whata weekend!

i had another amazingly wonderful weekend with mee sook!

you may notice that i have changed the spelling of her name. i was confused as to how to spell her name from when i first met her. the reason: when she first came to the united states in 1978, immigration misspelled her name. knowing how people can be prejudiced-jerks, i assumed they misspelled it: mesuk, as in: me suck. they did, however, misspell it misuk.

mee sook tells me that her name translates the following way:

mee = beautiful me.

sook = clearly.

clearly, she is!

we attempted to begin friday night with a view of the sunset, but the sun was not to be seen. so, we went over to allegro at the barnyard in the mouth of carmel valley for vittles.

following a mediocre italian dinner we drove out to “our beach” (mine and ron’s), wrapped up in a blanket and watched the waves for an hour or so.

on saturday we went hiking for the third time in garrapata state park between carmel-by-the-sea and big sur. we hiked up the canyon into the redwoods, ate berries and sourdough bread next to soberanes creek sitting on a fallen redwood and hiked up to our “secret spot.” i’d tell you where it is, but it is a secret spot!

we returned to the peninsula in time to watch the sunset at “our beach.”

today, mee sook called me to say that she needed to run up to santa clara to pick up some items for a friend whose mother is dying of cancer.

while we were in korea town we stopped by the buddhist temple then went over to one of the korean barbeque house. i thoroughly enjoyed a beef dish, which name i cannot remember and mee sook had a cold buckwheat noodle dish with beef strips. the dishes came with a variety of peripheral dishes, which included: 3 types of kimchi (napa cabbage, turnip and cooked napa cabbage), soy beans, steamed spinach, dried anchovies, fish cakes, some kind of soufflé and green tea. my dish also came with steamed rice. the meals were brought to a close with cups of rice water that is similar to mexican horchata, but without the condensed milk.

i enjoyed most of the meal completely. i was not all that into the dried anchovies and the turnip kimchi. but, i really enjoyed the shredded beef, the fish cakes, napa cabbage kimchi and the soufflé!

on our way back we needed to stop in gilroy. since, we took her car (i drove), we needed to go back to watsonville, where i left my car. so, i drove over hwy. 152 up into the redwoods.

as we reached the crest i saw a sign for mt. madonna county park, onto which i quickly turned.


we hadn’t been in the park for 10-minutes before a bobcat ran up the road in front of us.


we parked overlooking gilroy for several minutes, watched a banana slug, then drove to one of the hiking trails and strolled amongst the redwoods for about 90-minutes.


we left the park from the west side of the mountain and arrived into watsonville through a very scenic area.


the perfect ending to a perfect weekend!