Day 25 - Pebble Beach - Carmel - Big Sur

Lynne and I both thought the same thing when we woke up this morning. We're tired of driving. We want to go lay down in our own bed somewhere. We want to go the store and buy some food, bring it home and cook it. We talked a bit and decided to put some miles behind us today. There are tons of beautiful things to look at, but at this point and time, we're tired "Enough of this beauty, lets get somewhere!"

Well, it was a good idea, but the wrong place for that decision. Pebble Beach, Carmel, and Big Sur! I think this stretch of highway holds the most beautiful scenery anywhere.

We took our time and drove the 17 mile tour through Pebble Beach. Carmel is just beautiful, even if it is the most expensive town in America, and Big Sur! 90 miles of the most coast line vistas!

We got through Big Sur and decided to drive on for another hour to Morrow Bay. We passed more beaches as we got close and, at one beach we both looked at what we thought were hundreds of dead seals on the beach. we pulled in and found they were seals, elephant seals to be more exact. We met a guide on the beach who filled us in on the story of these seals. Their info is at www. ElephantSeal.org The short story is that these huge seals, travel 5,000 miles to breed. When we saw them today, they were females, just resting on the beach., getting ready for the males and breeding season which starts in a month or so.

We'll see if tomorrow gives us less beautiful views. maybe we'll make some miles tomorrow. Our plan right now is to try to make Palm Beach by dinner time.

Click here to see today's pictures.

Day 24 - Santa Cruz and Monterey

After the excitement from yesterday, today was far less eventful!

We parked in the loading zone at the front door of the hotel last night so no one could get near it without being caught. It worked! We checked before heading for breakfast.

Lynne went to the gym. I sat and got fatter and then headed over to the camera shop to get a replacement camera. I found the exact same model so that's what I got. The guy at the shop was great. He showed me all kinds of stuff. i could have spent the day there, but Lynne was back at the hotel waiting for me and we had a lunch date to get to.

We headed off about 11:00 to meet our old friend Gord. We've known each other for going on 25 years now! We don't see much of each other anymore. Gord lived abroad for years and lives in the US now. It's great seeing him whenever we do though. There's never enough time to catch up completely!

We headed off to Santa Cruz after a great lunch. We drove around a bit and then headed out to Monterey for the night. Off to Cannery Row for some sight seeing and into Bubba Gumps for dinner.

As we were pulling into town, we got lost a bit and saw the most amazing thing. We were on a little side street in town. There were woods on the other side of the narrow street and there at the side of the road was a deer eating. It wasn't 15 feet from the car. we pulled right up and took a few pictures. Amazing to be that close and not have it run away.

I think we'll do some exploring around town before heading out tomorrow. We only managed 185k today. Our daily distances are getting less and less as we get into better weather! We had 6800k on the old GPS. With today's @ 200, I guess we're at the 7000k traveled mark. I plugged in our old Aurora address into the new GPS - we could get back in about 4500k! It's getting tempting. We're both having fun, but starting to miss home and friends. We'll need to stop driving and get settled somewhere fairly soon.

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Day 22/23 - Berkeley

We spent Sunday walking around Berkeley, through the town and around the campus. We went to the local theatre and watched Michael Moore's "Capitalism - A Love Story". What a great town to see that movie in! We loved the movie and we loved the town so much we decided to stay an extra day.

What's the point of a trip like this if we don't just hang out a bit where ever the spirit moves us to do so.

We had a great sleep, headed out for breakfast in the hotel, came back to the room and talked about whether we would go to the gym or head outside for a bit of a run. It's cold here at night so it took a bit of discussing.

As we were talking I saw some people out front looking around at our car. They looked a bit odd, or, I should say the were looking oddly at the car, so I went out to see what was going on.

First I saw the glass on the ground, then I saw the bits of glass left in the drives door, then I saw the wires dangling from where the GPS was attached to the front window. I remembered that I hadn't brought the camera in last night, but had tossed a jacket over it. A quick glance at the jacket in the middle of the drivers seat told me the camera was gone too.

SHIT! Now what!

We got the front desk to call the police, we called the insurance folks and then . . . . . . we waited. And waited. And waited.

It took about 2 hours for the police to call. They wouldn't come, but if we thought of anything else that was stolen, call back and leave a message!

We were tired of waiting for the insurance adjuster to call back, so we called again and got through. "No, car insurance doesn't cover the items in the car, just the window, but the deductible is more than the window will cost". "No, you canceled your homeowner insurance when you sold the house, the items stolen aren't covered either" I'm beginning to feel like I'm trying to make a health claim to an American Insurance company!

By now, 3 hours have gone by and it ends up there was no reason to call or wait for any of these folks. We found a window guy who will come and replace the window. It's now 2:30 pm and there's no sign of him yet.

I always think it's important to look for a silver lining somewhere. I guess the fact that both the camera and the GPS are about a year old and have both dropped by about 50% is a small blessing.

The funniest though it Jordan's girlfriend Sara facebooked and wrote "Wow - I didn't expect that to happen until you got a little further along on your

journey!"

Yea - Us too! Berkeley sure looked a lot nicer yesterday from outside walking around then it does today from inside this hotel room, waiting!

Click here to see today's pictures.

Day 21 - Wine Country - Napa Valley - Berkeley

Saturday morning. It’s our third weekend on the road. The first weekend that we’re not stopped for a few days visiting family or friends. I don’t think I like the idea of just driving and driving from here on in.

We’re stopping in Berkeley tonight to meet up with Alex Platt. Alex is one of Lynne’s cousin’s sons who are going to Berkeley and who is also an amazing guitar player. I was kind of hoping that he was playing tonight, but apparently he’s not. I don’t know any of the nieces or nephews very well. I’m looking forward to getting to know Alex a bit over dinner. (Just back from dinner – what an interesting guy!)

We decided that we’d have a real easy day today, and stay overnight two nights in Berkeley. Knowing there was some sort of break from just driving felt good.

We left Santa Rosa and took our time driving over to Sonoma through the Napa Valley. We kept pulling over to the side of the road to let people pass. They had places to o, and we were doing the ‘old folks’ tour! Lynne grew up on a farm in St Catherine’s. She knows about crops and stuff. We passed a field. I wondered what that was growing. She knew it was strawberries, without waiting to see a sign!

The drive to Sonoma was only about 30 minutes. Gentle rolling hills mainly covered in grape vines. I guess they had been harvested already. I didn’t see any grapes until we got to town where a small bush was growing on some ones front yard beside their orange tree. We passed a farm from sale. I grabbed a picture so I’d have the web site address to look it up later. Turns out it 13.5 . . . . Million. We decided that, we don’t want a grape farm!

Sonoma was amazing. It reminded us both of Niagara-on-the-Lake, but maybe on steroids. The town just kept going and going, not just the little strip of town along the Niagara Parkway. There were a number of old historical buildings. The town looked old, but very well kept up. We could have stayed for a couple fo days instead of the hour or so that we did.

There was a group of folks with a 350.org sign at the town hall. I didn’t know what that was about, but I took my ‘memory’ picture and checked them out too. Who knew that today was the day that 181 countries came together for the most widespread day of environmental action in history. We stumbled upon one of 5200 events staged around the world today. I wish we’d known. It would have been cool to have joined in. http://www.350.org/

We drove fron Sonoma to Napa, but we didn’t like it as much. The town seemed to be newly constructed, pretending to be old. We walked a bit, had a bite of lunch and slit. I’d wished we’d stayed longer in Sonoma, or even stayed there for the weekend.

We drove on to Berkeley. It’s a great town. I’d driven though it once before, but hadn’t spent any time there. We drove around looking for a nice hotel. We’d decided that we were going to spend two nights there. We’d meet Alex for dinner, I’d finish off some work in the morning and then we’d just hang out in the afternoon.

Americans and college football! Again, ‘who knew’ the town would be full because of “THE GAME” that night. There were no rooms there, but we found a ‘bit too expensive’ room at a Marriott in Emeryville, just a few kilometres out of Berkley. It’s interesting to see how much nicer the service is in smaller places than larger. We’re near some big box store hell here. Lynne is going to go explore them in the morning while I finish off a job. We’ve got a room booked in Berkeley for tomorrow night. We’ll check out the Michael Moore movie in the afternoon and then head over to recommended pizza joint!

Click here for todays pictures.

Day 20 - California Dreamin' - by Lynne

Greg is tired tonight. He did a lot of driving around crazy hairpin turns with nothing separating us from falling hundreds of feet into the Pacific Ocean except the Grace of God. Greg's driving was superlative. At no time did he pretend to be Mario Andretti. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

We woke this morning early as Greg had a business call to make and we had a "free" breakfast to eat. It was a good "included" breakfast....hard boiled eggs, yogurt, raisin bread, yum.....you will notice that I talk about food much more than Greg does.

Then we left Garberville and the smell of burning hemp to play in more big trees. The one we drove the car through today was 2400 years old....that means it was on earth before Jesus was born. Yes, it was another drive through tree and drive through it we did. We met a lovely Canadian couple at the drive through tree site and exchanged travelling stories. They hail from Salt Spring Island.

At this point we left Highway 101 and entered what they call the Shoreline Highway. The first 22 miles took us about an hour. The S turns just kept coming and at some points there was absolutely no guard rail. Big lumber trucks come barrelling along those roads as though they are at the Indies. Was the fright worth it? Absolutely, hands down, that's a big affirmative......what views, wild Pacific surf, huge cliffs, sand beaches that go on forever, Arbutus trees, unique to the Pacific coast....they shed their bark not their leaves in the Autumn. We did those S curves from 10:30 this morning until 4:30 this afternoon. We stopped in Bodega Bay and thought we'd stay at an Inn right on the sea but at 250. American with NO included breakfast we thought we'd better pass on the "room with a view."

We drove inland to Santa Rosa, found a little motel and checked in. There's an Applebees across the street. Dinner for two for twenty. We went for the special. Had a much too big American dinner and then I played being American even more by browsing in Target and Marshalls, but with the car loaded to the roof top I didn't buy a thing. That's it for today.

Click here for todays pictures.

Day 19 - Redwood Forest

We got away about 10:00 this morning after a breakfast of stuff we'd bought at the local grocery store the night before and kept in the tiny room refrigerator. Neither of us noticed that it wasn't turned on when we stored stuff away in there. Lucky, it was a tiny fridge and the stuff we put in stayed cool anyway.

We drove for about a half hour and found ourselves in the Redwood Forest. I remember pictures my dad showed me growing up of where he'd driven his car through a tunneled out tree out there, about 50 years ago I guess.

The forest was absolutely amazing. We turned of the main highway and drove through the trees. We stopped to walk at one point for about an hour or so. We took a ton of pictures again today.

I kept thinking of friends who cycle through the woods at home. (Hi Ramona and Louise) They would have LOVED these trails. I think I was bugging Lynne after a while as I kept asking her to go here, or stand there. I wanted her in most of the pictures to give them perspective. The trees were unbelievably huge. Apparently the average age of those Redwoods is 600 -700 years old. Some live to be over 1000 years old.

We drove out of the forest and into sunshine! We still hit some foggy area's along the coast, but anywhere inland was sunny, bright and warm!

We only drove 180k today. We've stopped in Garberville. It's about 350k north of San Francisco. I think we're stopping there tomorrow and seeing if we can meet up with Alex Platt at Berkeley and take him out for dinner. I want to spend a day there myself. It just doesn't seem right to be there and not get something to eat at Fisherman's Wharf!

Day 18 - Welcome to California!

 We didn’t get away from the hotel in Newport until noon. Lynne wanted to go for a long walk on the beach. I had work to do before heading out.

It was a pretty uneventful day. The scenery along the pacific was amazing in spots, but the weather was very overcast and very misty along waters edge. Inland wasn’t much better.

We found a place to stay in Brookings Oregon. It was the last town in Oregon. We found a great looking place right on the beach again, but they wanted 50% more for a room with a partial view than the room with a complete view last night. We decided to carry on into Crescent City California, about 45 minutes away.

This town seems to be one of the many poor towns that we’ve traveled through. Not our first choice of places to stay, but it’ll do. We’ll head on out to the Redwood Forest tomorrow. It looks like we’ll make San Francisco by the weekend some time.