CONTINUING MY COW STORY

 Following on from my post yesterday, where I had mentioned this was from a while ago, (2009 to be precise), my memories came flooding back.  Looking at what I wrote and browsing through photos is cause for a fun discussion afterwards with Gregg, who enjoys looking back at them as much as I do.  The following is what I wrote at the time.

I have to say honestly when I first saw this sign, I raised my eyes and started laughing. We had just spent the last hour driving along a very winding road with incredibly steep drops, and I was a little more nervous than I usually am. No way is a cow going to be on this road I said.  Famous last words because it was seconds later that I saw them.  

But first let me begin my story. We were on holiday traveling along Route 1 in California, a coastal road as you can see. Gorgeous views though I was very surprised at how queasy I felt looking over those sometimes 500-foot drops. It had been several years since I had experienced dizzying heights along a road such as this one.  

The realization struck me as I have gotten older, I am my dear Mother after all. It was a very winding road indeed. Gregg had done most of the driving on this trip, and I was very glad he was behind the wheel. I would not have been comfortable.  A flashback to my mother's white knuckles as she used to grab onto the handle at the roof line on the passenger side.  My mother, bless her, never learned to drive but she sure could jam those invisible pedals on the passenger side.  I wasn't offended, she was like this with my father, and those roads were where you couldn't drive much more than 25 miles-an-hour along the narrow, country roads that we were used to, and oh my goodness, when we actually got onto a main road and went up to 45 m.p.h., poor Mum!  

We obviously couldn’t go too fast here because of the curves.  Imagine our shock when we came around a bend, to find a big black cow right in our path.  I was too surprised to take a photo of that one.  Going as slow as we were, we stopped in good time several feet away. It stood in the center of the road looking at us and did not budge, and as we waited it became apparent that it was not going to budge. We didn’t even think to honk the horn and wouldn’t have because a) we didn't want that big black cow stampeding over our hood, and b) we didn’t want it to run over the cliff. We finally edged around it, not thinking we would see another cow along that road and not one practically kissing our bumper.  We were also thankful we saw no other cars during this experience. 

As far as other cows were concerned, how wrong could we be? We saw more cow signs and crossed over several cattle grids. We then saw another cow making his way down the hill to the road, and another munching on a patch of grass at the edge of the road. Then we spotted yet another, the one on the hump of the hill. We were trying to figure out how it was going to get down because as far as we could see, the hill seemed too steep for any ordinary cow to climb. These were obviously no ordinary cows, they must have had mountain goat DNA.

The pictures don't show the whole story. To see these cows in this particular area was an extraordinary sight.  That patch of grass with a touch of ocean salt must have been very tasty.