Forest of Friends

Loyal readers of this blog may recall that every year for our anniversary we've gone to a "resort" called Treebones in Big Sur. It calls itself a resort, but it has campsites and community bathrooms, so..."grown-up fancy camp" is a more apt description.

Our first two years, we stayed in their famous yurts. Last year was a campsite. And this year was The Nest for two nights, and a campsite for one.

The Nest:

Yes, we slept in that thing. And it was awesome. Every Laura's dream.

Our first night there was misty misty. There wasn't rain, but the mist was so thick, the nest was basically in a cloud. It's surrounded by pine trees, whose needles, we learned, act as hundreds of mini-eye-droppers, collecting and then dripping water onto you while you sleep. Then you wake up at 1 am, notice that your feet are wet, which must mean that your sleeping bag is wet, and fearing that it will stay wet for the next two nights you will be sleeping in it, your husband convinces you to abandon the nest for the tent you set up nearby in case of such an occurrence, but only after you pout because sleeping in the nest is on your bucket list and even though you've been doing it, this is not how you imagined it.

So the first night was a bummer.

The second night was great. And as you can see by my fashionable facegear, cold.

We woke up to this view. Ahhh.

Fans of Max Richards will appreciate that anytime we were at our tent and about to go up to the nest, one of us said, "I tell you what, let's go up high." This happened at least a dozen times.

New on the property this year is this treehouse:

Guess where we wanna stay next year?

We read, relaxed, swam, ate, played backgammon (I even one once!), and read our leaves from our wedding. Which made both of us cry.

A few images of Big Sur to share:

On the drive back, we stopped at a place which has peaked my curiosity for the last three years: the enigmatic Anderson's Pea Soup restaurant. The quirky billboards are all over the the middle portion of the drive, and this year we finally stopped to check it out.

What we discovered was kind of like if a Dutch grandmother ran a Stuckey's with a Christmas shop attached. We tried the soup anyway. You can see I was not fond of the pumpernickel bread, as evidenced by the piece with a bite taken out that I generously put back in the basket pointing at Zach in case he wanted it. And we had to eat to the bottom of the bowl so we could see Hap Pea and Pea Wee, as made famous by the multitudinous billboards.