Big Sur is an area near Monterey, in the middle-ish of California, known for the Santa Lucia mountains that are right along the coast line. This is a beautiful place for hiking, right off the Highway One, and there is one really interesting spot at the top of a hill following the Tanbark Trail, called The Tin House. It took about 4 hours round trip for the hike, and it is a little bit strenuous as it goes pretty high up. On a good day, the view is supposed to be impressive, unfortunately I caught a few clouds as you will see.
The whole area of Big Sur is definitely worth a visit if you enjoy good hikes, this is just one of many trails. And the coastline is gorgeous the whole way!
I decided to partake in our current photo challenge, because a) it's a fantastic thing, and b) the topic made me think of this hike. So, to combine this with a nice little photo blog, the two entries to the current photo challenge (desolation) are the first two pictures, the second two just add to the story.
The Tin House
At the top of the trail is this fascinating house. Why is it made of Tin, you might ask? There's a bit of a myth surrounding the construction in general, but the accepted idea of the material is that there was not much in the way of anything to use during World War 2.
Supposedly, after building it, the owners never really lived it it. Turns out tin is a pretty crappy house material, who knew?
It also really isn't a safe place to be (the roof is has literally collapsed in most places), but I had to go inside. It has been weathered pretty hard, broken glass and pieces of metal everywhere. Didn't go any closer than this, that's for sure.
The View
I was pretty dissapointed that I caught the clouds over the Pacific, but alas, that is life. It's funny, since another part of the myth is that the reason why the owners decided to make the house so high up, is to get away from the fog and clouds. Well, at least they got that goin' for them.
The True Blue of Big Sur
After the hike, I went down to the ocean to relax and cool off for a bit. And seriously, it is that blue. It's crazy to me, it's almost as blue as Crater Lake. But that's a post for another day...
For those of you interested: Camera is SONY NEX-7, with a Zeiss 16-70mm lens. As always, these are my original photos. There was some confusion in the last post about copyright, so let me explain: these photos are NOT on the blockchain, only pointers are. I maintain the copyright.
See the gallery of all my photos, as I build it, here.
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