1470 miles and the road trip is done, on to LA

So, l last left off with my fear of the water....

Wednesday morning I headed out of Monterey a little after 8am and drive through Carmel, which was quite pretty, but everything was shut down that early.  Luckily the Carmel Mission was open so I had the chance to look around and it was pretty cool. After that I head toward Big Sur.  People had questioned my decision to drive down the coast solo and had described crazy roads.... Um, if there was someone in the car with me how would they stop me from accidentally driving off a cliff?!  It was SUPER foggy, but the driving in Big Sur was actually easier than some of the parts up to this point.

Next I headed to Piedras Blancas to see some elephant seals.... They are ridiculously huge!! I watched some play for awhile and then headed on to Hearst Castle.

Hearst Castle is HUGE.  165 rooms and acres upon acres of land along the coast and overlooking the mountains.  Harry Potter used the main dining room as the inspiration for the dining hall at Hogwarts.  Much of the art in the house including some ceilings were imported from Europe, including a ceiling from Spain that was from around 1480.    Hearst also had a zoo on his property, but he began to lose money so he had to give them away, but some escaped and bred!   So on my drive out I saw some zebras grazing alongside the cows.  

My final stop Wednesday night was Morro Bay.  It has a really large rock sticking up from the bay and provided a great view for the sunset.

Thursday morning I left just before 8am to finish my drive along the PCH to LA.  It took forever, because I went through farms and other random areas, but it was all beautiful!  I stopped at Avila Bay and drove through Malibu before hitting TONS of traffic less than 10 miles from the airport.  No traffic my whole trip and then this?!?!

Once I spent an hour in traffic Brian picked me up and we headed to the beach and pier at Santa Monica.  For dinner, since it was his birthday, we went to a delicious vegan restaurant called Crossroads.

Today we spent most the day at a taping of Let's Make a Deal (after Brian made us go to the Church of Scientology headquarters).  Wayne Brady is hilarious and people were in some crazy costumes.   We didn't get to be a contest, but it was still amusing.    

In the afternoon we drove up Mulhulland Drive to Runyon Canyon and hiked to the top to get some views of the. Hollywood sign and Los Angeles.

That's it for now!!

Still hate the ocean

My friend Sarah had a plan to get me over my fear of sharks (my plan was to go cage diving with them).  Her plan was to go to the aquarium...so, now I'm completely afraid of the multitude of creatures in the sea, so that plan didn't work!

I spent the morning at the Monterey Aquarium which was pretty neat.  It's on the water and so they have made sure that sea birds, etc have homes/nesting places along the coast near the aquarium.   LOTS of otters both inside and outside of the aquarium.  They look tiny, but once they're out of the water their fur dries and they look huge!   I also bought my newest nephew his first book from Aunt Jennie and got the other boys books and taffy (because I'm the book buying aunt... Lots and lots of books).

Next I grabbed lunch.  Had a delicious grilled artichoke.  Following lunch I went for a walk along the waterfront of Cannery Row, named after all the fish canning buildings that were there.  John Steinbeck wrote a book called Cannery Row.  Now, I have cursed Steinbeck's name ever since I read Grapes of Wrath in high school.  I had loved Of Mice and Men, but reading Grapes of Wrath was so torturous that  living during the Dust Bowl seemed like an okay time.  However, two years ago when I was in Romania I reread Dracula (Stoker's description of the Carpathian Mountains and surrounding land made me want to go to Romania... So I did) and it was great to see where the book took place.  So I decided to give Steinbeck another chance and read Cannery Row, and I'm glad I did.  I started a few days before the trip and enjoyed walking around Cannery Row, the Wharf and driving around Monetery picturing the story take place.  It's a really good book (a bit depressing, but hey, that was the time period), easy read, and I highly recommend reading it.

While walking I spotted a whale!!  So I stayed put for awhile a did some whale watching, which was pretty cool.  Eventually I got in the car and did some driving along the coast, over toward Pebble Beach.   For dinner I drove back to the wharf and had some roasted garlic with bread and bacon wrapped scallops over risotto... Delicious!  Although the amount of garlic I ate will keep vampires away from me for a lengthy amount of time.

Random:  There is a stretch or rocks west of the wharf that goes out into the water and there are tons of sea lions laying out on it sunning themselves.

Today I'm off to drive along Big Sur, make a secret stop, and then to Hearst Castle.

Another day of driving

Yesterday was suppose to be an 8 hour drive that include stops.  Well....  It was over 11 hours and had more stops!

The hotel I stayed at in Point Arena had some delicious homemade cranberry and white chocolate scones.  One of those, a waffle and a hard boiled egg and I was ready to start my drive!   Well, the weather was still overcast, but the landscape along the coast was absolutely beautiful so I had to pull over a lot.   No real traffic on the road, but one or two stops due to construction.

By the time I reached San Francisco the fog had lifted (yes... odd) and the sun was out.  I stopped to take a picture at the Golden Gate Bridge and then drove over.  This is where my map came in handy because I didn't want to stay away from the coast any longer than I had to!  Google had given me directions that kept me off about a mile of coast so I disregarded those directions, grabbed the map and hit the coast at the start of route 35.   There were more twists and turns along the way, but nothing bad (the part before San Fran was pretty windy and it wove up hills along the coast).

I got to see part of the sunset before the clouds kicked in so I continued on my way to my next stop... Santa Cruz.  Santa Cruz has the oldest original amusement boardwalk on the west coast.  It was built in 1907 and it overlooks the pier and the bay.   I walked around a bit, to the end of the pier, saw tons of sea lions just hanging around and of course bought myself some banana salt water taffy.   After an hour I got back in the car and drove about 40 minutes to Monetery where I checked into my hotel and went to bed.

Today there is no driving, just walking around Monterey!

Loooooong Drive with a road map

Sunday morning started at 8:15 am outside of Sacramento.  I said goodbye to Karly, got some green tea from Starbucks and then made my way along highway 80 to highway 5.  It was very flat, lots of farms along the side of the road, but nothing else.

So, when I decided to do a road trip I also decided to add a tiny challenge... NO GPS.   I have a highway map of the state of California (which was used frequently Sunday) and google directions, which are handy only to know what roads to take, not when to take them if there's no navigation.  So I have to use the state map to know what towns to turn in and what towns have taken me past where I was suppose to turn.  It's kind of fun to look at the map and map out your route (and then look at the google directions every now and then!). My route for Sunday is highlighted in yellow.

I drove east on route 20 through some hills and along the north coast of Clear Lake, just south of the Mendocino National Forest.  After a couple of hours I turned north on highway 101 and things began to get interesting.   I noticed that up on the mountains there looked to be a bit of smoke.  Eventually I saw signs for "base camp" and wondered if I' accidentally driven to Asia and the Himalayas, but no.  Base camp was for all the firemen in the area and fire trucks, and helicopters and dusting planes and emt's.  Uh, should I be here?   The cops were letting everyone continue so I did, got a little panicked as the smoke got thicker, but after 30 or so minutes everything was good.

I made it up to Humboldt. State Park and the Avenue of Giants which is a long stretch near highway 101 with HUGE redwoods.  I drove through a tree (glad I didn't get an even slightly bigger car). Then I headed back south down 101 to Legget so I could hit the beginning of route 1.   Well, the beginning of route 1 had an awesome yellow sign with the little symbol indicating back and forth curves for... 22 MILES!  Ugh.....  Well, I survived that, which was through a mountain.  After about an hour things began to get really foggy, and at first I worried there was a fire, but then as I got closer I realized it was fog.

Then it happened, I came out of the mountain and trees and saw the most amazing view ever, the Pacific Ocean.   Most guidebooks will tell people to skip this part of the Pacific Coast Highway because it just isn't as good as the part south of San Francisco.  Those guidebooks are stupid.  It was cold (50 degrees cooler than my hike the previous day) it was windy, it was foggy, it was beautiful.    Probably one of the prettiest things I've seen.  I spent the next three hours driving and stopping along the coast as I drove to my hotel (good pictures to come later, for now deal with the iPad photos).   I stopped to view the Point Arena Lighthouse before I went to my final destination and got a really great view.  

 Then, after 10 and a half hours, I ended up at my hotel in Point Arena.  It's above the wharf, on a cliff overlooking the cove that has fishing boats and some sea otters. No sunset because it was too foggy, but still an amazing view.  

Today, off to drive through San Francisco, along the coast to Monterey.

Hitch hiking.... Tom and Jeff would be so proud...

So Karly and I started the day by walking over the Auburn Bridge.  Some of you (like 5 of you) may know it as the scene in Vin Diesel's 2002 secret agent movie xXx where he drives a car off a bridge.  Karly thought it'd nice to include a clip...  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295701/?ref_=nv_sr_4.  Fast forward to 1:12.

We walked across both sides, saw some hawks, contemplating driving the rental car off like Vin Diesel and filming it, but Joe wasn't with us so we weren't sure we'd get the cinematic quality we were striving for.

Next we drove to Clementine Lake to go for a short hike.  Now, I'm a pretty good hiker, always have water, first aid, etc.... Well, I brought none of these (including my inhaler). We hiked down over some rocks to the base of the damn where the water falling over the edge had created a rainbow (which I only caught on my blackberry since I forgot to put a memory card in my camera).   We hung out there for a while and started the SHORT hike up.  Did I mention is was 108 degrees out?!  Needless to say there were lots of stops, we were super dehydrated, but finally hit the road... And had .4 miles to go up the road.  After maybe .1 miles we spotted a car and the nice couple picked us up and drove us up the hill to the car (yes, wild and crazy hitch hikers we are).

Karly and I turned up the AC and immediately headed to hydrate, by purchasing a slice of pie each from Ikeda's.   Karly had marionberry pie.  For all in DC reading this, it's a type of berry, not a cocaine laced pie. I had apple crisp.

We went back to her place then headed out for dinner and the up to watch the sunset.  Last stop was Baskin Robbins.   Yes, pie and ice cream kinda day!

Tomorrow I head out for my loooooong day of driving (8 hours).  I'll drive up the redwoods and drive along the Avenue of Giants then head to the start of the Pacific Coast Highway until I get to point Arena for the night.  There's limited wifi in the area I'm staying because it's remote and on the cliffs above the ocean, so maybe no blog tomorrow.

Tahoe

It's another season of travel! (And my lack of desire to edit anything I write).

This time?  California for two weeks!

Starting in Northern California near Sacramento, driving up to the redwoods, down the Pacfic Coast Highway for 4 days (by myself) then on to Los Angeles to see my brother who I have not see for the longest period our entire lives.

I arrived in Sacramento yesterday to spend some time with my little cousin and her hubby Joe.   Then today we drove to Lake Tahoe.   My goal by the end of my 40th year on earth is to hit 3/4 of the US states so we drove to the Nevada side so I could add another state.

The drive was beautiful and reminded me a lot of a drive from New Mexico to Colorado my family took a few years ago.   We hiked to Eagle Falls near Emerald Bay and got a great view of Lake Tahoe and then drove to the Nevada side and walked along the river.   

After the drive back we went to downtown Scaramento for dinner and went to see the capital building which involved a 10 person Occupy Sacramento protest.    There were also some fireworks (not for Occupy, for a baseball game).   So vacation is off to a good start and it's been great to spend some time with Karly and Joe since all the youngest kids on my mom's side of the family decided to move to the west coast.