USA Day 2

Friday 15h
Today we began our journey to San Francisco, the route we picked yesterday invovles taking the 101 through Santa Barbara

to San Luis Obispo, where we take highway 1 for a more scenic route all the way up the coast toward Santa Cruz. The drive

was very very long and by 8:30 (sunset) we still hadn't reached Big Sur and were a good 50 miles from our target of

Monterey, where we'd found a nice cheap motel to stay in if we got there! The day's travelling was cool, we stopped in

Ventura for breakfast (scrambled eggs, hash brown, bacon, sausage) and I stubbed my toe, which hurt an excruciating

amount! We then moved on up the coast on highway 101 to Santa Barbara, which was lovely, los of cool shops, restuarants,

bars, cafés and surf. Kinda like a US version of Byron Bay, but more upmarket.The next place we stopped was called Avila

Beach, just past Pismo Beach, and far nicer, it was a lovely long stretch of sand with a big long pier to walk out on,

fish and enjoy the views. From there, we passed through the town of San Luis Obismo, to switch onto the '1' to proceed up

along the coastline, We stopped briefly at Morro Beach, and Saw some surfers at San Simeon (I had to stop there because

of the Goldfinger song of the same name) then a few miles up the coast we stopped at an Elephant Seal look out, there

were literally hundreds of hte big, fat, lazy, noisey, burping, farting b*stards! got some awesome pictures and a bit of

a video, they were on the beach right beneath us, it was so amazing and totally unexpected! Now, it was starting to get a

bit dark, we figured we had maybe 30 minutes before sunset, so we took off along the road to get a decent spot (our aim

had been to get to Monterey before dark, but that was well out the window now) the road for the next hour or so was

truely not american, I don't know where they stole it from but they should steal more, hanging on to the edge of the

coastline, going up steep inclines, swinging round the edge of a slope, before plummeting back down to sea level for a

hairpin and back up again, it was quite like the more fun parts of the Great Ocean Road in Oz, we caught a really nice

lookout for sunset and took many photos. (Eventually I'll sort through the dozens for a decent one or two!) we then

decided we'd head on to Big Sur and find somewhere to stay. We didn't. they were all booked or too expensive, so we ended

up heading on past Carmel, to Monterey, a big town where we knew we'd find somewhere. We were in by 11, and soon asleep!