After coffee/juice and a blueberry muffin from the 'Top Dog Cafe', plus some cookies for the road from a fab looking bakery, we head off on the 6 hour journey to San Fran. Along the way, we saw a distant Hearst Castle and then stopped at a vista supposedly good for seeing elephant seals. As soon as we pulled up the Car(l), we spied a seal in the ocean in front of us. Excited, we ran out to take pictures when a man said there would be a better view farther along. So after watching out first seal, we moved farther down the walkway where we discovered a few more seals playing in the ocean, very close to the shore. It was great to see them in the wild!
We then decided to follow the path a little further around, but only then did we truly discover the better view we had been told of, there was a whole beach of sunbathing seals!
The young males not yet old enough to head for Alaska, there had to be 100 seals just chilling in the sun, occasionally heading in for a swim or play fighting. We stood and watched them for ages, it was so exciting!
After we had had our fill of seal watching, we carried on up the pacific coast highway, past Big Sur for some unfortunately extortionately priced petrol but cool ocean-side views.
We stopped at a grocery store in Santa Cruz for lunch, having pumpkin soup out in the sunshine, and then more coastal driving. We passed Monterrey and Carmel, which is the town where Clint Eastwood lives and was previously Mayor! Unfortunately we did not see Mr Eastwood to tell him that we named our sat nav after him...
We stopped at one more beautiful beach along the way, and even though mum was being silly and refused to come onto the sand because it was windy, I had a great time paddling and watching the windsurfers!
We arrived in San Fran, or to be more specific San Bruno where we are staying close to the airport, for around 4pm. Checking in to our final hotel, we spent some time clearing out the car for it's return and planning our 2 days here in the city. After this, we headed down to the local supermarket to get treats to bring home, and headed to an amazing Japanese restaurant in San Bruno named Aji Ichi where we ate fabulous gyoza and beef teriyaki. 12 miles from San Francisco our milometer reaches the 5000 mile mark. More news from San Fran tomorrow!
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