One of my favorite things when I’m out on the road (or at home for that matter) is finding a new trail to access a piece of coast I haven’t seen before. I’d seen some new trailheads on a previous trip past this stretch of private agricultural coastal bluffs and made a mental note to return when the opportunity arose. Today it arose because I’d been painting like mad over the last few days and had planned to get get some waves this morning, and as luck would have it the surf was absolutely uninspiring. But the weather was as nice as it gets, a great day to go paint and I happened to be in the area not far from this recently opened trail. I’d looked up the trail on a map and saw that it ran for miles on the edge of the coastal bluff, fields of artichokes on one side, the deep blue sea on the other. A pure and simple distillation of the essence of this coastline. I was disappointed to find the trail closed on weekdays though. Nuts! I’m sure they have a fine reason for this, but it boggled my mind. Fortunately, it wasn’t closed up by the road where a little fence-hopping would be obvious, but all the way down by the ocean well out of view from passing cars. The view from the locked gate was just fine and all… but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little finer just a little further in.