Day: May 24, 2009

Library, Casablanca Mosque

Library, Casablanca Mosque, originally uploaded by wind_dancer.

While I am sure it is not a “slow” day in Big Sur, I am staying home, resting up from my vacation and doing some catching up on the thousands of emails, a stack of mail, and sundry other things.

I woke at 3 am without a clue as to where I was. Comes from never staying in one place more than 3 days, and many places for only 1 or 2 days. It took me almost 15 minutes of laying in the pitch black, before I realized I was no longer in Greece!

Our first day in Casablanca, we visited the tallest Mosque in Morocco. The Moroccan art & architecture is a study in symmetry. It is a beautiful country, which I was blessed to see many parts of.

As one can imagine, I have tons and tons of photos to sift through. The bad news is, I dropped my D90 in Santorini, Greece — on concrete. I could only take photos manually, and even then had trouble with focus and exposure.

Big Sur Summer

Memorial Day Weekend marks the beginning of the summer tourist season in Big Sur. But residents are “spoiled” by the closures experienced this past year. This weekend’s significant influx of visitors, while greatly appreciated, has brought many hospitality workers back to the reality of living and working here — the crowds that keep us alive.

“After a festive ribbon-cutting ceremony, visitors poured in Friday. Every Memorial Day weekend site was sold out in 90 minutes. Another 1,000 reservations have already been booked for the rest of summer,” reported the Monterey Herald.

Several of my visitor-serving friends were on overload on Saturday, dealing with the sudden rise in population here in Big Sur. They had been inundated. Usually, our hospitality industry gets a couple of dry runs before the big opening day, and workers have the opportunity to get ready for the flood of tourists. This could not happen this year, due to closures of the Los Padres National Forest and the State Parks essentially since June of last year. Now, we are on a fast track to catch up with lost revenues and to get used to the large crowds. We got spoiled, and we got lazy, without our visitors.

Welcome back, everyone. Let’s keep this a safe and sane (by Big Sur standards) summer.

(Just flew back last night and I have a lot to catch up on. Being “unplugged” for 16 days was great — no phones, no internet, no news. Will write about my adventures on slow “news” days in the coming weeks. Also looking to post another Random Big Sur Photo for identification soon.)