Pacific Heights

However, California is not just a movie set, it's also an area of unparalleled natural beauty with dramatic coastline, ancient forests and granite mountain - which only means one thing to the TPs ... a roadtrip!!!

Tempted by tales of the fabled Pacific Coast Highway - built over landsliding faultlines and skirting rocky bluffs - off we set in our 'do you think we'll look like tourists' orange rental car armed only with a 1998 roadmap and several CDs (courtesy of a late night burning session at Frank's - thanks again). In true TP style, however, we didn't get too far on day 1 after stumbling across the pretty town of Santa Barbara. With its whitewashed walls and red tiled roofs, we couldn't help but want to stay awhile - easier said than done! Not known for its budget digs at the best of times, turning up on the first Friday since school broke up was probably not the best timing! Undeterred, we eventually (after a 2 hour search) managed to sweet-talk a hefty discount at a non too salubrious roadside motel just out of town - an experience that had us heading straight to the Big 5 outdoor store the next morning in search of some cheap camping gear and mosquito repellent!

Once settled, we spent a lovely couple of days wandering the refined town with buildings, signs and flowers all conforming to the same styles. The fact it also has numerous trendy bars, boutiques and restaurants, not to mention a great pier, lovely beaches and lots of things to do made this easily one of our favourite spots so far - when can we move in?!?!

Ging Gang Gooly Gooly ...
Moving along the coast stopping at various photo opportunities along the way, we arrived at the quaint fishing village of Morro Bay where Ali had her first ever camping experience! Pitching our tent in a nice spot alongside the beach, we were surprised to be charged so much for the privilege, especially as the site had few facilities (toilets were about it!) - so much for this being a budget option! Still, the setting was faultless and we spent our first night under the stars watching otters feed as the sun set and eating dinner cooked over our new gas stove - now there's a challenge, trying to cook with a camp stove on a windy beach!

After a surprisingly good night's sleep (inflatable mattresses are really quite comfy and Steve recommends 70% inflation to maximise the water-bed effect), we headed into town where we met a really nice photographer (Bill at his 'Focus on Nature Gallery') who drew us a map highlighting all the worthwhile stops along the way - and he should know as he's taken over 1/2 million photos of the USA and Canada (and we thought 7,000 throughout our trip was a lot - at that rate it'll take 700 years to achieve the same number!). Stocking up on supplies at the nearby Cambria, where we saw 5 Ferrarris parked in the same street and the famous(!) Nit Wit Ridge - a cr*p (literally) house made entirely of recycled materials, we spent the next few days camping along the coast and the Big Sur (a stretch of rugged coast where the road clings desperately to the cliffs and provides vista junkies - ie Steve - with a steady fix), stopping off at various points along the way:

Jade Cove - which lived up to its name and gave Ali a new hobby - prospecting!
Hearst Castle - a monument to wealth and opulence which sprawls over 127 acres overlooking the Pacific
Elephant Seal Point - where we got up close and personal with California's largest elephant seal colony, as well as numerous baby squirrels.
Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park - home to the beautiful McKay Falls
Pfeiffer Beach - so nice the locals keep taking the signs down!
Point Lobos - where we spent hours trekking the amazing coastal trails watching the crushing ocean, resident sealions and otters.

It's crazy, it's perplexing, it's a mystery ...
In direct contrast to the rugged shoreline, Carmel made for a nice change - allowing Ali to drool at the windows of 'if you need to know the price you can't afford it' jewellers and Steve at the huge mansions overlooking the sea. A former Bohemian retreat, Carmel is a millionaire's dream with glamour and wealth dripping from every awning, posh eateries, galleries galore and a pristine beach, not to mention the fabulously expensive 17 mile drive and Pebble Beach golf club.

Monterey however, with its envious position at the edge of the nation's largest marine sanctuary, was much more in our price range! Whilst not as beautifully preened, it is just as nice a place, plus that was where the campsite was (still can't understand why Carmel didn't want it there?!?!).

Santa Cruz, renowned for it's hippy lifestyle, beach culture and promenade, was also a must stop, not least because it's also home to the 'Mystery Spot' (wooooh). And, whilst the beach and promenade (think smaller scale Blackpool Pleasure Beach) was disappointing, the Mystery Spot was, well a mystery! A place where the laws of physics don't apply and gravity goes haywire, you can stand whilst leaning backwards, roll balls uphill, walk up walls and get smaller as you walk uphill - very bizarre! The scientific theory is that some unseen magnetism upsets the natural equilibrium, but we prefer the flying saucer fans idea of metal cones buried in the earth in order to guide visiting spacecraft!

If you're going to San Francisco ...
Arriving in San Francisco, with its magnificent views, dainty Victorian houses, impossibly steep hills and dozens of cable cars, we both fell in love. It really is exactly how you imagine - sophisticated, vibrant, diverse and way too cool. Obviously the fact we were staying in a hotel (a big deal after a week in a tent!) in the trendy Cows Hollow district merely heightened our enthusiasm for the place and called for a celebration - a few cocktails later we'd spent what we'd saved by camping and ensured the following day's sight-seeing would be seriously impaired! Hangovers aside, we did still manage to cram a lot into our 2 day visit:

Fisherman's Wharf, complete with resident sealions, great restaurants and tacky tourist shops (and yes we did succumb to the lure of the pearl factory where you fish for oysters and design your own jewellery with the contents - luckily ours did have a pearl in it as an oyster necklace wasn't that appealing!)
Alcatraz with an engrossing audio tour which brings the place to life and an entertaining guide to regale you with tales of failed escapes.
Chinatown, every city seems to have one but this is probably the closest to the real thing - not entirely a compliment given our Beijing experience!
North Beach, an atmospheric Italian district great for people watching over a Cappuccino.
Union Square, a mad crush of shoppers, buskers, hustlers, sidewalk chess and tourists lined up at the cable car turnaround which, apart from the last two. felt like Oxford Street on Christmas Eve.
Pacific Heights, made infamous by the movie of the same name and home to the most photographed row of houses in the World (apparently!).
Lombard Street, the self-proclaimed 'crookedest street in the World' - we later found out it isn't even the crookedest street in San Francisco but it was pretty cool nonetheless.
Golden Gate Bridge - what can we say. It really is an eye-pleasing engineering feat - 2 miles in length with a main span of 4,200ft - it takes a team of 25 painters and 1,000 gallons of orange paint per week to keep this national monument shiny!

If you go down to the woods today ...
After a few hours driving around various viewpoints in order to get that perfect postcard shot of the bridge, we got back to the serious business of road-trippin' and found ourselves on another continental plate at the Point Reyes National Seashore, which runs alongside the San Andreas Faultline and boasts 100 sq miles of beaches, numerous lagoons and forested cliffs - an amazing place which would only have been better if it wasn't so windy! Still, we had fun exploring and watching the wildlife before pitching our tent in the deeply forested, bear and mountain lion infested local State Park - a good job we didn't know about the wildlife until morning, though perhaps if we had we might have thought better of cooking chili on an open fire!

Our next week or so consisted of camping in various forests and on beaches along the North Coast of California (not so different from the South apart from the world's oldest and largest Redwoods lining the road - some of which you can actually drive through, through Oregon and into Washington State. Our highlights:

Bodega and Bodega Bay - An idyllic fishing town and inlet village famous for Hitchcock's 'The Birds'
Gualala - A cute lumber town perched above a windswept beach
Mendocino - A lovely, but costly, artist town along the cliffs - $9 coffee anyone?!
Glass Beach - A pretty beach covered with colourful (worn) glass - remnants of the local dump!
Lost Coast - Untouched, undeveloped and stunning
Cape Perpetua - where volcanic intrusions and exploding surf creates a dramatic effect
Beverly Beach State Park - where they were all out of campsites so we got to stay in a Mongolian Yurt (no, we're not sure what they have to do with Oregon either!)
Portland - A vibrant city full of micro-breweries, coffee-houses and tax-free shopping - a wonder we made it out of there!
Route 30 - A beautifully scenic drive interspersed with views of the Columbia River and Gorge that divides the two states, numerous stunning waterfalls and a strange tea house run by a woman from Reading!
Mount St Helen's - which, after a couple of false starts (2 of the viewpoints were closed - a pain when there is at least a 60 mile drive between them!), afforded great views of the true extent of the damage done by the 1980 eruption - a 24 megaton blast that leveled hundreds of sq miles of forest and blew 1,300 ft off the top of the mountain!
Port Townsend - A well preserved Victorian seaport resembling an old sepia photo with some very bizarre shops and the historic Fort Worden (where An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed).
Olympic National Park - one of the USA's most popular parks (not that you'd notice as we felt like the only ones there) with crystal clear lakes, lush rainforests and magnificent waterfalls.
Port Angeles - A forgettable town worthy of a mention solely for its pawn shop - full of high quality jewellery, musical instruments and nazi memorabilia - which bought our camping gear from us for almost what we paid for it!

And the lowlights : freezing cold nights in a tent, millions of bugs and a strange eye infection which led to a black eye - prompting many dirty looks and an old lady patting Ali on the arm at Seattle airport and telling her 'you're doing the right thing dear' as Steve was taken off to get his bag searched - presumably she thought Ali had reported him for abuse!

Sleepless in Seattle ...
Sorry, but we really were after deciding to stay out near the airport for convenience as we had an early flight!

We heard it was criminal to be in Seattle and not get out to the Puget Sounds islands so we killed two birds with one stone and got the ferry into the city via Bainbridge (a quiet, quaint and pretty place). Seattle itself was another great city, full of nice shops, bars, restaurants and the world's first Starbucks!

We've really fallen in love with America's West Coast - so much beautiful scenery and so many fantastic cities and towns that it's been really hard to narrow it down to just a few highlights so apologies for the long blog!