To Coe SP And Then Back To Monterey

by Peter Natscher

After a 1-3/4 hour drive up to Coe SP from Monterey, I sat in my parked vehicle in the Coe parking lot watching the 15-20 mph winds blow up dust devils. The wind was pretty bad up there with parking lot dust and gravel blowing all around. Coe at its worst! Looked like prevailing winds out of the NW that would stay 'til midnight so I didn't hang around. Besides, the sky was turning crummy with haze and thick cirrus coming in from the west. After 30 minutes, I down the mountain for Coyote Lake Park but decided while on Rt. 101 to call it quits seeing the sky lose a lot of transparency with the encroaching cirrus. The day was so beautiful and by sunset it was getting mediocre, not the kind of night that I was going to enjoy with my 20" Starmaster. I called it a night. What a hobby! So far, I've been skunked four times since Jan.--not a good year so far. Driving back to Monterey on Highway 1, the sunset was a religious experience with a large viewable solar disk behind low-lying coastal clouds, telling me I shouldn't have left to begin with. Sometimes, you have to notice the flowers in your own backyard.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 02, 2005 20:25:57 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 20, 2005 11:43:29 PT