The Dark Night of the Soul

It was a good thing we stopped at Dillon Beach because that was the last beach before the Cliffs of Insanity arose before us. As the night got darker, the road got steeper, narrower, and with tighter turns closer to the edge of the Cliffs. At first it was pretty fun, but after about an hour or so, I was wondering if it was ever going to end. The incline was so steep a number of times that I thought I was in one of my recurring bad dreams where I'm heading up a highway that gets steeper and steeper, higher, and narrower until I feel like I'm about to do a loop backward. I started praying Lord have mercy with every turn. I have to say I now have more respect for people in that area who are used to steep narrowness, and did I mention no guard rails? Just a view of the ocean far below, which I didn't even want to see at that point. Sometimes there would be a sassy little sports car that would shine it's high beams at our van's undercarriage to try to get past me. I sincerely wanted to let them by, but the only way on that continuous double yellow lined road was to pull over on intermittent "turnabouts" that were about the size of a postage stamp, with no guard rail, on a harrowing precipice. So ruining these people's pleasure cruises also made me more nervous. There were a couple of larger shoulder areas where I was finally able to let some of them pass. The only thing that made me feel better was that as we finally approached the end of the ocean cliff portion, an even larger RV started making it's way north towards us. We were like, turn back! This road was not meant for us!

Even as we headed into the redwood forest, the turns were still sharp as I had to keep in low gear going down those steep hills. I was pretty tired at that point so all the steering and braking really got tedious. George congratulated me, though, and said I went just the right speed, etc. I don't think he's so worried about my driving skills now, but I was so ready to turn the van back in the next morning, get on our Alaska-bound ship, and let somebody else drive.