Friday August 18th
I slept well, and woke up at daylight, now synced with US time. It was a warm, sunny day, and I drove off to nearby Morro Bay, and got breakfast at McDonald's. I went into the drive through, and it was weird because I found what looked like a rubbish bin instead of the place where you order. I was stopped, puzzling over this, when someone came over and told me I was going the wrong way. Their drive throughs go the other direction!
Morro Bay was quite pretty. As I walked out to the beach, an older guy told me he could tell I was a tourist. Apparently I was dressed too nicely, and my pants weren't staying up! I walked along the beach for a little while. There weren’t very many people around. The beach had a fair sized bluff at one end, mainly just bare rock, which was quite striking.
From there I set off for Big Sur. I couldn't take Highway 1 along the coast because it was closed with a landslide further up. It seems that this highway is closed for significant percentage of the time with landslides. The alternate route wound up through the hills to the main inland Highway 101, before backtracking on Highway 1 down the coast again. The drive through the hills in this upmarket car would have been pretty enjoyable if I’d been more used to driving on the right hand side of the road. I was still trying to make sure I was not driving too close to the edge, but it was a nice drive in any case.
I got onto 101 and drove for a couple of hours through fairly flat territory on a four-lane highway. Some of it looked a bit like South Australia, but here and there were oilfields with the big pump heads going up and down. Most of the trip the speed limit was 65mph (104km/h), but there were sections where it was 70 (112km/h). I worked out how to get cruise control going on the car (surprisingly complicated for a fancy car), and realised that it was also automatically steering to keep me in the lane - mostly! But sometimes when the curve was too great it would just give up and I had to rescue it! It did insist that I keep my hands on the steering wheel, and sometimes told me off even when I was holding it, but maybe just with finger and thumb.
I bought something for lunch along the way at a service station, and kept going, skirting Monterrey to get onto Highway 1 southbound. I came to Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, near a place called Carmel-By-The-Sea, which I think may be part of Monterrey, and turned in to have a look. Parking was a bit scarce, but I found a spot and had lunch there, and a bit of a walk around. It was nice, but not very different from what we have here. There were signs warning of poison ivy, which I had heard about. Contact with it could cause painful rashes.
From there I headed further south to the famous Bixby Bridge. I found a spot to park in a pull-off near the bridge, and took lots of photos. There was a lookout spot on the other side of the road, and quite a few other people doing the same thing. I walked down to a place where I could get a better view, and when I was coming up, someone was asking me something, and addressed me as “sir”. This happened quite a bit in the US.
The road wound along the side of the hills by the coast with some great views, then turned inland for a while. I made my way down a tiny, rather windy narrow side road to Pfeiffer Beach, for a quick look. But they wanted money to get in, something like $15, and they said it wasn't a particularly impressive beach – it was just special because it was one of the only places you could actually access the beach along the coast there. It wasn't worth it for just a quick look which would have been all I had time for.
I got back to the main road, and before long it started getting near the coast again. After stopping at a couple more lookout points, I came to Partington Cove, where there was a walk down a slope through a gorge leading to the cove. The first part of the walk was in direct sunlight and pretty warm, but it wound down into a rather nice forested area with a little stream going through the gorge and out to the sea. The cove itself was quite small and rocky, with the tiniest bit of sand, and towering cliffs on either side. There were a few people sitting on rocks enjoying the sun.
A little further along was McWay Falls, which has a beach with a waterfall going directly into it. A short walk along the top of steep cliffs led to a good viewpoint of the small sheltered beach. You couldn't get down to the beach, but it was nice to see. It was about quarter past five by this time, and time had run out, as I had about two and a half hours of driving to get to my destination near San Francisco.
So I headed back the way I came. I was doing the speed limit but apparently that was way too slow for most people. I pulled off at one stage and quite a few people who had been behind me passed by, one tooting me! I stopped biefly to get something at a parking area next to the Big Sur River Inn near the Pfeiffer Beach turnoff, which also had a store, and lovely flowers out the front.
I was to stay with Ron, a coworker and friend, who lived in the town of Dublin, about 10km from the outskirts of San Francisco, and a fair distance from the centre of the city. He suggested that he order some tacos from a store in a town called Castroville near Monterrey, and then I collect them, since it was on my route to him. I was keen to try out authentic California tacos. He said he’d got tacos there a number of times when he was in the area, and they were excellent.
I had pulled over on the highway shoulder to read his message and ring him, which I’m not sure if I was supposed to do, though there weren’t signs saying not to as far as I could see. Getting back to speed quickly to get back into the traffic I discovered that the car was pretty powerful. I think it was a V8, and had an 8-speed auto transmission. I would have enjoyed driving such a powerful car more if it wasn’t my first time driving on the other side of the road in another country – it was a bit wasted on me under the circumstances!
There was some confusion when I got to the taco place, I think maybe he had ordered them in my name, and I was asking for an order for him, but we got it sorted out, and I went to pay for them, but found he had already paid. It was about an hour and a half drive from there to his place, along Highway 101, through San Jose and onto I-680, which went out to Dublin. I arrived around 8.30 or 8.45, after dark, and when we got there he heated everything up again, and we ate. The food was good indeed.
My case was too heavy for the weight limit of a single piece of luggage with Southwest Airlines, which I was using to fly to Phoenix the next day. Ron suggested packing some of it in a box, which was a great idea since I was allowed two pieces of luggage. I didn't know you could check in boxes. He had a scale which hooked onto an item and you then held it up, and we weighed the case to try and make sure it was under the limit of 50 lbs.
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