As you may have realized, I was not born in the US of A. Instead I come from a Land of Mists. If you travel in the early morning or late evening between October and March in my homeland you will have to get used to driving through patches of cloud that hang in the still air.
When I started to explore Northern California, I was met with a similar phenomenon. In the summer there is that daily enormous fog bank known as The Fog. Once inside, you notice how the fog or the mist is thread-like and moving quickly, pushed along by the winds.
It is amusing how my husband (who grew up in San Francisco) and myself (who grew up in England) use language differently. My husband refers to the thread-like phenomenon of Northern California as fog, whereas to me, it seems more like a mist. That is because in England, fog means a very thick cloud that you can barely see through, whereas mist is semi-transparent.
In any event, I have enjoyed our many trips to Northern California over the years with my husband acting a tour guide. We have been to Big Sur many times, and have had the pleasure of visiting The Big Sur Inn and Nerpenthe. Some of these trips occur during misty conditions ~ or are they foggy ones? No matter, as you can see from these images, the place becomes magical when it is semi-opaque.
