Verse 7: Big Sur to Santa Barbara

After a really good and cosy sleep in our lovely wooden cabin (called Grandpa's Room) at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, it was champagne in bed and up early for another mega breakfast.

 

 

  

Our cosy cabin bottom right and on to the breakfast room...

 

  

Mr B's perfect breakfast, poached eggs not ice-cream by the way.

  

Mrs B's Eggs Benedict, mmm lip smackingly good, just add Tobasco.

We decided that this was not enough food and added bacon...

 

It was only half way through this gigantic plate of food that Mrs B realised that she had meant to order the half portion. After several pauses and coffee refills, she struggled on and managed to clear the plate of every morsel. Praise the Lord for stretch jeans!

So after that wonderful breakfast it was back to the winding Big Sur and another gorgeous day of blue sky, sunshine and t-shirt temperatures.

 

The car and Mrs B.

The person who owns this letter box probably has a view something a little like this:

We stopped several times to take in the incredible view of the mountains cascading into the Pacific. At one stop there was a honky tonk chorus from hundreds of seals on the beach below. Pulling up just after us was a friendly New Zealand family touring in an RV, one of the children was more interested in playing Nintendo than the epic nature on display.

Look closely (click on the pics for larger image), all those rocks are actually seals... big fat and lazy looking until they dragged themselves into the water where they became graceful and playful.

 

As we drove we kept an eye out for tell tales signs of the elusive Gray Whales which migrate south along the Californian coast in the winter months between December and early February. Mrs B was determined that we would see them without having to go on an expensive tour (although if you have time it is probably worth doing this to get really up close). An excited shout and a grab of Mr B's arm as he drove... a bushy spout of water! Yes... Gray Whales, not just one but three travelling together. Now don't get too excited about this picture as we were high up on the cliffs and the whales are out at sea but we can assure you that these are whales, although when Mrs B later tried to focus the binoculars she only managed to find a large log and some foamy flotsam.

Actually these could be rocks but we really did see some whales, honest. Our sighting was later affirmed when we bumped into the NZ family again and they excitedly asked us if we had seen the whales. We said "yes" (although we might also have seen two logs or some rocks). Mrs B is adamant that she saw the watery spout of a Gray Whale, Mr B was concentrating on the road at the time.

  

There's a beach tucked away in the middle of this picture, no idea how you get down there, or even if you can. I am sure Big Sur is dotted with tiny little bays like this. Apparently there's one called Partington Cove but we missed it and drove on to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park where the fragrant mix of alpine Redwood trees and the tang of the sea on a clear winter's day was a potent mix. 

Our plan had been to take a short hike in the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park but the trails we wanted to follow were closed due to last summer's fires, bridges collapsed and vulnerable habitat. We should have checked at the State Park Ranger Station the day before in order to replan but hey we're on a roadtrip so who cares. Fortunately we could still do the short and very accessible walk to the viewing platform above the waterfall at McVay Cove, that should at least burn off half an Eggs Benedict, well maybe a quarter, possibly just one poached egg.

And what a site... the waterfall cascades some 80 feet directly into the Pacific Ocean, it looked like a scene out of that 80s classic Blue Lagoon, we half expected a naked Brooke Shields to sashay out from behind the rocks. Instead three young lads had managed to get down onto the beach, or perhaps they were ship wrecked becasue we could not for the life of us see any way down. There are worse places to be stuck.

We walked a little further around the headland to a viewing platform. In front of us and around us tiny metallic shimmering hummingbirds flitted about, shooting at incredible speeds high into the air and dropping like swooping bullets back into the orange flowers.

As with our Gray Whale photo, our camera is not well equppied for nature documentary. However if you look right in the middle of the above photo (click on it to enlarge) there is definitely a tiny green bird there... honestly, go on take a closer look. Oddly it looks quite big in that picture, it was tiny.

Lovely. To top off our day of amazing sightings a UFO appeared on the horizon, it approached gradually then passed over us, as we stood overlooking the waterfall beach, and then continued on its way down the stupendous Big Sur coastline:

 

Eat your hearts out Erich von Daeniken (or if you understand German Twitter him), Robbie Williams and Peter Andre!

On the way back to the car Mr B entered a dark tunnel

 

and disappeared in a flash of light! We had found the Big 'Sur'chedelic Tunnel (see what we did there?)

This really happened, believe everything you see.

Eventually Mr B reappeared and we got back in the car and drove off down the road. 

After many wonderful winding sunny miles, the steep cliffs and deep headlands and canyons started to give way to shaggy hillsides and the floor of the Pacific Valley section of Highway 1 and eventually onto rolling dunes and hills.

 

It was around 2.30pm by the time we hit the sandy dunes and soft grass covered hills just north of San Simeon and Hearst Castle. The highway was now at sea level with the lush, hilly meadows to our left. Suddenly to our right we caught a glimpse of the beach - what were those big blubbery shapes just beyond the shallow dunes. Some way up ahead we could see cars parked up along the road and as we got closer throngs of people lining the narrow path that snaked along the top of the dunes right on the beach. We jumped out of the car and were hit by the almighty stench of defacating animals and the rumble and raucous barking of some seriously large mammals. 

A male Elephant Seal shows off his probiscus to his harem of females.

Only to be outshone by a battle royale further up the beach between two HUGE males. Amazingly no one else seemed to have noticed these two mammoths bellowing and battering at each other so Mr B and I hotfooted it along the path to the end of the beach to get a front row seat of this amazing spectacle.  Using our highly technical nature documentary camera, which had earlier that day captured whales, hummingbirds, a man disappearing and a UFO, we managed to capture this remarkable footage for you. 

Time for Mr and Mrs B's 'Life on Earth: Smelly Majestic Mammals'

After our brush with the Elephant Seals we hopped 8 miles down the road to Hearst Castle an incredible manmade fantasy vision, after the miles of awe inspiring nature. We could see the Disney like turrets peeking over the hilltops from some distance. Hearst Castle was conceived, built and lived in by William Randolph Hearst a latter day Rupert Murdoch who partied in the Castle with Hollywood greats including Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin and Cary Grant. Simply spiffing dahling.

Another 'we make mistakes so you don't have to' moment now. If you want to actually go right into Hearst Castle you have to book a tour in advance, even in winter... as we found out the wrong way i.e all sold out for the entire day. So we had to join other groups of disorganised road trippers and tourists in just staring up at the Castle from the visitor centre as it lorded over us up in the hills, with its magnificent Mediterranean Revival architecture and sheer camp presence.

 

The visitor centre is free but miles from the castle, you have to get a bus to the actual castle and you can only do this if you have a tour ticket, of which there are 13 possibilites, each of varying cost and duration. We satisfied ourselves with the information in the free visitor centre and an envious gaze up to the castle. We also took in the glamourous dramatisation of William Randolph Hearst's life. Shown in the onsite IMAX cinema this was a tale of success, money, hard work and most importantly 'the building of a dream', a phrase repeated at around a rate of six times per minute. The title of the movie was Hearst Castle - Building the Dream. It was dramatic, slick, glamourous and full of sweeping strings crescendoing and pulsing tear inducing theta-waves across the audience. So much so that I felt the compelling urge to stand up, punch the air and leading the audience through the Star Spangled Banner.

Dramatic license aside it did look pretty amazing and it's an interesting place with a very glamourous history. We would love to go back and see the castle up close some day.

After coffee and a hot chocolate, accompanied by a delicious choclate brownie (the first of two brownies that we forgot to photograph, clearly they are just too tempting to wait for a quick snap), we headed onto Santa Barbara. Past San Luis Obispo and the palace of kitsch that is the Madonna Inn (read Charlie Brooker's opinion of this motel that we will definitely stay in if we pass this way again) and on into the sunset to another meeting with strangers trusting enough to host strangers in their own home.

See that small prick of red light, that's an oil rig. Not a UFO.

The road ran by the ocean and skirted round towns and then curved inland towards the coastal mountains of California, carving through hillsides and rugged rock and into darkness. 

Good evening Santa Barbara.

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Verse 8: The Santa Barbara Cruise

We arrived in balmy Santa Barbara early evening under a cloak of star studded darkness. The nice lady in the SatNav box led us expertly to the door of our second couchsurfing hosts, Mark and Jen. There's always a moment of nervous anticipation as you stand on the doorstep of complete strangers waiting for them to open it up and welcome you in... imagine if they open the door and take one look at you and say 'maybe not' or what if they are completely psychotic, or even worse, they have a collection of old china dolls in a room full of ticking clocks and clown masks... and you have to sleep in it. (Mr B just broke into a cold sweat). Well thankfully that hasn't happened to us yet and everyone we have stayed with and everyone we have hosted has been really lovely and all very different.

So Jen and Mark's place was a south Cal version of a Mexican adobe, a one storey bungalow with a driveway and a back yard and lots of cactii and interesting but dangerous looking plants in the well tended front garden. Very nice. We were welcomed in by Jen and their two beautiful little twin girls who we never got a photo of :-( and then Mark arrived home from work and we all had a jolly laugh and a refreshing beer from a Santa Barbara microbrewery. Mark told us that the US is now full of great microbreweries which challenge the assumption that all US beer is mostly pig swill. We agree. Mark also collects Mexican Day of the Dead things.

We soon realised that this was going to be a very comfortable couch surfing experience. The main house (yes I said main house) was really nice, wooden floors, loads of interesting things to look at, books, music and then we were shown to our guest suite, a converted room next to the garage, complete with double bed, throws, a TV, a laptop, a shower-room, heater and more interesting books (Mr B read a big Gary Larson comic book on the loo for the duration of our stay here).

After another beer and a glass of wine with Mark and Jen we headed out for dinner at a Vietnamese place round the corner called Saigon In and Out, which sounds like a title for an interesting movie. Fairly cheap, around $25 for a starter and two main courses, which were delicious and highly spiced with tongue tingling chilli.

 

Despite appearances these are spring rolls - not the MSG laden deep fried kind we are used to but a cold, fresh explosion of tiger prawns, shredded carrot and lettuce, coriander and lime juice wrapped in a delicate leaf of moist rice paper, served with a moorish peanut sauce. They were really good.  

  

After our spicy and delicious main course we wandered home and sat with Mark and Jen, had another glass of wine and got the USA map out and talked about Santa Barbara, the weather, routes and roadtrips and travelling... then we all yawned a lot and we said good night to our gracious hosts. Off to bed.

Zzzzzzzzzzz. We woke up around 8am and headed into the kitchen to say hello to Jen who had made us a pot of coffee. Scoffed down a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal with cinnamon and apples, which we forgot to photograph. Jen kindly offered us their spare beach cruiser bikes so Mr B got busy giving them a service, well he pumped up the tryres. And off we went to explore Santa Barbara on four wheels. 

Did we mention that the temperature was over 20 degrees C?

 

Brace yourself for another great nature photo: 

 

There are several pelicans chilling out on the lagoon, can you see them? 

Somehow we managed not to take many photos in Santa Barbara, the bikes were too fun. I was wearing red stilletoes and these are not known for being sensible footwear for a bike that you have to back pedal in order to brake, before scraping your feet along the ground in order to bring it to a complete standstill.  We rode around and checked out some nice looking buildings including Old Mission and some downtown area buildings. 

We took the bikes onto the pier and parked up. There was a sign at the entrance saying 'No  high heels' heels'. Oh well, Mrs B kept her weight on the balls of her foot so that her heels didn't get caught in the gaps between the wooden planks, she's well practised at these things. We fended off the boisterous seagulls and greedy pigeons, watched the Pelicans flying low over the water and sniffed out lunch on the pier from the take out hatch at Santa Barbara Shellfish Co. We settled down on a bench table to a cup of lobster bisque and a really seriously stuffed and succulent crab sandwich. All of which tasted even better thanks to the sea air, the view, the warm sun and the company.

 

 

...and I forgot about the huge onion ring, that was good too. 

We also got a little lost in several fascinating junk shops. For a start they are all huge and labyrinthian with all the good stuff jumbled up with all the utter toss (the latter often being the more fascinating and informative of a culture). These are like ramshackle museums of the everyday detritus of life.

Santa Barbara is quite small, very affluent, laid back, pretty and very fit. Everyone was slim. Lots of people jogging, jogging with dogs, jogging with buggies, jogging with lovers, jogging with parents, mainly jogging... perhaps a little cycling, rollerblading or skating as well. Because we thought you might actually want to see what Santa Barbara is like rather than just seeing what we ate, here are some pictures we didn't take - each picture is a direct link to the website of origin.

  

 

 

 

  

And here is our offering:

  

A banana and blueberry waffle with ice cream and a coffee at Jitters Coffee on State Street (where most of the shops, cafes, cinema etc can be found) 

 

and a blurry vintage shop called Cominichis - check it out on street view on Google Maps, 434 E Cota St Santa Barbara... just because you can. It was huge and Mrs B bought a red 60s coat. She definitely needed another coat. We thought we had better take a photo before it got dark. Useless.

We cycled back home through the rush hour traffic, with no lights. It was a little hairy.  Got back to our cosy abode and Mr B did some important internet stuff while Mrs B walked to the local supermarket, thankfully not a huge megastore, just a normal size local store, lots of exotic fruits and mexican food,  piled high, cheap and busy. Mrs B stocked up on items for the road trip - food and water, wet wipes (very handy) and stuff that Americans call butter. 

Mrs B sat with Mark and Jen in the main house chewing the cud and getting tips for the roadtrip. We forgot to photograph dinner, which was two over priced organic pizzas from the supermarket, which were the only thing Mr B could find when he realised he couldn't pay with card at the Mexican take away.

Food over we all settled in to watch 500 Days of Summer, a US inde movie, staring Zoey Deschanel and the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, but grown up, as he should be. It was a love story with a real ending and a quirky narrative structure - this sounds lame, but it was good, mildly funny and completely inoffensive, we weren't bored and the soundtrack stimulated an enthusiastic conversation about late 80s UK indie music and early 90s American indie rock. Mark got his guitar out and tried to work out how to play Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies. Which coincidentally was the song that we were singing as we drove into Santa Barbara the previous evening.

 

Because we had decided to do the mammoth drive to Grand Canyon in one day, we had an early start in the morning. So we did a group photo and said good bye to Jen as she would be sound asleep when we left at 6am, then we stumbled off to our bed in the back.

Tomorrow the serious driving will begin.

Verse 9: Santa Barbara to the Grand Canyon - Part 1

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRINNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGGGG

DRRRRRRRRRR *****BANG*****

6am in the morning and time to rise and shine ready for our 600 mile 11 hour drive! For us folk that live on the teeny tiny British Isles, that's like waking up in the morning at Land's End in Cornwall and thinking 'mmm I fancy driving to Dundee in Scotland today, just for the fun of it!'

So up for coffee and goodbyes with Mark (being a teacher he always has to head out early).  In our state of fuzzy headed early mornign confusion we had to content with our first petrol station fill up of the trip. Pay at the kiosk before filling up. Mrs B asked the clerk to put $100 on the pump and got a funny look from Tony (that's what it said on his name tag)... in the UK that would be about right to fill up the tank, of course we are in the US where petrol is at least three times cheaper, Tony suggested $40 and he was right. Cheap, very... but this doesn't come without a price that has to be paid elsewhere.

Heading out of Santa Barbara as the sun was rising was a lovely idea, despite the bleary, sleep infested eyes. 

We drove along the highway parallel to the Pacific Ocean and were treated to the sight of dolphins playing in the surf, even Mr B saw them although he was at the wheel... sorry no photo this time, you just can't capture every moment but as we drove Mrs B decided to scribble down notes in our little red book. Every now and then we managed to stop and snap a photo or catch a passing landscape through the lens. But mostly we were happy to sit back and soak up the incredible landscape.

And it goes a little something like this...

Sunrise over the mountains to the east (above), silver ocean to the west, dolphins in the rolling California surf. Surfers.

Trailer parks lining Highway 101 towards LA, grim, run down. 7.24am, starting to see the LA traffic now. Miles and miles of polytunnels flanking the freeway around Ventura, growing who knows what. Breakfast stop at Coco's, a Californian diner chain, too tired to make a note of where, but somewhere before LA. Mrs B took a nap in our booth and then we ate a huge breakfast!

Guns 'n' Roses on the radio just north of LA 'Welcome to the Jungle', could there be a more appropriate song? Listening to 100.3FM The Sound: Tom Petty, JJ Cale's Cocaine, Smashing Pumpkins, Bob Marley, Hendrix... a true LA soundtrack.

Hit the five lane freeway that skirts round LA, views of LA from the Pasadena highway.  A layer of smog hanging in the air like a thick blanket.

East on to Highway 10 and entering the Low Desert plains heading towatds Twentynine Palms and the northern reaches of Joshua Tree national park. Hundreds of wind turbines.

 

  

  

Off Highway 10 and onto Twentynine Palms highway, blue skies, snow capped mountains and desert. Joshua Trees (which are actually giant yucca plants - agaves -not trees) cropping up all over the place once we got near Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms. Dusty low lying towns spread out along the highway. Fast food chains, knife shops, Indian craftshops, tourist information, dust, Joshua trees, rocks.

Passed Kickapoo (best name yet), a town in Yucca Valley.

Popped into a HUGE Wal-mart in Yucca to grab a cool bag for all our roadtrip food. Parked next to a car that Mr B would gladly have swapped the Nissan Maxima (looking drab in the background) for this matt black and lime green beauty:

Just before Twentynine Palms we did a quick detour off the main road into Indian Cove campground, a rocky wonderland of towering rock formations with a campsite snuggled cosily at the foot of the rocks. The sites were empty apart from one RV belonging to a couple of climbers who we could see dangling of the rocks high above.

 

 

One of the discreet toilet blocks.

Back in the car after a brisk walk and scramble over the rocks.  Turned off Twentynine Palms onto the Amboy Highway heading north up and over the mountains. Views over the salt plains that belong to the American Chloride Co. and the barren darkness of the Amboy Crater and lava field. We pulled over and took a picture in what felt like the middle of nowehere, only to find a rock full of graffiti.

 

Onto the salt plains and the winding road (see above) through desolate landscape, would not like to be here in the summer. Hit part of Old Route 66 and our first Route 66 relic, Roy's Motel, once a buzzing crossroads on the two lane blacktop journey across the US, now a dusty reminder of life before the impersonal Interstate highways.

Route 66 stretched out ahead of us, a poker straight line for 50 miles before the first bend. All along the banks of the road people had laid out their names and the names of loved ones using white stones. We whizzed on enjoying the panoramic desert vistas, dust, no life apart from the scrubby plants and occasional bird riding the thermals high in the sky. Crazy yucca plants with gnarled blackened trunks and branches and vivid lime green heads.

Suddenly back on Interstate 40 and huge trucks crawling up the righthand lane. Freight trains that go on and on, carriage after carriage after carriage, snaking their way across the high desert valley.

At some point we drove past a man walking at the side of the road, pushing a trolley with a sign saying 'World Walk'. Check out his website. We drove past him during weeks 9-10! Had we not been on the speedy Interstate we definitely would have stopped to have a chat with him and give him a bottle of water and some roadtrip food. Good luck to him on his journey. 

Shortly after seeing Gary 'Walkingman' Hause we passed over the mighty Colarado River and from California into Arizona. 

  Goodbye California!
 Hello  Arizona!