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My favorite road sign is an “arrow” directing one-way traffic to the left. Before the sign was erected, a motorist went straight to his death—100 feet into the Pacific Ocean—or so the locals tell me. I have no confirming data on this, so I Googled the truth: Has there been a car accident on Scenic Drive in Carmel where the driver went off the road into the Pacific Ocean and died? The search results, including variations on the question, directed me to tourism sites, Wells Fargo and news about Point Lobos, and some posts on how dangerous it is to drive Highway 1 in Big Sur, but nothing about cars crashing into the ocean. Sometimes we expect too much from Google.

But getting back to the arrow. I took the photo from the bottom of a cliff at Sammy’s Beach. The beach is named after our dog—we’ve yet to tell the State of California about the naming. Getting to this beach is not easy at high tide when access is often denied by rock-crashing waves. But once you are there, you can look up and see the arrow and be thankful you are not near it, just in case a driver fails to realize that the best course of action is to stop before making this hairpin left.