Category: America

We spent a few days in a lovely airBnB in Oakland chilling, being entertained by chattering blue Jay’s and squirrels playing. We’ve taken a trip to Alcatraz (yes, they let us leave!) – interesting, albeit smelly trip (the island is now home to a huge number of seagull and cormorant nests hence the smell).

The cell block audio tour was worth doing, with tales of what life was like as a prisoner and the few escape attempts.

There was an excellent exhibition about the Indian Occupation of the island in the 1970’s too. After our boat trip back, we wandered along Fishermans Wharf and then hopped on one of the famous cable cars for a trip up and down the crazy San Francisco hills

and also saw one of the trams that had just been restored – it was out on its first trip complete with people dressed in historic attire.

The next evening, our hosts invited us to join in their street party for National “Night Out,” which is an annual event now and a wonderful opportunity for everyone to meet their neighbours. We did feel as if we were gate crashers but were welcomed by everyone, so we were soon put at ease.
Then we hopped on a ferry to Sausilito for a wander around – still didn’t get to see the Golden Gate bridge – the bay was in sunshine, but the bridge still shrouded in sea fog!!! Obviously, it is a very shy bridge!!!

We’ve also seen the USS Potomac ship (aka the floating white house – President Roosevelt used it for a while) in Jack London Square in Oakland. Jack London was an author, born in San Francisco and famous for his books “The Call of the Wild” and ” The Sea Wolf”.
Can’t quite believe we have reached the end of another leg of our trip – next stop Hawaii!

As we didn’t have far to go and had time to kill before getting to our hotel in Santa Cruz, we visited San Juan Bautista. This pretty town was once a bustling city in the late 1800s before the railroads took a lot of the stagecoach business away. Now the old hotel, stables, blacksmiths and adobe are protected as a State Historic Park – they have laid out an interesting self guided tour with some entertaining information boards.

These buildings are laid out around a large grassy town square and on one side is the San Juan Bautista Mission complex, founded in 1797 and which became known as the Mission of Music.

In the Chapel there is a door with a cat flap built in so they could catch the mice (yes even in those days!) and you can see animal foot prints on some of the clay floor tiles where they walked over them as they were drying in the sun!!

The San Andreas Fault runs along the hill at the bottom of the cemetery and during the 1906 earthquake the sidewalls of the church collapsed (they were restored in 1976). The remains of the original El Camino Real can also be seen here.

The Mission was featured in several scenes in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Vertigo” and there are a couple of old carriages in the museum that were used too.
We then continued our journey to Santa Cruz – our final stop before handing the car back.

And so our 3394 mile,  5 week, Pacific Road trip has come to an end and the car has been returned!
We did venture into the crazy world of Santa Cruz for a day – if you love the beach, surfing, fishing or amusement parks, this is the place for you.

We walked the length of the 2745 ft wooden pier (longest wooden pier in the US) – never seen so many fisherfolk – and watched the Californian Sealions barking and jostling for a place on the pier supports.

There was a rough sea swim going on when we arrived, which looked like hard work and lots of surfers looking for a good wave. We didn’t  spot sea otter 841 though – its making the news as its been hitching lifts on surfboards and then taken to biting the boards and becoming a nuisance so they are trying to catch it to check out its health. We wandered around the famous Boardwalk for a while watching some of the rides – 2 are historic landmarks now (the old Giant Dipper roller coaster and the Charles Looff carousel with 73 wooden horses and a 342 pipe organ – both rather gentle in comparison to the thrill rides of the modern world but lots of people were still queuing to go on them).

Then it was back up the road to the Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery for a good pint and pizza from the food truck next door.

For those who are interested, we used the Moon book “Road Trip USA Pacific Coast Highway” by Jamie Jensen as a rough guide to base our trip on.
Would we do it again? Probably not, but if we did we’d stick to the area above San Francisco and explore Crater Lake, Mount Hood, Mount Ranier and Mount St Helens National Parks.
Now for a few days chilling before leaving mainland US and heading to Hawaii.

We moved north up Highway 101 to Salinas for a couple of days (the salad capital of the US, supplying nearly 80% of the country’s lettuce!! And also where John Steinbeck,  the author, was born). From here, we drove the north end of the Big Sur (Highway 1) as far as the closure at Lucia.

It started off with the infamous marine layer covering everything  but soon the sun burnt through and we had blue skies again. Whilst the Big Sur is supposed to be one of the main road trips I must admit, whilst it was scenic, I think we’ve seen just as spectacular, if not better, on other stretches of Highway 1 (Depoe to Cape Perpetua and Fort Bragg to Jenner). There were 31 bridges built, most of which  have been replaced, with the exceptions of the 7 concrete bridges known as the Big Sur Arches like Big Creek Bridge and the iconic Bixby Bridge (didn’t stop for this one as too many tourists!!).

We stopped off to see the McWay falls – an 80 ft waterfall that drops directly into the Pacific (well, it does when the tide is in and is then known as a tidefall).

We did also manage to watch a group of huge magnificent Californian Condors soar overhead – they were on the brink of extinction but in 1987, scientists captured the last 27 and started a breeding programme before releasing back to the wild – it seems to have worked.

The next day, we visited Carmel Mission, one of the more important of the 20 plus missions on the El Camino Real. It was the home and final resting place of Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who established a lot of the missions (and according to a gravestone, the final resting place of Old Gabriel at 151 years old!!). The gardens here are beautiful.

From here we drove around Carmel (not the 17 mile toll road as it was so foggy it wasn’t worth it). Sadly, the 1855 Point Pinos lighthouse in Pacific Grove was closed but we did have a wander around the local cemetery (all the gravestones are laid flat to the ground) along with a small herd of deer!!!

We then parked up in Pacific Grove and walked the sea trail along into Monterey. During the Spanish and Mexican regimes, Monterey was the Capitol of California. In later days it became the hub of sardine fishing and canning. The old cannery row is now rather commercial but you can still see the old cannery buildings either side of the row and there are still three of the original 16 bridges that vaulted the street – they were used to shuttle unfilled cans to the cannery and packed tins of sardines back to the warehouse for shipping out by rail.

There are plenty of information boards around explaining a lot of the history and canning process, and not to forget, the links with author John Steinbeck.
We had a lovely seafood lunch at the Coast Guard pier, listening to Californian Sealions barking away from their resting places under the pier.

Whilst walking back, we spotted a sea otter playing in the sea kelp and a group of harbour seals lazing in a cove.

From Colusa we travelled on to Chowchilla and on down through the humungous flat central valley of California, passing acres and acres of orchards – almonds, walnuts, pistachios, peaches and nectarines (all growing in amazing heat – 40 degrees plus) and on down to San Luis Obispo. Having had various discussions, we had decided not to go to Lake Tahoe or Yosemite further up due to the huge queues of tourists visiting (3 hour wait just to get into Yosemite!!!) so went south instead but knew we weren’t going to get as far as San Diego (too hot and there were wildfires south of LA).
We spent a couple of days in San Luis Obispo – famous for the 1772 mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and the Madonna Inn (a pop culture landmark – rather outlandish decor in each of its 110 themed rooms!) – oh and home to the Central Coast Brewing Co – hmm, wonder which one we visited!!!!

We spent a very hot day visiting the tourist trap known as Solvang.

It was set up as a Danish community in 1911 but has developed into a rather kitsch fake European town – however, the danish pastries were lovely. We did visit the old mission Santa Ines here, built in 1804, which had beautiful gardens and was lovely and cool.

There were about 21 missions built between 1769 and 1823 by Franciscan missionaries from San Diego up to Sonoma all about a day apart and linked by the El Camino Real (Kings Road) which runs roughly along Highway 101 and is denoted along the way by mission bells on posts.

Next day we travelled the south end of the Big Sur (you can’t do it all in one go at present as it is still blocked after a huge landslide in April this year) and visited Hearst Castle, William Randolph Hearst’s 115 room hilltop house (The Enchanted Hill)! It was a collaboration between Hearst and architect Julia Morgan which lasted from 1919 to 1947. It is somewhat over the top and filled with amazing art and antiquities that he collected during his lifetime and is now a Californian State Park. Although it took some 25 years to build, it was actually never finished and still remains that way. There are several tours you can do but we just did the Grand Rooms tour (taking in the Neptune Pool, Esplanade, The Cottages, Casa Grande, North unfinished terrace and Indoor Roman Pool), which also included a film.

There is a 20 minute bus tour to take you up a very steep windy road to get to the top. We never got to see any zebras (they were released onto the estate when his zoo animals were rehoused and apparently still roam the fields!!).

After our trip we headed on up the Big Sur and came across the Elephant Seal viewing area – we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t seeing these huge creatures so close up. They are on the beach and the public can view them from a cordoned pathway. There were some year old pups who had completed their first migration – they seem so small compared the giant adult males!

We ended our day with a pint and chilli at Central Coast Brewing.

We’ve left Windsor and travelled to Colusa.
Our 4 nights in Windsor were supposed to be a bit of a treat in a slightly better hotel (hah) with a pool for a chill out. Let’s just say that did not happen and left us with a very unpleasant memory. However, Windsor is a lovely town, laid out around a town green, with some great people who reminded us why we were travelling!!! We had intended to go on an organised wine tour of the Sonoma Valley but discovered that there are wine tasting rooms in Windsor, so we just tried those – cheaper too!!! Well, in reality, we only got as far as one – Baldassari and stayed as we loved both the wine and the company there!

We popped to Sonoma (lovely town based around the old Solano Mission and Mission Barracks from the Mexican War) and Healdsburg (gorgeous high-end shopping area and lots of wine tasting rooms). We probably didn’t do the area justice as couldn’t quite get into the right frame of mood but hey ho – it’s taken 15 weeks of travelling to reach our first low point so we probably haven’t done too badly!!!!!
Sonoma County has links with Charles M Schulz, creator of Peanuts, so we kept coming across life size cartoon characters dotted around the town!

After Windsor we travelled inland to get around San Francisco (doing a loop around, going south then coming back up the coast to return the car to San Francisco before spending a few days there), via Clear Lake (apparently the oldest in the US) but should have been called Green Lake – it was very smelly too but seemingly this is a summer thing!! We did see an Osprey fly overhead with a fish in its talons. Then on to Colusa – a tiny town in the Central Valley, sitting in 38 degrees, so hot but where we met some lovely characters – yes, that’s what travelling is about – meeting new people and listening to their amazing stories. One such couple are driving a lovely 1949 Ford Shoebox around – they’re off to Montano soon in a convoy with 7 other hotrods!! Oh, and weirdly, we’re in rice growing country!!!! And as per Asian rice paddies there are white egrets here too.

We headed from the heat of Willits back to the coast, where it was a lot cooler. The road was incredibly windy but stunning. We stopped at Fort Bragg and saw the Skunk Train go out (it used to go through to Willits, but now only about 3 miles due to tunnel damage).

Then we travelled on down Highway 1 – wow this stretch of the road is not for the faint hearted, (a couple of times I nearly sat on Andys lap, bloomin high up and close to the edge!). We stopped off to visit Point Cabrillo light station, built in 1909 and now refurbished, along with the lightkeepers (or Wickies as they were known – keeping the wicks alight) houses which can now be rented as holiday cottages.

The next stop was Mendocino – a pretty coastal town, still with the old water towers intact in places and used in several movies and the murder mystery series ‘Murder She Wrote’.

Then, on for a quick stop at the Point Arena Lighthouse (built in 1870 and 113ft high)

and some seal watching

before carrying on this scary road (several places where a lane has disappeared over the edge!!) to Jenner – there we headed inland up the Russian River Gorge, past stunning vineyards up to the lovely town of Windsor. We didn’t get a chance to visit Bodega Bay (bit further down Highway 1 but film buffs will know it for Alfred Hitchcocks’ film “The Birds”

In Crescent City we stopped at the quirky Curly Redwood Lodge (all the wood comes from one single curly redwood tree and built in 1957). Yes we were in the giant coastal redwood area so we went to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park where we stopped for short hikes to see big Redwood trees like the Corkscrew (3 redwoods growing and twisted together to form one), the big tree reputedly 1500 years old and the Cathedral of trees.

We saw endangered Roosevelt Elk on the elk prairie and then lots of brown pelicans and the last surviving World War 2 radar station on the coast just off the coastal trail at Klamath. We also had, of course, to do the slightly tacky tourist thing of driving through a Redwood tree.

Then on down highway 101, hopping off on side roads to visit places like Sue-meg village – a traditional native indian village of buildings that are still used for teaching and a redwood dugout canoe that takes 7 years to make and is then handed down through generations.

We drove on through the towns of Arcata, Trinidad, Eureka, Samoa (fog bound) and on to the lovely old Victorian town of Ferndale – full of beautiful old buildings, often used in films. We stopped for a pint in the very atmospheric Palace saloon, complete with antique shuffleboard, original bar backdrop where local characters play dice for a pot behind the bar (barkeep said it’d been won 3 times the previous week so could be expensive now – winner buys everyone a round plus 10% for the bar!!!).

Our accommodation for the night was Shaw House Inn, an old frontier house built in 1854. A beautiful house with so much character still within it and everything you could possibly ask for in a B&B.

Before leaving Ferndale, we popped into the cemetery to see the great pair of headstones put in place by a married couple who are still alive – loved the carrot cake recipe on the back of her headstone.

Then on through Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the Avenue of the Giants to see more trees!!!!! The Founders Tree is allegedly the tallest at over 300ft. Coastal Redwoods are among the fastest growing trees on earth and can grow between 3 and 10 feet a year. They also have a unique thick bark that protects them from insects and fire. Sometimes, if fire does get through the bark and into the heartwood, it forms caves known as goose pens. We saw lots of these here.

It was a lovely drive but the temperature was rising fast so we just headed off to an air-conditioned motel in Willits (accommodation is cheaper inland than at Fort Bragg or Mendocino where we had originally hoped to stay) for the rest of the afternoon!

Depoe Bay is known as the whale watching capital of the Oregon coast and we’d agree with that – we saw several whales (spouts and tails) just whilst we were walking along the sea front after breakfast! Depoe even has its own Blow Hole on the shore (a geological oddity that allows for water spouts as high as 20-30 feet in the air if the sea conditions are right (too calm for us so only a couple of feet if that!). It’s also got the smallest harbour (Guinness world book of records), it certainly has a narrow entrance, especially at low tide!

We took a day’s ride out along highway 101 down to Cape Perpetua stopping off at the many stunning outlooks and rock formations along the way such as Otter Rock, Cape Foulweather (more like Calmweather during our visit!), Devil’s Punchbowl,

Newport and the beautiful Yaquina Bay bridge & two lighthouses – Yaquina Bay (only wooden one on the coast) and Yaquina Head (93 feet high, apparently the tallest on the coast),

Seal Rock, and the Devil’s Churn and Spout Horn at Cape Perpetua and view from the top of the Cape along the coastline.

Next day we carried on down through Florence, quick hike up to Heceta Head lighthouse (masses of harbour seals around the rocks here with pups), through Reedsport and past the massive dune area, quick photo stop at Umpqua lighthouse before overnighting in Coos Bay (our worst motel to date and we’ll say no more on that!!).

Happily leaving Coos Bay, we stopped off at Cape Arago – well, this definitely made up for our rubbish motel! We explored the lovely Shore Acres Garden, then at Simpson Reef wildlife lookout, we saw harbour seals, very noisy californian sealions and one juvenile elephant sealion. Volunteers had set up binoculars and telescopes and happily identified the wildlife for us.

We then came across a weekly Coast Guard rescue exercise, which we watched for a while! Then, on down to the lovely town of Bandon (Cranberry Capitol of the west coast) with the Coquille River lighthouse, some strangely shaped and named sea stacks on the beach (including Face Rock).

Had to have a look at Cape Blanco lighthouse built in 1870 and reputedly the oldest and highest (you may have detected a trend here – everything has to be older, bigger, higher etc here and all the towns have straplines!!).
From Coos Bay down to Brooking, the coastline is stunning, and we were once again blessed with mainly blue skies. Along the Samual H Boardman state scenic corridor, the coastline is scattered with many rock stacks and arches (Arch Rock, Thunder Rock, Whaleshead etc).

Then we travelled on through Brooking and said goodbye to Oregon and crossed the border into California, where we were promptly engulfed with the infamous sea fog!

From Astoria, we headed inland up the beautiful Columbia River Gorge – although we hadn’t expected it to be quite as hot (mid 30s) and stopped at Horsetail Falls for lunch on the way.

We stayed at the Celilio Inn in The Dalles, right opposite The Dalles Dam. We had a couple of lovely sunsets just watching the dam and river from the patio, enjoying a lovely breeze to cool us down. Our first nights dinner was at Clock Tower Ales, which is the old courthouse and site of the last public hanging in Oregan in 1905!
We managed a very short walk around town and came across the American Empress paddlesteamer moored up on her journey between Portland and Spokane.

I even got my Scoopers ice cream – only 30plus flavours to choose from here – dark cherry was lovely and Andy enjoyed Caramel Caribou – just what was needed in the heat. We also loved all the murals painted around the town.

Next day we drove to Hood River to visit the WAAAM (Western Antique Aeroplane Automobile Museum). Wow, we’ve never seen so many early era planes and cars – all pristine, beautifully presented and apparently in working order! We spent a good 3 hours there checking them all out.

Then we went around the aptly named Fruit Loop – a lovely drive around near Mount Hood where the soil is volcanic and fruit grows well. Heavily laden cherry trees at this time of year and lots of cideries and wineries.

We also visited the exquisite Hope Ranch Lavender – stunning colours, lovely essential oil, and lavender sprays, and pick your own bouquets but BEST of all was the delicious homemade soft lavender ice cream! We also got some great advice about how to care for our own lavender plant at home.

On our way back, we diverted on to the historic Highway 30 and wound our way up to Rowena Crest – amazing views of the Gorge from the top and also the switchback we were going to travel down!!!

Finally, we left the heat of The Dalles, the turkey vultures and american pelicans, and headed back to the coast. We stopped off at the Bridge of the Gods (man-made version but the name originally came from the native Indians verbal stories of a huge landslide on the Washington side of the Gorge that completely blocked the river for many years), and Bonneville Lock and Dam.

Very interesting free tour here about the history of the Gorge and the dam. You can see the fish ladder that the adult salmon use (the juveniles go down the spillways on their journey apparently having to avoid sealions at Bonneville or american pelicans at The Dalles dam!) – believe it or not the fish are counted manually because technology has not been able to count and sort them into different species (yet!).

Then on past Portland, we came across the Evergreen Aircraft and Space Museum. We very nearly didn’t stop but decided we needed to stretch our legs. So glad we did because we discovered this museum is the home of Howard Hughes Spruce Goose!!! My goodness, it’s one hell of a huge machine – couldn’t get a picture of it all, it’s that big!!!

Again, excellent displays in both the aircraft and the space museums. There’s also a water park hanger with a 747 on the top that is part of a water slide – how mad is that?

We continued our trip through hazelnut and walnut groves before getting back onto Highway 101 and the Pacific coast, which was much cooler (phew) and stopped in Depoe Bay.

We’ve just spent 4 nights in Astoria on the mouth of the Columbia River (the same river we walked by in Revelstoke in Canada!!) and is often called little San Francisco due to the hill in the middle! It has lots of lovely old Victorian style houses, a maritime museum which looked great but didn’t get chance to visit, an old trolly tram that travels the 3.1 mile shorefront, and is home to scenes from various films such as The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, Free Willy and Short Circuit amongst others.

We took a day out to visit Tillamook Air Museum for Andy to get his aircraft fix! It was a naval air base that housed blimps (K class airships) in world war 2 to escort shipping up the coast and which now has a range of aircraft and interesting information boards housed in the largest wooden hanger remaining.

We attempted to visit Tillamook Creamery but didn’t bother staying as queues were stupid – who knew a creamery could be so popular? On the return journey, we revisited Cannon Beach and managed to get a photo of Haystack rock – you couldn’t see it in the morning as the marine layer (sea mist) had come right inland.

On the 4th of July, we spent exploring Astoria itself. We stopped at the Astoria Brewing Company taproom, where we met Rigel, the bar host and an artist. He’s got a very interesting background, having grown up in Guam with hippy parents.

Then we met a couple from Bristol, Helen & Rob – Helen grew up about 15 miles from me!!! Small world eh?
Then onto Fort George brewery before having a Mexican meal with Rob and Helen. We walked back UP THAT hill before it got dark (no street lights) and saw several deer eating peoples front gardens, including one with 2 young fawns. And then the 4th July fireworks started – what a racket!!!

Next day we hopped over one of the many bridges in Astoria to Werrington to see the rusting hulk of the Peter Iredale, a 4 masted steel barque ailing vessel that ran aground in October 1906.

Then onto Fort Stevens, which was constructed in 1863 and saw service for 84 years. It was also the site of a Japanese submarine attack, June 21st 1942. We watched a bald headed eagle on her nest with a chick for a while – the nest was on the old chimney of the Battery Clark Command Station!!

Then, back to Astoria to visit the 125 foot Astoria column, dedicated in 1926 and which tells the history of Astoria’s pivotal years from before white people arrived up to the arrival of the railroads in 1880s. There are stunning views from the column, and you can see across to the aptly named Saddle Mountain on the Oregan Coast mountain range.