DAY 21 - The Final Leg

It's the final drive! We awake in the beautiful Cayucos to our last journey of the trip: up to San Francisco.

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!

DAY 20 - SUNFLOWER SURPRISE

We leave our motel fairly early and pick up an "on the go" breakfast from the local 7/11 store.  We then drive down to Venice Beach.  It is a misty start and too cold to swim but we paddle a bit and watch the surfers who are braver than us but wearing wet suits.  We then commence our drive up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway).  Unfortunately, Clint (our SatNav man) keeps sending us on the 101 instead of the 1 so we end up back in Hollywood.  After an hour of driving in the wrong direction in the usual manic traffic of LA we manage to get on the right route.  We are hoping to find a nice beach for lunch but after Jane misses a left hand turn off for the beach Jessica has picked out (because Jane thought it was a right hand turn and therefore cannot get across the four lanes of traffic in time) we end up sitting in a dusty windswept layby eating our left overs from yesterdays dinner.

After lunch we press on with our journey and by 3.30pm we arrive in Cayucos.  This is a classic California beach town and it is a real peach of a place.We are staying in the fabulous Seaside Motel http://www.seasidemotel.com .  The rooms are all themed - we are in the sunflower surprise room and we got a free upgrade so Jessica has her own little room. It is a family run motel and they have a wonderful garden which our rooms back on to.

After settling into our room, we decide to go to the Laundromat up the road because we havn't done any washing since The Battle of Little Bighorn.  We drive up to the laundromat even though it is only a little way up the road (like true Americans).  However, we find the machine supplying detergent is empty so we have to go to a nearby supermarket and purchase a whole large container.  We get our washing machine going and then go to give the left over detergent to a local man who is doing his washing (as we won't be needing it any more and we can't fit it in our suitcase.  The man's name is Greg and he is so thankful for the gift of detergent that he offers to take us to his local coffee shop up the road for afternoon tea/coffee.  Greg tells us that he has lived in Cayucos since 1991 and previously lived north of San Francisco.  We chat about our road trip for a while before venturing back to the Laudromat to dry our clothes.  

We then take a walk to the beach but the water is too cold for us to swim so we just paddle about and look at all the wildlife.  There are pelicans, some wading birds with long beaks and then we see a seal basking in the sea.  Another local man is walking his dog and he tells us that there were some dolphins in the sea just off the pier.  We get a few fleeting glimpses of them but they are too far out for a good view.

For dinner we go to Schooners Wharf which is just a short walk from our Motel for some sea food http://www.schoonerswharf.com 

On the way back to our room we go to yet another restaurant to pick up some Coconut Pie for dessert later (does it seem like we are always eating?)

DAY 19 - LA Women

Day 19: we awoke and quickly packed our things ready to head to our final stage of the trip. Leaving Vegas for good, we head out on the long road to California.

Along the way, we stopped in the town of Primm for some breakfast at 'Whiskey Pete's Stateline Store'. I was extremely excited as Primm is a location in the game Fallout New Vegas which I have played a lot, and it really had a rollercoaster! Driving on, we decided to take a more interesting route to LA than the boring interstate, so took a detour through the Mohave desert. This involved lots of empty, bumpy roads sided by cacti and water-starved bushes. At most times we could see no other cars on the road - it felt very adventurous! The drive was a little boring, it is a desert after all, but got more exciting when we saw tumbleweed and an old train!

After leaving the desert, we followed the interstate on to LA, and boy was there bad traffic! For about the last 2 and a half hours of the journey I (notice mum made me do all the city driving again, huh!) was driving down super busy 4 or 5 lane roads, a bit different from the UK! We arrived to the Venice Beach area without incident however and settled in to the Encore Motel for the night, which although I had worried might not be great was perfectly nice.

A little short on time, we headed right out in the car to Hollywood, driving through Beverly Hills on the way (with much singing of Weezer of course) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4iTyHItFwg).

Finally finding our car park, we explored Hollywood Boulevard, seeing all the tourist sites! The Hollywood walk of fame...

(Julie Andrews is my hand twin!)

... along with the Hollywood sign and Grauman's Chinese Theatre. We even managed to catch a snippet of whatever musical guest was on Jimmy Kimmel Live by spying on the outside stage from across the street (apparently Laura Mvula?). Mum is a little annoyed that Bastille are playing the night after we have left!

After seeing all our favourite stars' stars and matching our hands to the celebrities', we headed back to Venice for dinner. We headed to a great place down the street from us called 'Eddie's Italian', heralded as a big lover of garlic and boy were they! We were served free bread with massively delicious garlic oil and my food had about 20 whole garlic cloves in it! The place looked a little dive-y when we arrived, but true to the online review we didn't judge a book by it's cover and it turned out to be a real hidden gem. The portions were large enough we kept half for the next day's lunch!

Full and tired, we head back to the motel ready to travel up the Pacific Coast Highway the following morning...