The central coast

Up until the beginning of this week we'd been really lucky with the weather. Not that it had been sunny all the time, but the weather did what it should do where we were when we were there.

Apart from for the drive down Highway 1, that supposedly picturesque cruise past turquoise waters through Monterey, Big Sur and down to LA.

Picturesque it was, but the water was not turquoise. In parts, we could barely see it! So here's how you do wet weather days out on the Pacific Coast...

Buy taffy, and lots of it.

Find the pretty pink flowers in Pacific Grove.

Take arty pictures of your hire car by the beach (I took this one, despite it looking like one of Ad's).

Have your photo taken on a big rock in front of an even bigger rock (Bird Rock, to be precise) that's covered in birds and seals.

Cough up $9.50 for the 17-mile drive. It's totally worth it, though the Lone Cypress is a little underwhelming, especially when two coaches unload as you park up.

See where the rich people play golf at Pebble Beach, and spend your dinner money on a hot chocolate, a coffee and a half of ale at the Lodge At Pebble Beach. You could stay in the Lodge if you had $500 to spare per night (we didn't).

Drive round to Carmel Mission and don your history hat.

Battle the rain along Big Sur.

Get your woodsman pose on in the State Parks.

Become mesmerised by the waves in the bay at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, but less so by McWay Falls at low tide (I hate to say it but it kinda looks like someone's having a big wee from behind the cliff).

Discover that you can never fully plan your route when you've driven right up into the clouds on a detour around the landslide on the way to Hearst Castle only to find out that the US army have literally just closed the road you're driving on and you've got to go back to where you started to get to where you're trying to go (a laboriously long sentence to describe a laboriously long drive).

Still, get to where you're going you will - San Luis Obispo (the happiest town in America, no less) - and stay in a swanky hotel to mark the near-end of your trip. Celebrate the fact that that hotel provides fluffy white robes, unlike anywhere else you've stayed in the past six weeks.

And finally, finally, you'll find that the sun does shine on the coast at Santa Barbara.

Point Reyes National Seashore

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking here, except for this little introduction.

When we left Santa Rosa at half 10, it was sunny and starting to get hot, hence the decision to wear shorts, a vest top and flip-flops. Mistake. Point Reyes was about 12 degrees C and blowing a hooley. So I had to improvise. Luckily, I'd packed my Converse into the car and my hoodie and waterproof coat were in the boot. So that just left my legs as the problem. Behold the solution: proof that one should always carry legwarmers, whatever the weather.

And now for the main event(s).

We'd read that there were seals but we weren't holding up hopes of seeing any. So I was much excited when I spotted this eensy collection from a viewpoint. There they are, just there.

Just down the coast and hang on a minute....

SEALS!! SEALS!! Many, many elephant seals! "Awrrp awrrp," I cried, scurringing down the trail. "AWRRP!"

They were amazing!! And the noises they made were awesome. Not just your usual 'awrrp, awrrp' that I'd been calling. More like groans and grunts and burps. Brilliant! Loved every second of experiencing these blubbery animals.

Want to know the difference between seal lions and elephant seals? Well, sea lions have external ear flaps and four flippers that they 'walk' across the shore with. Seals have 'ear holes' but no ear flaps and they use their front flippers and their bellies to flop along the sand. Marine mammal fact.

Bloody brilliant day.

A mini-break in a mini adventure

Wine country. We almost missed it. We almost spent four days driving on the interstate instead. I'm very glad we didn't.

After sweating our butts off in Death Valley (I think I neglected to blog on that: it was 98 degrees Fahrenheit and Badwater Basin was salty, Adam licked it to be sure), driving a bazillion miles to get around the closed road to Yosemite, which we would then hike, we decided that we deserved a little holiday. Yeah, yeah, we're already on holiday. But this mini adventuring is tiring and we wanted some down time. And where better than Wine Country in the 90 degree heat. Mmmm.
 

We spent three hot and sunny days in the glorious Healdsburg (thanks to Sian's recommendation), which is in North Sonoma Valley. I've not been to Napa but I'd say this is just as good. Hell, it's probably even better.

As you know from my previous post, we stayed in a Best Western. I had rather biased views on the place after reading Dave Gorman's America Unchained. He despised the place, and everything it stands for in coprporate America. And while he had good reason to, I had good reason to love it. For a start, it wasn't a tent. Also, it had two beds (I like an extra bed to use as a dressing table, so sue me). And it had a pool - an essential element for a holiday in the sun. Sorry, Dave. But I'm sold. As was Adam, evidently.

We were in Healdsbug for three nights. And by the end of it, I didn't want to leave. Our Best Western was on the side of a main road so we were a little concerned that this was all the town had to offer but once we had found the central plaza we were really in love. I could seriously live here. And mainly because of this independent book shop.

Copperfield's Books, a place that we showed good custom three days running. God knows how much money and time I could've spent in there if we had stayed in Healdsburg for longer.

Don't worry. We found some time for wine, too. There were a lot of winerys to choose from.

But Sian had also recommended an incredible winery, Quivira, so we headed straight there on our first full day.

It's not just any winery. This one is certified Biodynamic and "uses the energies that create and maintain life to establish a rich, healthy, self-sustaining biodiversity". Here are the beautiful gardens where there are beds and beds of vegetables and leaves, a 'prep tower', bee hives, fruit trees and a flowform water feature.

Once we'd taken in the gardens (soundtracked by the content chickens in their 1/3 arce coop), we went to the tasting room. Oh, there it is.

We didn't get any pictures of the actual tasting but we made our way through some Zinfandels, a Syrah and two Sauvignon Blancs. I have to admit, I struggled to tell the difference between the reds, apart from that one of them tasted of parma violets (or a floral palette of lilac and violet) but I could tell taste the difference between the Sauvignon Blancs. One was born in a stainless steel barrel and was consequently light, bright and crisp. While the other came from a wooden barrel - the depth of the wood was really evident.

Aside from visiting Quivera, we spent our time chilling by the pool and in the jacuzzi...

...exploring the town centre, relaxing in the lovely central plaza and cruising past other vineyards in the area.

 After we'd checked out, we headed south to Calistoga and the Old Faithful Geyser of California. It wasn't as big as usual but it was erupting every five to 10 minutes, as opposed to every 40.

There was also a petting zoo. I think Adam was more interested in the goats than the geyser.

Some of them were Tennessee Fainting Goats. He was trying to psyche them out. It didn't work.

From here we travelled south to Santa Rosa where we had booked a Days Inn off of one of the highways. The least nice place we've stayed yet, which made us want to head right back to Healdsburg. But it was cheap, close to Point Reyes National Seashore (BEAUTIFUL, post coming up) and on the way to San Francisco, which is our next stop. Whoop!

Byee.

State #7?

Ok, so we started in Illinois, headed east to Michigan, jumped on a plane that stopped back in Illinois then landed in California, drove to Arizona, then up to Utah and west to Nevada, then north west back into California.

So that's six states. Enough for six weeks? Hmm, perhaps not.

When we were in Yosemite, we started to think about Portland. Which is in Oregon FYI. 753 miles away. 13 hours and 15 minutes' drive. We could do that, right? Add another state to our list? Number seven?

Alrighty then! We found a cheap HI-hostel in dowtown Portland, got supplies, hit the road about 8.30am on Monday and prepared ourselves for two long days in the car. In about six or so hours we could get to Medford, Oregon - about half way.

A few hours into the journey the weather was getting hotter, the scenery was getting more beautiful and the thought of driving for two days (even from the passenger seat) was getting less and less attractive. "There's a McDonald's. Can we pull over?" I ask, tentatively.

Adam's sixth (Lucy) sense kicks in, realising that I want to look on t'interweb to rethink this epic drive.

Within an hour (mainly due to crappy WiFi connection), we'd cancelled the hostel in Portland, got a good deal on a Best Western in Wine Country and decided never to drink Maccy D's Strawberry Lemonade ever again.

Sorry, Portland. But this was just too good to pass up.

Yo-sem-ite

And so starts Adam's history lesson. "Do you know where the name Yosemite comes from?"

"No," I reply. "Tell me."

"Well, it comes from the Indian tribes that used to live here."

"Ok, that makes sense."

"Yes, it was the call they made they were ready to eat: 'Yo-some-eaty'!" Followed by much guffawing.

I was also interested to find out that the word 'gullible' had been removed from the Oxford English Dictionary...

Anyways, he was right about one thing. It has Indian origins, although Google comes up with a few definitions: 1) it came from the name of the Miwok tribe that translates to 'those who kill'; 2) it translates as 'great falls'; and 3) it is the Indian name for grizzly bear.

I can't tell you which (if any) is correct. I can tell you that we saw no bears. Kind of a disappointment, I suppose, but it's hard to feel that way for long when you're surrounded by landscape like this.

On our first fall day, after a pretty dang ok buffet breakfast (Adam marvelled at the vat of hot maple syrup), we decided to do the Upper Yosmite Fall hike. We didn't go to the top, which was 3.4 miles as it says below; we chose to go to the base of the falls - a three or four-mile round trip.

Considering it was freeze-your-ass cold in the tent when we got up, we thought we were rather wise layering up. Wrong. By the time we'd got the beginning of the trail we were stripping. It must've been at least 18 degrees C in the day. Which is HOT when you're climbing up hill constantly for an hour and a half.

The map said it was a strenuous hike. It wasn't wrong. No smooth uphills for us, but constant steps up and switchbacks for the first mile or so. Ow.

Ok, so this doesn't look that steep. But check out the next pic. See the people on the left of the picture above Adam? Yeah, that's quite a gradient. *Huff puff*

Can't knock the view, though. That's Half Dome. Something you will never find me hiking up. I think it's best viewed from afar...

A while (and a lot of sweat) later, we were rewarded with the sight we'd been waiting for.

The snow melt was at its height I think, so this bad boy was raging. It's hard to get a sense of the size of this thing, but if you look to the top of the picture and see the teeny (MASSIVE) fir trees on the top of the cliff then that should help with the perspective. As we walked around the corner of the mountain to be met with this sight, the temparature dropped suddenly. Quite the sensory overload.

And back down we went. It look a while... (see the valley floor way down in the pic below). My quad and butt muscles were a-quivering!

Lower Yosemite Fall was equally as impressive from the bottom. And it involved no climb.

We'd have liked to have seen Vernal Fall as well, but it was on the other side of the valley and the road was closed the day we wanted to go there. Next time.

The next day we went to Mariposa Grove. BIG TREES or sequoias to use their actual name. And this pic isn't even from the bottom (Ad has better pics with his wide angle lens but RAW files don't load too well on this ickle laptop). These trees are as tall as a 19-story building, a Boeing 747 and the Statue Of Liberty. Gurt.

It wasn't just the trees that were big. Fir cone the size of your foot, anyone?

It took about an hour to drive back from the south of the park to the valley near the centre - the park is that big - and we passed Bridalveil Fall and El Capitan on the way.

Our little canvas tent served us well for the three nights we stayed in Yosemite, even if I did complain the hell out of having to stay in a freezing tent on the first night. Thanks to our $15 Walmart sleeping bags, though, we were toasty warm. In fact, on the third night I had to remove my two pairs of socks in the early hours. Now that's $15 well spent.