Refugio Beach, California Sunday September 14th – Tuesday September 16th

Hello,

It wasn’t too long of a drive at all to Refugio Beach, but again, we got to drive down the beautiful, breathtaking Californian Coastline. We drove by huge vineyards cultivating some sweet grapes for some Californian wines.

On the drive down we came across a beach that was covered in seals that were in heat, oh yeah, the smell was beautiful, they arrive for only 2-3 weeks in the year as the migrate up the coast, to shed their blubber and to reproduce.

When we reached the campsite it looked like paradise! The campsite was small and was right on the beach! If you looked out from your tent you could see the white sand, lined with towering palm trees and then the dazzling blue see. It really was gorgeous!

We spent a lot of our time in Refugio on the beach.

When we got too hot we went for a drive to the Santa Barbara library which was just south of our campsite, to cool down in their air conditioning and to catch up on some emails. We bought some $1 hardback books frmo the library. Emma got a Sidney Sheldon and Ian got a John Grishan. We had a lovely dinner that night made on our campstove – vegetable chilli with rice and a nice bottle of said Californian white wine to sip by the campfire.

While sitting on the beach after many games of frisby we glanced out at the ocean and spotted groups of dolphins migrating up the coast. Looked pretty sweet but the camera couldnt really pick them up, they just looked like specks.

We got up pretty early both mornings we stayed at Refugio as you kinda wake with the noise of the birds and the sun rising, which raises the heat in the tent to unbearable. Some toast and tea sir?

Pfeiffer/Big Sur, California Friday September 12th – Sunday September 14th

Ian and Emma had to leave early the day they were leaving San Francisco as they hadn’t yet made any reservations for a campsite.

Before they left San Francisco, they stopped off at the intersection of Langton and Harrison St - yes two streets called Harrison Ave and Langton St intersect!!

They travelled down the coast, on a rollercoaster of a road, where you could see the coastline for miles and miles in front of you. The road had so many twists and turns which made the road difficult to drive, never mind driving right on the cliff edge with no barrier!!

We reached the campsite and thank God, there was space for us. When we were checking in, there was a sign warning us of rattlesnakes!! The sign said that they would only attack you if you threatened them!! We set up our tent anyway and it was right beside the toilets!! When you have to get up in the middle of the night to pee, by yourself, its great not to have to walk a long way in the pitch black in a forest to get to the toilets!! The nights that we spent in Big Sur, of course we had to go to the loo in the middle of the night and were petrified walking beside the bushes because you could actually hear the rattles!! It was scary! You knew you had to walk by them and were just hoping that you didn’t feel something at your ankles!!

Big Sur is an amazing place and unfortunately a lot of the area got damaged by a forest fire in June of this year caused by lightning. Because of this, nearly all of the hiking trails were closed. Nearly half of the campsite was closed too/ Big Sur has some beautiful beaches though – The Thrills even have a song called Big Sur. The beaches are like paradise. We had one full day in Big Sur and we spent most of it on the beach – of course we got sun burned! (By the way, these few blog entries are being written on the laptop in the car, going through the desert on our way to Las Vegas!)

Here are some photos from the beach.

September 12th - Goodbye - Choo Choo

Note: We havent had access to anything resembling the internet in about 5 days so the blog has been suffering but we are still going. Internet at tent sites would be sweet.

Hey,

This was the day that the two couples said goodbye, after having lived together for three months and then spending 24/7 together for over a week. Ian and Emma were going down the Californian Coast to continue their roadtrip and Graham and Sophie were heading back up to Vancouver on a 24 hour train journey.

Graham:

With Ian and Emma on the road we had 10 hours to kill before our train journey. We walked up Market street where the wheelchair fella was still giving people agro in the street. We both had two huge cases which we wheeled to the customer service desk of Macy's. They were kind enough to take them off our hands under the assumption that we were about to spend loads of money in their shop, so off we went to Starbucks. The next 10 hours we spent "case-less", which was good and so we plodded around San Fran, sitting in the main square and surrounding streets. Finally, we took a taxi to Emeryville where our train left from.

Graham in the Square:

The "Coast Starlight" train service also known as the "Coast StarLATE" lived up to its reputation arriving 2 hours late. The scenery was amazing the people were friendly and the train was massive. Sophie looked tiny in comparison to the seats. We spent most of our time playing cards and in my case losing at cards, which is always fun. We arrived in Seattle and got our connecting bus to Vancouver, leaving one man at the border along the way as he didn't meet the standards. That pretty much ended our part of "USA road trip 08". We had a great time and hope we'll do it again sometime. Thanks to Ian and Emma for driving and looking after everything…Thanks!!

The viewing carriage of the train:

Day 6 - September 11th - Ding Ding!!

Emma - We all got up nice and early and availed of the free breakfast again, smuggled into our room! We walked downtown and saw a homeless man in a wheelchair chase a female cyclist with a sweeping brush!! He had shouted something at her and whistled so she retaliated by showing him her middle finger! She had stopped for the red light but went right through it when she saw him coming after her!! Then Ian stepped on a huge white egg that was randomly lying in the middle of the pavement. The egg went all over his shoes and went on Sophie's flip flop too. Sophie saved the day with her baby wipes though!! As we walked further downtown, we saw a few more eggs... maybe there's a secret bird that goes around laying its eggs on the streets on San Francisco waiting for unsuspecting Irish tourists to step into them and then laughs heartily from it's perch!!

We got dowtown and went to the Apple store to "borrow" their wireless for a while! Then we went to the Tourist Information Centre to see what we should do. I was dying to go on the San Franciscan cable cars or trollies so we all bought a day pass. The others couldn't really understand that I didnt have any destination in mind to go to on the trollies - I just wanted to ride around aimlessly on them for the whole day!! It's a cool way to see all the backstreets of San Fran and go up and down the huge hills without murdering your calves!! The first trolley we went on happened to go to Lombard St where they have a street a block long, going down hill called the "Crookedest Street" because it goes diagonally from one side of the street to the other a number of times before the end of the street.

The trolleys were great fun because you can stand at and hang off the sides of them for your whole journey! You also get to be right beside the driver and see how he pulls the huge levers and stands on, putting his whole weight on, the breaks. It is a bit scary hanging off the side when another trolley comes in the other direction and you have to suck all your bits in and also when you're going up or down the hugely steep hills! I think the others were getting a bit sick of me though coz I made them go around the city on the things all day long!!

Graham and Sophie hanging off the side:

We eventually decided that we were all freezing so we went to get dinner in the Cheesecake Factory, a famous American restaurant that has lovely food and you've guessed it - delicious cheesecake!! After dinner, we went back to the hotel for a few drinks and a game or two of cards!

Day 5 - Sept 10th - Sean Connery What A Plonker

Hey,

So after a nice sleep in a proper bed we all got up around 8:30am. Everyone wanted a shower to clean up after three days on the road. As we only paid for 2 people to stay in the hotel (it was only an extra $15 for 4 - when you can get away with it) Graham had to go down and get the free breakfast for four of us. He was getting some looks.

So we were booked in for the 11am cruise and tour of Alcatraz prison. Yahooooo! We jumped in a taxi driven by a crazy African dude who nearly rear-ended a woman talking on her 'cell phone'. It was a sunny day in San Fran but there was a wind about.

Here is us on the boat. Graham and Sophie in a patriotic photo.

The boat journey only takes 15 minutes but there is ample opportunity for good photos of San Francisco from the bay.

There is no real tour of Alcatraz, you are free to walk around for as long as you like. The only tour part is the prison cells, where you get a headset and follow instructions and information to work your way around.

Here is a classic of Graham and Sophie at Alcatraz, get a load of Grahams hair.

While learning about this amazingly historical place I couldnt get the absolutley dire crap film Sean Connery made entitled "The Rock" out of my head. What a plonker!! Him and his green toxic balls. However they sold the dvd on the island, probably the one movie that draws in all the tourists, but it was crap!!

The cells were tiny, cold and damp. Was an amazing place, I'd highly recommend it to anyone!

After Alcatraz we walked around Fishermans Wharf, full of shops, and a Hooters. For anyone who doesn't know, Hooters is a restaurant where the waitresses wear very little and push-up bras. Sophie was dying to go to this place, myself and Graham werent really bothered!! Ha ha.



We then hopped on a bus/tram, not the famous red ones, we were keeping that for the next day. We headed to downtown for a bout of shopping. We all got various stuff, as it got dark we grabbed a bottle of Malibu and headed back to the hotel for a night cap.



This is all you need to know.




An out of focus photo of Graham holding Sophie who is crushed into a bag.

???

Day 4 - Sept 9th - Eye Spy With My Little Eye

Hey Up,

Another night spent at Prairie Creek Redwoods, we woke up to a bird trying to break into Sophies peanut stash which was accidently left out overnight in a plastic box. There was a huge amount of mist that arrived during the night and hung over the trees.

After breakfast we packed up and hit the road for our 8 hour journey to San Francisco. The journey we took is below.

This was an extremely long drive!! There was alot of sleeping going on.

And some craziness!!!

We stopped off in one or two towns along the way namely Eureka, which can only be described as a hole and a pretty sweet little town called Garberville where we grabbed some lunch. But all in all the drive was amazing with some rugged coast and tiny roads through some amazing forests.

As the miles on the signs for San Francisco grew smaller we were awaiting the first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was kind of misty so it was difficult but when we turned a bend on the huge 6 lane freeway we saw it off in the distance. We finally crossed it at around 8pm having left at 10am signalling the end was near.




After driving up some extremely steep San Francisco streets and hoping the van could hack it we finally reached our hotel which would be home for the next 3 days.

We were all too tired to do anything that involved any type of movement. So we just ordered in pizza that arrived about an hour and a half late (we got it free of charge).

Sin e.

Day 3 - Sept 8th - The Hike and The Hells Angels

Yo,

So after a not so cold nights sleep in Prairie Creek Redwoods, we got ourselves together, had some toast and tea which we made on our little camp stove.

We then set out for a 3-4 mile hike through the redwoods in search of 'The Big Tree".

The forest was dead quiet. We only passed one or two people on the first mile or two. The trees were towering over us, it was good shade from the sun. There were huge redwood trees that had crashed to the ground and new trees were growing out of them, or trees that had fallen and were caught by another tree, just kinda sitting there waiting to fall. We had a chat about the "if a tree falls and no one hears it, did it actually fall" idea. Turns out, yeah, it still falls.

We came across a hollow tree so we all climbed in.

If a tree fell across the hiking path the parks rangers would just cut through it and leave the rest of the tree to decay as normal. Must have taken quite a while.

When we signed in to camp and to hike in the forest we had to sign a disclaimer that stated we knew there were bears in the forests and that there was a danger associated with this. So while hiking through the woods this was constantly in the back of our minds. The guy at the sign in office told us there hadn't been a sighting in 3 weeks. Yipeeee! The hike crossed the US101 road at one point which was void of any cars so we stopped for a quick snap.

We finally reached "The Big Tree". It was 22 foot in diameter, you could fit two cars into the base of it and have room. It was huge. Sophie wasn't too impressed by the tree because she was expecting a tall tree rather than a wide tree, so we spent our time convincing her of its status as the big tree.

Unfortunately this is the only photo of the 4 of us at the big tree but it really doesnt show its size, so here is one of Emma and Ian.

After our wee hike we drove to the local town of Orick. Replacing the 'Or' with 'H' in the town name would have been a bit more accurate. We wanted to pick up some food and Sophie needed to get on the internet to sort out her college registration. We arrived at the local market shop which was literally a big barn full of shelves. We picked up some food and a bottle of Baileys.

We then went in search of a wireless internet in a town with a population of about 30. We found it at the most unlikely place. A bar called "Hawg Wild". We pulled into the parking lot which only had spaces for motorbikes. Sophie got her college registration sorted, we think. A couple pulled into the bar in a big fancy car, abviously tourists, they went into the bar and were out in 2 seconds flat with concerned faces. Check out the bar.

Returning to the campsite we had dinner, some Baileys and got the fire going again. We sat around the fire until about 1am and then called it a day.

Day 2 - Sept 7th - Drive To The Redwoods

Hey,

Note: A few pictures have been added to the post for Day One

After a very cold night camping in the mist at Cape Lookout, we left at about 11am. We got onto to US 101, which goes right down the west coast. It is a two lane freeway, which is a bit hairy at some points, but it brings you through some great little towns. This was our drive.

The drive to the Prairie Creek Redwood Forest took us around 8 hours. Pretty tiring drive but the scenery made up for it. The drive took us right along the coast with some huge cliffs and miles of rugged coastline, plenty of surfing towns, campsites, RV parks. Everyone on the road seemed to be camping one way or another, hauling huge RV's, or keeping it real in retro VW vans.

As we left Oregon and passed into northern California it got alot warmer, which made everyone happier. After about 50 or so miles we hit the great redwood forests. WOW! Just immense trees for miles and miles. Crossing ELK signs on every corner and warnings of bears let us know we were at natures mercy. As we drove the winding road through the forest the sun started to set and it illuminated the trees in a red hue. Was bloody amazing! But with this came the darkness and Emma put the foot on the gas to make it to our campsite before we had to pitch a tent in the pitch black.

We arrived at the site nestled right in the woods, surrounded by towering trees. We pitched the tent, blew up air matresses, put the food in the bear box and lit a fire and had smores!!

After the fire embers were on they way out and the mosquitos became too many we called it a day!!

Day One - 6th Sept - The Scam and the Racist Border Officer

Hey Ho,

Yesterday was our first day on the road. We left Vancouver at 6:30am. Below is the starting mileage on the van!!

We filled up on "gas".

While at the gas station there was a man who approached us stating his van was broken into last night and had all his tools and bags stolen. We had a quick glance at his van and everything seemed to check out. He showed us ID proving he was from Prince George, which is a good 4 hour drive from Vancouver. So we gave him $20 for gas. As we pulled out we saw him approach another driver and give the same story, i think we were scammed big time but we'll never know.



Below is the route we took to Cape Lookout Provincial Park from Vancouver.



Anyway, after our encounter with the best actor/scam artist Vancouver had to offer we were on our way. We hit the US border with only a 40min wait, which is is pretty damn good. When we handed over the 4 passports we proceed to listen the most racist man i;ve ever met telling us that the white european race is in decline and that the US is being over run by Mexicans. I think we saw a mexican family in the line for the border, i really hope they didnt end up with that guy.

We flew down the I-5, not the most interesting road. Turns into a big 5 line interstate before Seattle and is just littered with Wal-Marts and huge commercial chains.

We crossed the Washington border into Oregon where we turned onto I405 in Portland and headed toward the coast. The drive was amazing, much like a rally course with twists and turns through immense green pine forests. Lucky we had a good bit of gas in the tank because we were in the back arse.



We finally hit the coast which was covered in the heaviest mist. It just hung over the huge trees. We signed into the campsite at Cape Lookout, there wasnt much "looking out going on - the mist kinda buggered that up". We set up camp with the tent and tarp, got a meal going, got some fire logs burning.

We hit the hay as we were all shattered, convincing ourselves we will become better road trippers over the next few days.

The Shit Has Hit the proverbial "FAN"

Folks,

Don't have a clue who'd be reading this except the parents but we are gonna give this blog malarky a bash for our road trip through the west coast of the US of A. We will try to update it regularly with a summary of the goings-on of the day and some photographs to accompany.

This is the night before the first day. We leave for Cape Lookout Provincial Park located in North Oregon tomorrow at the fine hour of 6AM. We will be camping there for one night and then moving on!!

Emma is manic at the moment, packing, cleaning and being the general orchestrator of this show. Graham is being a sarcastic git as usual and Sophie is playing it cool, writing postcards and letters. I'm doing whatever I'm told by the boss.

Keep tuned,

Emma, Ian, Graham and Sophie