Cats and Dogs!

O.K., so you know how the saying goes, 'it's raining cats & dogs'? Well, when Nina and 1 tried to leave San Francisco on Monday, Jan. 18, it started raining sheeps and cows! I mean right when we got in the car it started coming down like that. You would think we were in the mid-west, forchristsake! We headed towards ocean beach to pick up coastal highway 1 to get us to Monterey. By the time we drove the 10 minutes to ocean beach, it was getting pretty scary. It was raining so hard the wiper blades on the car were useless. The wind was gusting between 45-60mph. The ocean was out of control, crashing against the beach and walls like a monster. By the time we started to round the curve and go up the hill towards devils slide (how comforting) we had zero visibility. What made it even nicer was they had the right lane closed (the one on MY side of the car!) due to that lane being eaten away by the violent ocean. Good thing it was raining so hard I couldn't see out of the window! :o) That's when we looked at each other and said, "NO! This aint happening today!" We pulled over till the rain let up a bit and we could see and then we turned around and headed back to the house. On our way back,

the flooding was crazy. Manhole covers were popping up off of the street from the amount of water going through them. Cars were swerving around them as the geysers were randomly popping up out of the street. You have to remember, this

is California

and it doesn't usually rain like this here. Geeez, this was almost as exciting as a tornado where I live! We got back to the house and

went right to the computer to get

the weather map to see if we were going to be able to make it down

to Monterey today or not. We saw that there was going to be a 3 or 4-hour break between

the next system coming through, so we jumped right back in the car and tried again. This time we took the hwy 101 route that goes a bit more inland and we were successful. The drive down was really beautiful with all of the dramatic thunderclouds and random sun popping through on the lush green hills. We did have the occasional rain shower, but nothing like our earlier experience. Here are a few photos of our beautiful drive south to Monterey.