boy howdy, did i luck out. i was only technically homeless for a few hours, but still. TRAUMA, AMIRITE

these are professionals

south beach is a first-come, first-served seasonal campground on a bluff overlooking a beautiful ocean beach that i just happened by while trying to figure out where i was gonna stay for the next few nights. being seasonal, this meant the site would close for the winter in just a few days. don't want to be out in the open during storm surge, after all.

fortunately i arrived early enough to snag a sheltered spot in the cleft of a wooded hillside.

welcoming committee

i even managed to set up my tent properly so i didn't get rained on by my own breathy condensation. and i didn't have to fight a raccoon. and i only lost one bag of chips to a raven. it was the perfect place to rest and regroup and walk and explore.

the big driver for why i chose to try to climb a mountain and see a glacier was to see something that won't be around much longer. to witness it with my own eyes and through my own efforts. but since my said efforts were sorely lacking, i decided to take a different tack and head towards a new, even-more-precarious-and-endangered goal: to see the tree of life.

now it was time to move on, and continue my planned trip along the south coast wilderness. which would prove to be much harder and more treacherous than anything i had previously encountered. 

while this wasn't the experience i expected, it was the experience i had.