June 15 was a spectacular day. For starters, I was in Big Sur. Waking up to the smells and sounds of the ocean counts as a darn good day in my book. Taking that first sip of coffee while sitting on a deck overlooking the Pacific is hard to beat. Toss a couple of Humpback whales swimming by into the picture, and it’s nothing short of magical. This was how my 50th trip around the sun began.

Big Papa and I spent two nights at Treebones Resort to celebrate my five decades on the planet. For many, ‘resort’ conjures up images of plush towels, bedtime turn-down, Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom and five-star dining. Treebones is a different sort of resort experience all-together. First of all, we slept in a yurt. For those not in the know, a yurt is like a tent with a wood floor. Yurts are ancient structures that were used by Central Asian nomads for centuries. Our yurt was pretty cushy with a real bed, electricity and running water. Treebones has sixteen yurts, and fittingly for a June 15 birthday celebration, our yurt was number fifteen.

Breakfast at Treebones is self-serve waffles or homemade granola. They also offer tasty lunch and dinner which you can eat in their cozy lodge or outside on the deck. For my birthday dinner, we ordered the Tagine for two, a yummy stew with Middle Eastern flavors. Ours had chicken, apricots and almonds. The food was fantastic, though even Dinty Moore might have tasted pretty good with the view of the ocean from the deck.

Throughout the day, we saw a veritable ‘Partridge and a Pear Tree’ worth of marine and avian life from various vantage points at Treebones. The aforementioned Humpbacks were sighted over breakfast. Seeing their tail flukes wave and dive was spellbinding. During lunch we spotted a few dozen dolphins flying across the water in a flurry of leaps. Birds small and large flew overhead from the turkey vultures cruising the coastline, to Pelicans flying elegantly single file over the waves, to tiny Hummingbirds darting to and fro between the flowers. On land a few small brown brush rabbits hopped hopefully around the perimeter of the organic garden and the requisite on-site resort cats scurried through the brush.

And then there was the sunset. Big Papa and I sat and watched the sky turn every shade of crimson and tangerine imaginable until the sun fell to the horizon, burning bright like a day-glo island and gradually slipping below the surface. We sat together, nursing a glass of Cabernet from the bottle we received from Treebones for my birthday, waiting until every last bit of light was squeezed from the sky. As stars upon stars filled the darkness, Big Papa and I stood up and gave quiet thanks for the day, and walked hand in hand back to our yurt.