From the UK to the UK via CA, NV, UT and OR

Day 16 – California

The main event today, I’ve always wanted to drive the Pacific Coast Highway in a soft top with the music playing, and today I got to fulfill that ambition!

So it was up and on the road early, the plan was to head South from Crescent City via the 101 and 1, ending up in San Francisco this evening.

First stop was the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the Newton B Drury Scenic Parkway drive – this 8 mile long road runs alongside the highway and was my first sight of the redwoods for which this part of the world is famous.

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On the way through I was lucky enough to come across a herd of wild elk feeding.

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Onwards to Lady Bird Johnson Grove, this is mainly a trailhead for a number of walking trails that pass through various different eras of large trees (some that weren’t cut down during the logging here and others that the Park Service have planted as part of their efforts to improve the area.)

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Just up the road from the main parking area is the scenic redwood overlook, this gives a great vista over the redwoods, all the way to the ocean.

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A long run down the 101 now to Scotia.

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This is one of the last company towns in the USA, pretty much everyone who lives here works for the lumber company and the town is owned by them, it might be my imagination, but stopping here and walking around was like walking into a strange bar – heads turned and conversation stopped!

They did have a small museum and a couple of examples of the historical methods of working timber.

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Just south of Scotia is the famous Avenue of the Giants – this is a 32 mile trip on a wonderful road through the depths of the thousands of acres of redwood forest.

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Outside the visitors centre is a fallen tree that has been dated from 1148 – incredible to think of the changes that have happened in the world over that time.

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At the end of the 32 miles is one of the two trees here that you can drive through.

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At the junction of the 101 and the 1 is the second drive-thru-tree – it would be rude not to!!!

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Following this, I start to drive the 1, only to discover that I don’t have enough fuel to make it to the next stop – a 30 minute backtrack later I fill up ($3 a gallon as they’re “the only show in town”… grr)
And get the PCH underway.

It lives up to every preconception that I had – a truly fantastic drive, where every corner reveals another stunning vista

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Midway through the trip I stumble across a Porsche club from Washington state doing their own road trip, we chop and change road position for the next couple of hours.

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Sunshine, great roads, my V6 burble, air cooled Porsche engine whine and Toby Keith on the stereo – life doesn’t get much better. I think I’ve strained my face from smiling so much.

Truly a perfect day.

Anyway…. Enough eulogizing.

Final destination today is San Francisco – I booked my hotel on the Internet before I left the UK, and on the strength of the fact they have free parking (most hotels here charge $50 a night) I booked the Hotel Adagio… what a result, the room is probably one of the nicest I’ve ever stayed in – 14th floor with a view.

So that’s where I am now.. enjoying an ice cold Skyy and looking forward to tomorrow.

Thanks for sharing the trip with us this time!

Really, a great report -- And thanks for re-loading the San Diego images again!

Mark

Day 17 – San Francisco

When I planned this trip I was intending to spend much of today doing laundry and other domestic stuff, however a previous hotel stay sorted all that for me, so I had more time to explore today than I thought.

First stop was to drive Taylor Street. Made famous by the movie Bullitt with Steve McQueen, the street’s changed little, it’s still seriously steep and full of tourists doing the same as I.

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Straight after Taylor comes the famous crooked street – this contains 8 turns within a 1 block space, and again is full of tourists!

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After the corners I’ve driven in the last few days it’s nothing really, but pretty cool none the less.

The final planned stop of the day is the observatory at the DeYoung museum.
This is a free look over SF from the 9th floor of the DeYoung art museum.

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The views from here are pretty good, unfortunately though it’s not possible to see the bridge.

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However, as I’m leaving the DeYoung I spot an open top bus….. it’s tour time!
$35 for a 48hr unlimited tour, takes in pretty much all the sights in SF, including the bridge.

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And Alcatraz

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I hop off the bus at the famous Fishermans wharf and take a tour of the second world war submarine that’s permanently moored here – the USS Pampanito.
Very small inside, amazing that 80 sailors lived in such close quarters for such a long time, this must have really been true.

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I’ve heard of cellphones, cordless phones and visually impaired phones but I’ve never seen one of these in my local radio shack.

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Back on the bus and a long stop at Macys to do some shopping means that it’s gone 7 before I get back to the hotel and head to Ruth’s Chris steak house for dinner… yum!

I’ll be back to fisherman’s wharf in a couple of days, my initial impressions of SF are good, but the homeless population are a real downside, it can be quite intimidating just walking around, getting accosted every 30 seconds.

Day 18 San Francisco / Yosemite

Checking out of the hotel this morning, the weather forecast was undecided as to what it wanted to do, but I wasn’t too concerned as both of my planned stops today were indoors.

First up was the NASA Ames research museum.

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This is a small facility on the outskirts of the secure NASA facility here in San Fran.
It’s actually a really interesting site to visit, albeit a little brief – I spent 90 minutes here and thanks to joining in on a guided tour I actually learned quite a lot!

Probably the most interesting thing was a video shot at the International Space Station of one of the astronauts eating dinner… sounds mundane, but the gasps coming from the viewing public would disagree.

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Plenty of hands on exhibits, and a good cross section of history, current and future projects make this a recommended stop… it’s free as well which helps!

Second up today is the Intel museum

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As an IT person I couldn’t come to the home of computing and not do something a little geeky!
It turns out the museum isn’t geeky at all, it just makes me realize how long I’ve been involved in IT, a lot of the items exhibited in the museum section were current when I started playing with PCs

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The tour guide has some interesting tidbits – in 1978 a flight from CDG to JFK cost $900 and took 7 hours – if airline development had happened at the same rate as computing, that same flight would now cost 1 cent and take less than 1 second!!
This development pace is called Moore’s law and is actually named for one of the founders of Intel.

There are plenty of hands-on exhibits here as well, including one that notes that “it would take you 25,000 years to turn a light switch on and off 1.5 trillion times, but Intel has developed a transistor that takes less than a second to do the same”.

It’s an interesting tour, and again one I’d recommend even if you’re not particularly technical.

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Leaving Intel late afternoon I head toward the campsite just outside of Yosemite, when I get there I head into the little one-horse town down the road for some dinner and bump into a couple from Huddersfield, where I went to university.. can’t get away from Brits!!

Day 19 – Yosemite

Thanks to not setting an alarm clock (because I always wake early when I sleep under canvas!)
It’s 10.30 before I’m on the road from the campsite toward Yosemite.

First stop today is Hetch Hetchy dam and reservoir.

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This place provides water and power for 95% of the San Francisco area – no tours of the works here, just some great visuals and a few information boards.

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Be aware though that travelling anywhere in this region takes ages, most of the people on the road think 30mph is quite acceptable and get a little emotional if you try and pass them… oops!

The trip from here to Yosemite itself is full of vista points, each one has something different to recommend it, plan on taking at least an hour to drive the route.

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Unfortunately the weather started to close in as I got to Yosemite and by the time I parked up in one of the car parks the rain was falling hard.
Yosemite runs a free shuttle bus between all the points of interest, in the hope that you’ll abandon your car at the start of the park and leave it.
This is what I did and it worked well to be honest.

The bus took me to the visitors centre and then on to the base for the valley floor tour.
I would recommend doing this tour upon arrival to the park, the drivers are a mine of information on what to see, where to walk and timescales which really helps.

The weather’s really closed in now, and it’s impossible to see the tops of the rock formations.
Apparently there are groups of climbers on various faces of the surrounding mountains… I don’t envy them!

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Unfortunately the weather stays with me all the way back to San Francisco, making it a long 3hr trip.
No real problems though and I’m now back in the same hotel I stayed in 2 nights ago.
A real scene when I first arrived as there’s an NBA hall-of-fame player staying here… he is the tallest man I’ve ever seen!!

Day 20 – San Francisco

The Coit tower in San Fran was built with money bequested by an eccentric woman during the great depression.

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The city government asked a number of famous artists to paint murals inside the tower as part of the NRA program to find people work during the great depression era.

Many of these murals are hidden away and can only be seen on a once-a-week guided tour, held Saturdays at 11am.

The Coit tower therefore is my first stop today.

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The murals are impressive, containing much hidden symbolism, the opening of the tower was even delayed a while due to communist overtones within some of the murals.

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Catching the bus down to the famous Fisherman’s Wharf, I head to pier 39 to see the resident sea lions.
The noise these creatures make is unbelievable – if I worked here I think it would drive me to distraction.

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On the Hyde Street pier are moored a number of classic vessels that are open to self guided tours. They don’t take long to walk around, but it’s interesting to watch the ongoing restorations in progress.

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A quick trip to Ghirardelli Square for one of their famous chocolate sundaes

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I head to the Hyde Street terminus of the Powell – Hyde streetcar line and jump on the running boards for the 50 minute round trip. I chose this line as I’d been told it was the most scenic, and so it proved.

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When I return to the Hyde Street terminus, I have an hour to get around to Pier 33 to board the evening Alcatraz cruise.

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The rock lives up to my expectations, the ranger talks are a fascinating insight into the history of Alcatraz and the audio tour, complete with memories from inmates as well as guards is well worth doing.

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Unfortunately however coming over on the 6.45 crossing doesn’t give nearly enough time on the island, I barely did 1/3 of the tour.
If you want to be on the island in the evening (and it’s definitely worth doing this if you can) then I would suggest heading over on an earlier crossing and staying.
When I booked my ticket, I didn’t realize that you can hop on any return so I didn’t do this. A big mistake.

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Returning to the hotel I’ve time for a quick change before heading out to meet an old schoolfriend who I haven’t seen for 15 years who now lives in San Fran.
We have a good night watching his friend’s band before heading out to another bar.
It’s late when I get back to the hotel but I’ve not got too much to do tomorrow so can lie in!

Derek,

I thought that San Francisco was going to be the end of this year's trip -- so it was a real nice surprise to swing by here tonight and see you are still here and sharing stuff with us. Speaking of old school IT -- I remember using card compilers and keypunching computer cards using Fortran.... It never seemed like science to me then -- more like art --I never really knew what was going to happen when the compiler ran.... (I wasn't particularly suited to the task of key punching I guess).

Mark

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

Derek,

I thought that San Francisco was going to be the end of this year's trip -- so it was a real nice surprise to swing by here tonight and see you are still here and sharing stuff with us. Speaking of old school IT -- I remember using card compilers and keypunching computer cards using Fortran.... It never seemed like science to me then -- more like art --I never really knew what was going to happen when the compiler ran.... (I wasn't particularly suited to the task of key punching I guess).

Mark

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Thanks Mark

This trip ends back at LAX on Tuesday, so I only have a couple more days to go.
I've seen so much and covered so much ground that it's going to take a while for it all to sink in.
Luckily I have plenty of photos and this thread to help jog the memory.

Day 21 – San Francisco / Highway 1

It was raining when I awoke this morning, which didn’t bode well for the dreamt about “roof down run down route 1”

My first stop was Laguna Seca raceway.

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This circuit is now owned by Mazda, and was busy today, a skidpan school in the paddock and single seaters out on track.
I mainly wanted to come here thanks to an episode of Top Gear where Clarkson tries to beat his PS3 time for real. There’s a bend here called the corkscrew that looked pretty impressive on the TV.
Sadly it’s on the back part of the circuit which is closed off, so I have to make do with watching from Andretti hairpin.

Onwards then to Monterey. It’s a bustling little town, full of the smell of the sea and lots of tourists strolling about in a break from the rain.

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It used to have a huge canning industry, packaging all the fish that were caught off the coast here.
Nowadays, Cannery Row is a shopping area with art galleries, restaraunts and gift emporiums.

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The jewel in Monterey’s crown though is undoubtedly 17 mile drive.
This scenic trip through… unsurprisingly 17 miles… of headland must be awe inspiring on a clear and sunny day.

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Sadly this afternoon the famous west coast fog has started to roll in, making it tough to even see some of the points mentioned in the self-drive tour brochure.

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This lone Cyprus tree has been on this outcrop of rock for some 250 years, it has a little help nowadays in the form of chains and fences, but still…..

Towards the end of the drive is the famous Pebble Beach – home to a wonderful golf course and a mecca for classic car fans.

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There’s not much happening this afternoon though unfortunately.

Carrying on down route 1 you reach Carmel, the town made famous by the fact that Clint Eastwood was its mayor for 2 years in the 80s. He still lives locally and owns a ranch and restaurant in town.
Carmel also has one of California’s nicest missions – tucked away up a side street on the outskirts of town, the 1771 Mission San Carlos is still a functioning parish, it just also happens to give tours!

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I had originally planned to stop at Bixby bridge to take some pictures, as the scenery there is supposed to be great – however the fog is so thick that I can barely see the other side of the road, so instead I’ve continued to Big Sur and checked into a motel here for the night.
If the weather has improved tomorrow I shall drive back to Carmel and re-do that section of route 1.

A good place to grab lunch in Carmel, if it's not too late.