Climbing The Fence: Road Trip: Day 2 - The Pacific Ocean - A blog of photos and adventures by Jeffrey R Stroup

I have been to California three times, and this was the very first time that I saw the Pacific Ocean. After fighting traffic in Los Angeles for what seemed like forever, we finally arrived at the coast. We stopped at the first beach we could. I'm by no means a beach person, but it was still exciting to see the Pacific. We walked around the beach for a little while looking for neat shells and rocks, and then it was back on the road, driving north along the Pacific Coast Highway.

I did not expect to see so much fog but it really was amazing the way that it would roll off of the water and up the mountain sides.

We were beat and even though we had planned on spending most nights sleeping in the car, the night before had just been too rough, so we decided to head for Morro Bay and get a hotel there for the night. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. After a quick meal of pizza and garlic bread from a local pizza shop, we headed to the beach. The goal was to catch sunset.

...and we definitely caught that sunset. It seemed to last forever. Here in Cleveland we have about twenty minutes of beautiful breath taking color, but as soon as that sun disappears it's dark and the colors are gone. This sunset however seemed to last for hours.

The beach was covered in Velella, basically a type of jellyfish.

Always a sucker for smoke stacks.

Looking at these photos I find it almost hard to believe that this place is real and that I was there.

I had never had any interest in surfing but after watching these guys take advantage of the last light of day, I'm starting to think that surfing might be kind of awesome.