Back to Downey, LA - 5 & 6 July 2010

On the Road Again, one more time – 5 July 2010

Well, we hit the road again. We packed up the van after a couple of fun filled, walking filled days in San Francisco. I had forgotten how much fun you can have in that city. The road out of the city was just down the road from our hotel. Thankfully, this road led us directly to US 1.

We drove US 1 back in April. It was the first highway we drove up and the first beautiful scenery we encountered. The road was just as beautiful as we remembered but this time there was a lot more traffic. For the time we were on the 1 we were stuck behind slow poke after slow poke.

One thing we hadn’t counted on was the fact that everyone would be making their way back to LA. Well, everyone was. And we found this out in its full force when we reached Santa Barbara. The traffic had been flowing smoothly and then stopped. We didn’t go above 5 mph for about 1 and ½ hours. And this began 120 miles (170-ish kilometres) from the city…

Thankfully, I had been looking for a way around this, so we turned off and made our way up towards Ojai. This area is just beautiful and is full of fruit trees. We then made our way towards Interstate 5 and the hope of better traffic. But, the traffic was just as bad. We are talking about 4 lanes that was barely moving. Thankfully, after it turned to 5 lanes of traffic the backlog cleared up.

The I5 led us directly back to our old stomping ground, Downey. We made our way back down Lakewood Blvd and back to the hotel we had stayed in 3 months previously. The Indian couple who had looked after us originally and who had agreed to hold our mail, greeted us again. They recognised us straight away. They gave a room just next to our old room and gave it to us at the same rate.

After unloading the van, we made our way back up to Chilli’s restaurant. We were really hoping that the kitchen was still open, it was 9pm after all. Thankfully, the kitchen was still open and even more, the same waitress who had waited on us 3 months prior, was still there and even more so, remembered us and even what we had ordered those first times.

We enjoyed a delicious filling meal and said farewell to our waitress. On arriving back at the hotel we started the painful process of packing our bags. We have accumulated quite a bit of ‘stuff’.

Repacking took a couple hours and we went to bed late. Just as well, because we hope to be tired enough to sleep on the flight tomorrow night.


Goodbye Sacky – 6 July 2010

This morning was all about tying up loose ends. Firstly we went and washed our laundry at the local Laundromat (exciting stuff, eh?).

Then while Pia did some research, I went out to try and sell the van. Tough job, as it turned out. No matter how reliable it’s been, it’s a bit rough looking and it’s a 17-year old, obsolete model. I checked and since we began the trip, the book-price for that model, for a private sale has dropped from $1600 to $1000. We really wanted to get $500 if we could but after running all around town and talking to about 15 dealers, I had to settle for $300. Better than nothing, though. And I sold it to the only guy who wasn’t going to part it out. Soon Sacky will be going south of the border. Having seen most of the US and parts of Canada, she will be starting her new life in Mexico. Cool.

Cash in hand, we took a cab to the airport and checked in at 5:15. Our flight’s 10:30. We used some of the van’s sale money to upgrade our tickets for more leg room. After last time, we learned our lesson.

So we are writing this from a restaurant at the LA airport. We are having Calamari and wine and beer for a late lunch. And soon we will be boarding our flight. Tomorrow will find us beginning a whole new journey, as we land in Moscow and find a motel and a van over there. Always wanted to see Russia…




Okay. Kidding. But this isn’t our last instalment. Stay tuned and we will have more when we return home…

The final Mark and Pia snap, this time with Sacky in the background. We love that little van and hope she has a wonderful life in Mexico.

5 July 2010, misty and missly, just as it was when we first drove up this road. But just as beautiful.

San Francisco - 3 & 4 July 2010

The City by the Bay - 3 July 2010

This morning we set out on foot again to explore more of the city. As in Savannah and Seattle, we decided that the best way to orient ourselves would be to get a good tour and use that as a way of finding out which areas and places would be worth re-visiting.

First though, we visited a great store called Rasputin's, in the Union Square area. Rasputin's is a new and second-hand place specialising in new and old, common and rare movies and music. We found many treasures and splurged on a couple. Overall, though, it was worth visiting just for the vibe.

So after exploring on foot for a couple of hours, we boarded a trolley car for a 2 hour whistle stop tour of the whole bay area. The tour left from near Fishermans Wharf and ran along the shoreline to Fort Point and over the Golden Gate Bridge to the north shore, then returned over the bridge and toured through thhe Presidio, up Pacific Heights, in Union Square, back through Chinatown and Little Italy, before returning to the wharf. It was a lot of fun and taught us a lot more about the city.

After that, we walked across town a bit and up the hill to Coit Tower, a city landmark named for a century old society figure, Lillian Coit, who apparently left substantial fortune to the city for the purpose of further beautifying it. As you walk about the city, Coit Tower constantly pops into view in the background, between buildings or over them. Its design is graceful and it is both a great landmark and a great legacy.

We walked through a portion of Chinatown that we hadn't seen yesterday, but that we had spotted on the tour earlier. We resolved to return in the evening for a Chinese meal. We then returned to our hotel for a period in the late afternoon.

Sure enugh, late evening found us in a second-floor Chinese restaurant in a small side street in Chinatown. I tried a Chinese beer, Tsingtao, while Pia had a Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc. Our feast began with chicken potstickers and vegetable spring rolls for starters, then salt and pepper fried duck and mu-shu port for mains and a small bowl of green tea ice cream for dessert. The mu-shu pork wasn't my taste but other than that, it was very good. And the potstickers and ice cream were complimentary.

We returned to the hotel and went to bed late.

Independence Day - 4 July 2010

We slept in this morning, before striking out in search of the local laundromat. Of course, this being the 4th of July, it was closed. Most coin-op laundromats, we figured, would be open, but the only one within easy walking distance has a cafe attached, so we were out of luck.

On the bright side, we stopped for brunch at a cafe/ restaurant across the road called Triptych. It was awesome. The coffee, the food and the service. All awesome. And a nice place to hang out to boot.

In the early afternoon, we once again walked around the Bay City Area. It is stupendously hilly but we we're both used to walking a lot by now. There were people everywhere and a festive atmosphere. The only dampener is the large number of homeless and panhandlers we are seeing here. Still nnot quite on a par with Vancouver, but dispiriting nonetheless.

We stopped in a very cool old bookstore called City Light Bookstoore. It is in the middle of Little Italy. We browsed here for quite awile over the two storeys and the basement. We each bought a book. Pia bought Armistead Maupin's San Fancisco classic, Tales of the City and I bought, Iron Council by hard core fantasy writer, China Mieville.

The strangest thing happened though, when Pia humorously drew my attention to a 2 inch thick tome called Road Trip America on a budget. We laughed about how it was a bit too late and then I picked it up (it is the size of a telephone book) and it flopped open to a page with a downtown map of San Francisco. What a funny coincidence. This book has every city and area in the United States in it and thousands of pages of text and THAT was the page that flopped open. We laughed and then for added humour I started to point out on the tiny map, just where we were standing and the second amazing coincidence came. The tiny, backstreet bookstore in which we stood, was marked in bold on the map. A tiny map that reduces a city of nearly a million people to a single page, leaving out half of the famous buildings and landmarks because of a lack of space, had marked in bold the obscure spot where we stood. Weird.

One of the odder things for me (Mark), was seeing that some of the Fire Trucks here are tractor-trailer units. The truck is a regular fire truck, chopped off and fitted with a turntable behind the single rear-axle, then all of the ladders and equipmennt is carred on a purpose-built semi-trailer, which has one axle only. There is a small cab on the very rear of the trailer and a second driver sits there and steers the trailer axle. This allows him to track the trailer wheels exactly along the same line as the wheels on the truck, allowing them to get a truck the size of a semi through traffic and tight streets in no more space than an ambulance would use.

We had the very bizarre experience of watching one of these trucks reversing into the station house. First they block traffic, then the truck drives in the right lane while the guy on the trailer steers it into the left lane. They drive about 20 metres in a 45-degree jacknife, then, back themselves in trailer steered independently. It is a very weird sight.

It's just another example of the inventive "can-do" attitude that is seen throughout the city's public transport and tour services that include busses, both diesel and electric. The electric ones use overhead lines like the Melbourne trams. But the busses come in: regular, convertible, bendy, double decker, double-decker AND convertible and Duck amphibious busses. Then there are the old, open trolleys, enclosed trams, cable cars and a lot more besides.

In the late afternoon we returned to the Bay Bridge Inn for a relax. It is quite tiring walking up and down super steep streets all day for three days!

In the evening we went out to a local Irish Pub called the Chieftan, for a counter meal and celebratory drink. We then decided that due to the weather, which had been closing in all day, to go back to the hotel. All throughout the the afternoon the famous San Fran Fog had been rolling in and it now plastered the sky and it had brought the wind in to make it quite chilly indeed. We also figured that we had seen so much of the US over the past three months that we had been celebrating the whole time.

Francis Ford Coppolla owns this building. The Pyramid building beside it is another landmark of the city, the Trans-America Building.

The home from Mrs Doubtfire

Need I say any more!

The very cool trams that are still running

Coit Tower

How steep are these streets!

Chinatown, a fantastic place to walk through.

Fire truck, doing the reversing jacknife on purpose. Very strange indeed.

The Streets of San Francisco – 2 July 2010

We slept in a bit this morning at our hotel in Merced. We hit the road without breakfast (the Denny’s last night came in big portions). We followed the 99 north until we hit the highway west to San Fran. Three hours or so later, we cruised across the Bay Bridge and found (with no trouble) the hotel we had arranged in advance. The Bay Bridge Inn is a nice place. It is nice and clean, modestly priced and right on the edge of the Bay City area, which is where all the action is.

Checked in about 2pm, we went for a stroll. San Francisco is a walker’s city. So we walked into Union Square and made our way along Market Street to the Ferry Market Building, which was awesome. Then we walked along the Embarcadero to the famous Pier 39. Along the way, we also had a late lunch at a famous local bakery/ restaurant called Boudin.

Pier 39 is a touristy kind of market. It is nice, though. We had a good time window shopping there. Wandering around the waterfront area, we came across a place called the Musée Mechaniqué. This place was an arcade of vintage coin-operated machines. There are a lot of moving mechanical dioramas and animatronic fortune-tellers and even old pinball machines and video games. It was really awesome. I scored well on a strength tester and wondered how many young men, in the company of how many young women had gripped those handles before me.

We also stopped in a camera store, where the guy cleaned Pia’s camera internally and refused any payment. Customer service is king here.

In the late afternoon we walked through the largest Chinatown outside of China and back to our hotel, which is one of the quieter ones we’ve had. The plan includes a quiet night in.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more Tales of the City…

San Francisco China Town

One of those really steep San Fran streets, we had yet to walk up or down any of these streets

Pier 39

Pia's favourite shop, and she still can't use left handed scissors.

Ferry Building, an absolute dream building for any home cook, gourmet chef or anyone who likes good food

The cool San Fran Buildings

This is how you turn a cable car around

Coit Tower

Cool building and love the name

Check out the names of these two ginger beer's

Beautiful cable car's, still on the move

Mark and Pia and Alcatraz

Half of the Bay Bridge, on our way into San Fran.

The Last Park - 1 July 2010

We woke this morning in the RV park in Lee Vining and after a hot drink, hit the road. To enter the park through the eastern gate, as we were, you must traverse Tioga Pass. We peaked out at 9942 feet, another new record. Just for the record, Australia’s highest peak, Mt Kosciuszko is 7310. That must be why they call it the High Sierra.

We cruised slowly through the park, from east to west, stopping frequently for short hikes through the woods, up rocky slopes and along rivers. It is a really beautiful part of the world. As the road runs west, it also descends in altitude. We saw some marmots close up, but they are quick little buggers and we failed to get a picture.

We headed to the western sections of the park and saw El Capitan and the Yosemite river. We spotted deer in the woods by the road.

Later, we headed south to the Maricopa Grove and took another walk through the redwoods, including the giants. On the way, we stopped at the side of the road and saw a black bear grazing. He ran off when some guys on Harleys pulled up. Their exhausts were too loud for him. We also saw some bucks up close as they grazed and sized one another up.

In the late afternoon, we headed out of the park, westward, and stopped for the night at a motel in Merced. Dinner at Dennys and a quiet night in.

Buck at Maricopa Grove

Mark and Pia at California Tree, tallest Sequoia in the park

Grizzly Giant, and yes that is the name they gave it

A bear in his natural habitat, but with too many people trying to disturb his lunchtime

El Capitan, Mark moved very gracefully over slippery rocks to acquire this shot.

El Capitan, Pia's shot, trying to rediscover the joy of black and white. Also, it didn't hurt that I had just been inspired by Ansel Adams

How's this for a lunch spot

Stone Structure

Rocky embankment

Moon and River. All that needs to be in this shot is the Death Star.

California Dreaming - 29 & 30 June 2010

Friends in High Places – 29 June 2010

We awoke to a cool misty morning. We left Crescent City and headed south again on 101. The mighty Redwoods were calling us again. Heading into the mist of 101 we turned off onto a very quiet ‘scenic’ byway. This scenic byway didn’t seem to be being used by anyone else, and we soon found out why. This road was in shocking condition. And at this moment in time it wasn’t scenic at all. Yes, in the mist it was eerily beautiful, but, apart from that you couldn’t see a damn thing. The highlight of this road was where we found an outlook on a clifftop above the ocean, only the mist was so thick we couldn’t see the water at all. We were just standing on a clifftop with a panoramic view of …nothing. Just whiteness. It was eerily like standing on the very edge of a flat world. The Viking blood in me stirred…

We turned around and headed back to the 101. But soon enough we were driving through Klamath where there is a sky ride through the redwoods and a tour through the ‘drive through redwood’. These are both money making ventures and we just wanted to see more of those majestic giants. The famous tree that you could drive through in the old days is now long dead and cut off just above the level of the ‘tunnel’, which you can’t drive through anymore anyway. It is far less impressive a sight than the living forests of giants.

Luckily throughout this entire portion of 101 there were many pull outs and scenic detours. At this point in the day the weather had cleared and the scenic detours were very scenic indeed. We took a turn off and parked. The walk we took made its way into what was signed as ‘The Big Tree’. This really made us laugh. All of these redwoods are huge. So how much bigger could this ‘big tree’ really be? Well, we were quite quickly shut up. This tree was huge.

We walked on one of the side trails and were yet again in awe of the majesty and immensity of these silent giants. Some of the skeletons of these trees had been hollowed out over time and you were able to stand up inside these monsters. The texture and colour of the trees is truly beautiful. I have a new immense appreciation of nature, courtesy of this National Park.

We regretfully made our way south again on 101. But thankfully we had a couple more miles of the giant redwoods to guide us south. The US 101 is a very beautiful drive: A two-lane blacktop, baby-bum smooth that twists and turns through the sun-dappled forest, winding around the mammoth trees rather than cutting a swathe through them.

Eventually though, we left the redwood forests behind. The further south we went the more the scenery changed. The green grass changed to have a golden sandy hue and we started to see something very familiar to an Australians heart: The beautiful big grey gum trees and smaller red gums. Very distinct in this scenery but it just added to the feeling that we were back home.

We stopped in Eureka for lunch at an Applebees’s restaurant. This is another chain restaurant. The meals are really reasonably priced and the food is really quite good. We kept heading south, with Sonoma set in our sights.

If you remember from one of our posts from Shenandoah National Park, we mentioned that we had met a couple from Washington DC. Well, we have kept in touch with Laura and Lindley and knew that they would be in California about the time that we would be. It was agreed that if we had the time we would organise to have dinner together and a catch-up.

We had been communicating via email and in the afternoon we spoke by phone. They were staying in a vacation-rental house in the Sonoma wine region, part of the famous Napa Valley. We met at a convenient nearby park and followed Laura up a long, steep, twisting driveway.

The house was very lovely indeed. A designer-style place but very liveable. It sits on a hilltop with a gorgeous panoramic view that looks like a cross between Australia’s wheat-belt and Tuscany, with the surrounding hills topped by vineyards. As the sun went down and the amber harvest moon rose, the distant lights of the towns of Sonoma and Napa spread out before us like a twinkling blanket, and was reflected in the star-filled sky. It was spectacular.

They had a bit of a feast prepared, with salads, veggies and cheeses from a local farmers’ market, as well as some bottles of some of the better local wines. We had a great time catching up and sharing the company of these wonderful folks. We are lucky to have become their friends and we hope that they can visit us in Australia sometime. We just know they’d love it. In the meantime, we hope they’ll accept our most sincere thanks for their friendship. Thankyou, guys.


To see the West, go East - 30 June 2010

This is a popular Californian term, because the ‘old west’ regions of the state are actually inland, not along the coast.

We had a fantastic breakfast with Lindley and Laura and wished them a very fond farewell in the mid-morning. Our intention today was to head west, through the wine and farm country towards Yosemite National Park. This is one of the most famous parks in the world and the only one in the US that approached Yellowstone for grandeur and diversity.

It took a few hours to cover the distance on the busy old country highways and once we got close to the park, we decided to follow US 108, which doesn’t run into the park, but runs around it to the north, climbing into the High Sierra.

The climb up us 108, through the Sonora Pass was amazing. The road itself climbs steeply into the foothills and the golden grasses and gum trees give way to mosses, clover and pine and fir trees as you pass signs that declare the pass ahead ‘open’. Then the forest thickens as we approached a sign warning articulated vehicles, trucks and vehicles over 25 feet to turn back. The gradient ahead was signposted as 26% and it was every bit of it.

Steeper than any other road I’ve seen anywhere, the road is constantly cresting, dipping, twisting, changing camber and switching back in vertiginous hairpin turns, with sheer cliff on one side the whole way and no guardrails at all between you and a drop of 200 – 1000 feet. Even though your speed only ranges from 5 to 30 MPH, it is a two-hour-plus white knuckle drive with very, very little other traffic. Also, the grinding climb really threatened to overheat the poor van’s engine, which is ill-geared for mountain driving. We really had to baby her. We topped out at 9624 feet, a new record on this trip.

The descent 2000 feet down the other side was equally challenging, beautiful and dangerous. While the poor van’s engine cooled down, the trans and brakes heated up…

Eventually, the terrain levelled out into the table-lands of the High Sierra and we made the junction with US 395, turning south towards Mono Lake and the lakeshore town of Lee Vining, at the East gate of Yosemite National Park. We stopped for gas in the town of Bridgeport, where we had to pay $4.09 a gallon! This is the most we’ve paid for gas anywhere this trip, including Canada! Back in Virginia, we had bought it as cheap as $2.39 and here we were paying about as much as we would back in Australia! We also topped up the oil and bought a spare quart after the grinding climb.

Not far south of Bridgeport, we came upon the scenic overlook above Mono Lake. This part of California is truly still part of the old west and Mono Lake is a beautiful sight, but perhaps after seeing Crater Lake, we’ll never be amazed by such a site again. I hope not, though.

We descended into the valley and walked along the shore a bit before drifting into the town of Lee Vining. We got a spot in the local RV Park and had a cheap(ish) dinner in a famous local restaurant. Tomorrow: Yosemite.

How is that for a steep grade? Please all give Sacky a round of applause.

The beautiful Mono Lake, just outside the town of Lee Vining and about 12 miles from Yosemite National Park

About 9,500 feet up and absolutely beautiful

Are we in Australia or California?

How is that for a view? The view from the house Laura and Lindley rented.

Pia, Mark, Lindley and Laura. Thanks again for the hospitality guys, it was really appreciated.

Ok, so how big is this tree stump? And this is about half way along the length of the tree.

Whoa nelly! That is tall.

Where's Mark?

Misty beginnings

Our 'scenic byway'. The road no one else was using.