Leaving Los Angeles

The last few days have been a strange combination of quiet and busy.  We have our rental car so we haven’t been abusing Ian’s services as taxi driver, and of course Jo has been back at work (as has Ian of course, but he can be more flexible than a theatre nurse can).  We spent Monday recovering from our busy time in San Diego, and planning our routes and accommodation for Wednesday through to Sunday this week.  It is amazing how much time can be wasted doing internet searches for accommodation – especially somewhere like San Francisco where there are so many options.  Thank goodness for Wotif, solved the issue quickly.

In the afternoon we went down to the boat with Ian to see how wet things had become after that rain on Sunday.  The dinghy cover had kept most of the rain out, and only a little had made it through the hatches on the boat.  We then met up with Jo and went to Nelson’s at Palos Verdes.  It is right on top of a cliff overlooking the sea and the early evening was stunning.  We sat in the sun outside and had a couple of beers while watching a pod of 5 grey whales meander by.  We know that they were grey whales as on the way back, we stopped at the whale counting spot where a team of volunteers sit all day long counting the whales that pass.  They said that they only count the grey whales, but their whiteboard showed that a blue whale had been past too.  They were slightly strange.  Not the whales.

On Tuesday we went to Santa Monica, to see the famous pier and the Third Street Promenade shopping centre. The pier is pretty cool, and we even saw dolphins swimming close by.  They were beautiful.  It is so much better to see them in their natural world like that than at Seaworld, even if we can’t get good pictures!  We had a fun few hours in the area before heading ‘home’ for our last evening with Jo and Ian.

The four of us went out for a drink at Brewco (Grant added to his list of things he would drink again) before having a delicious Italian meal at Mama D’s.  Thanks to Chloe for the recommendation.  We had to say goodbye to Jo at bedtime, as the odds of us being awake at 5.30am were worse than slim. 

This morning Ian took us to The Pancake House in Manhattan Beach for breakfast, which was a lovely way to end our time there.  Jo and Ian, thank you both so much for your wonderful hospitality.  We promise we will be back!!

Our quick departure from LA was slightly hindered by a very long wait at the Post Office to send on a parcel to Kate, but we finally got underway.  Luckily with two of us in the car we are eligible for the car pool lane (equally luckily we had to keep left for many miles so the lane was worth it!!).  Our first stop was a place called Camarillo, which among its hundreds of outlet stores has a Merrell outlet.  I finally have the warm Merrell boots I have wanted for a long time.  Thank you Grant for letting me stop and look.  And thank you too to Trip Advisor, which directed us to a café where we got lattes that were really truly like Kiwi ones.  The (American) barista even put little ferns in the foam.  Yum.

It was Grant’s turn to drive now, and we headed to Morro Bay.  Both Charlie (in San Diego) and Ian told us how very beautiful this part of the coast is so we were really looking forward to seeing it.  Sadly, when we arrived a good sea-fog was rolling in, and while this was beautiful in its own way, it did hide the special sea views.  Where is that Wellington wind when you need it, hey?  

Still, we headed up the coast and it wasn’t long before the fog lifted and there were some stunning views.  About 10 miles past Cambria, there was an elephant seal colony and place that you could pull over to see them.  The beach was littered with these guys, sunning themselves on the sand.  And while there were signs all along the area telling people not to feed the wildlife, some of the children could not resist feeding the squirrels that clearly were lying in wait for the next tranche of tourists.

 

After that we headed north again along a road that reminded me a lot of the Turangi-Taupo road, wiggly-windy road with a steep drop down to the water.  Annoyingly, we got about 10 miles further on to find that the road was closed.  As in completely closed and turn around and go back the way you came.  The GPS started getting annoyed with us now as we couldn’t work out how to tell it that the road was closed.  It wanted us to turn around.  Even more frustrating was the lack of a signal for our phones too.  Luckily I had had a map up on my phone and I got a brief look at it before my phone decided that there was no signal to be had.  So instead of driving up the coast, we have to drive back about 20 miles, head inland, and then drive north inside the coastal mountain range.  So, we had set out at just before 10am and we finally arrived at our accommodation about 7.45pm.  It has been a long day, but the scenery has been great.  When we arrived at Carmel (also on the coast), the sea-fog had descended again, drifting in amongst the trees.  Despite the fog’s best attempts, we still found our way into town for dinner.  It looks like Carmel will be a very beautiful little town if we get to see it in daylight without the mist.