8am. Bathing suits. Scratchy green towels. Lying on large lounge chairs with plush orange cushions. Watching the hot pool empty itself over the edge. The ocean stretches out to infinity, meeting the sky in a haze at the end of the horizon.
The water from the pool steams as it hits the air and yet it’s warm enough in the sun to lie here in just a bathing suit and towel.
I can hear Blue Jays argue with Scrub Jays over which tree they are each allowed to perch in.
We watch the lightly cloudy sky and wonder where the planes are heading.
“That one is going a bit south for Asia. Maybe Hawaii.”
“And that one looks like it’s going to LA, unless he turns up and follows the coast to San Fran or San Jose.”
The planes leave again and the skies clear. And we go back to just listening.
No cars. No kids. Relative quiet in this rich man’s paradise.

I kept taking pictures of it all. Trying to capture the beauty. But I knew even my awesome camera could not do this place justice. There’s no way to capture the smell of the ocean and the redwoods and the fires burning in the chimneys of the guest houses. There’s no way to record the telltale screech of the heinous Scrub Jay – each one transporting me back to the summer they tortured the cat in our very own yard. There’s no way to reproduce the sweet breeze. I could just take endless shots of the ocean, the mountains, the pools, the houses, and, yes, even the birds, and hope that my memory fills in the blanks.

We stayed in a tree house.

That table, right there?
That’s where we had breakfast.

Oh. And this was the view.

The place was crawling with fountains.
Followed you everywhere being all soothing and stuff.

This is a statue of a whale.
Yes. A whale.

That tiny white dot?
Is my husband next to a HUGE Redwood.

I could not get enough of the massive trees.

This is why there was Technu in our room.
For all you foreigners, that’s Poison Oak. Don’t touch it. Ever.

This was the restaurant in the early morning mist.
As seen from our room.

This was the fitness center.
Never saw it any closer.

This was the hot pool we pretty much lived in.

This was the view from the hot pool we lived in.
Are you starting to see why we never left?

These were the lounge chairs by the pool.
OK. For realz. Now do you get it?

But then we had to leave.
And we saw some lovely private beachfront property on the way.

With a bit of a view.
Because some people have all the luck.