Grateful the next morning was Saturday, Bond slept in and, after dressing in casual clothes, drove to the next village for breakfast at the New Pines Café. Although the trip was only fifteen miles from Black Bear and via freeway would’ve taken about twelve to reach, it took far longer on the hairpin turns of the mountain roads. His stomach growled with hunger by the time he arrived.
The weather was crystalline clear and what his Catholic mother would have dubbed an “annunciation” sky, the term referring to the day the angels appeared to the Blessed Virgin to tell her she was with child. One glance at the rich blue of the lake beneath it plus the deep greens of a forest splotched with leaves turning red and gold convinced him it was an apt description.
There was a crisp feel to the air, s
