood pavilion perfect to house a design industry event. 

That night, I stayed with a friend in Concord and enjoyed wonderful company and an incredibly comfortable bed. The full-length mirror in her guest room was adorned with the hand-written quote: "You is smart, you is kind, you is important." Was I noticing these little gems of moments, amazing views and timely discoveries more than usual? Or were they popping up more frequently on this vision quest? 

I spent half of the next day working in San Francisco, the second half spent logging nearly 20,000 steps walking around the city. It was the most tourist-y day of the entire three-week-trip, complete with a visit to Lombard Street (accompanied, of course, by a busload of Asian tourists) and Fisherman's Warf. I passed by a quirky bookstore that called me inside to explore. After spending almost an hour perusing the extensive beat poetry section upstairs, I bought two poetry collections that would join me in my tent every night the rest of the trip. Later, my host from the night before met me for a delicious gluten free meal at Mariposa Baking Company in the Ferry Building, and we wandered around the Embarcadero until the sun went down and it was too chilly to stay outside (amazing how quickly low 60's felt cold to me, after the Sacramento heat).

My day of being a tourist in San Francisco had me pondering the competing dualities of many popular cities. These urban destinations seem to have two faces - the real city, where people live, play and work, and the tourist attraction, cleaner and brighter than the rest of the city, often feeling as if it is just for show. Along Fisherman's Warf, storefronts and the scenes before me felt like caricatures of what one might imagine San Francisco to be like. Yet a few blocks away, people in business suits hurried to their offices, Starbucks in hand, parents let their toddler take a few shaky steps down the sidewalk, and I would stumble onto gritty side streets that smelled of piss and pot. Which parts are the "real" city? It felt like the a magician's trick, seeing something amazing yet wondering if it is too good to be true, and then peeking behind the curtain and seeing that yes, in fact, the reality is a very different picture. 

I stayed in Redwood City, where I was welcomed with gluten free cookies, all the fixings for trail mix, and two very snuggley cats. My pregnant host, knowing my history better than most of my friends back home, asked whether I'd be comfortable staying in the future nursery, surrounded by all things baby, or if I preferred the living room. I slept that night in what is now the nursery for a beautiful, brand new baby girl, under rubber ducky-adorned blankets, pleased with myself that I could feel joy and excitement for my friend, without feeling the often intertwined pangs of my own sadness.

Before starting down the coast, I wanted to visit Muir Woods, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. My friend, though she was in her third trimester, joined me for a short hike after we assembled several bags of gluten free trail mix. We arrived early enough to park in the visitor lot and decided to take the Main Trail - part boardwalk, part unpaved trail. It is easy to see how John Muir fell in love with the wilderness here. The  sun streamed through the tall, sturdy redwoods, and the abundance of cedar and pine mixed in the air, resulting in the smell of Christmas. 

By the time we completed the loop, the park was packed. Yet another park overrun with visitors - it was beginning to make me feel uneasy, as if we are asking for too much and overstaying our welcome in these places that belong not to us, but to the natural world. 

CA-84 was incredibly windy on the way down to the coast from Redwood City. At times, I felt like I could be in New England, with the road winding up and down small hills, surrounded by forest on all sides. Soon the view opened up and I had arrived at the ocean.

The Pacific Coast Highway, the road sandwiched between the rocky geography and the wide open expanse of water, was a very different kind of beautiful than my favorite drives from earlier in the week on mountain roads. Just past Monterey (where I encountered the first full campground), the highway twisted into a cove dappled with colorful hang gliders. The sky was filled with what felt like a hundred of them, all floating elegantly in the wind.

At sunset, I was high above the sea surrounded by awe-inspiring views, winding down toward a lower elevation. As the stress of wondering where I would spend the night grew, and darkness crept closer with every moment, I decided I simply would not accept should's on this journey. I would not regret or second-guess my choices. There would be no should's. Only what was happening at that very moment. Only now. The amazing views that surrounded me, the brilliant red sky, the sun slowly meeting the horizon. Only now.