Week 3-4 June 21 - July 4th

Only been here a couple of weeks and we are on the move. Lesley is presenting a paper at a conference in Santa Cruz so we are taking the opportunity to combine it with some sightseeing.

We braved the Ca91 Freeway in peak traffic on Friday morning, turns out rush hour is much less stressful with traffic mostly crawling along in the congestion. Normally the Freeways are not for the faint hearted - minimum 5 lanes in both directions all nose to tail and doing 80mph. No mercy is shown to fellow drivers,  which is odd because California drivers are incredibly courteous to pedestrians and cyclists - to the extent they will just stop on a busy road in heavy traffic to allow you to cross the road.

We arrived at the famous Venice Beach Boardwalk in time for coffee - within the first 50 yards Lesley is conned into buying a dreadful rap CD by her mate Leon aka Mr100.

We stayed overnight in Santa Barbara - a very pretty coastal town full of Spanish architecture and
another coastal boardwalk for us to cycle along. The town was preparing for a big carnival to be held the next night The Summer Solstice Festival but unfortunately we had to move on.

Although the motel at Santa Barbara was the pits we had a great evening in the nearby mountains at an old stage coach Inn called Cold Springs Tavern, just near this impressive bridge:

Ever since leaving Venice Beach and Santa Monica we had been following Highway 1 - The Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and the section from here to San Fransisco is reportedly one of the World's most scenic drives.

We were amazed at the SoCal version of free camping - miles and miles of RVs camped right on a very busy highway To the right of this photo is a railway line and next to that the 101 one of the busiest Freeways in California. Admittedly the beach is right behind them.

One of the less severe parts of the track up to Big Creek

We met up with Doug and his wife Leanne, who are also going to Santa Cruz,  at the small beachside town of San Simeon and proceeded up the PCH to our overnight stop at a University research station at Big Creek in one of the most spectacular parts of the PCH. The Big Creek research facility is situated at the end of a very steep rough and winding road in the heart of the forest country overlooking the coastline. The poor old Dodge, being a front wheel drive, low clearance people mover was not happy going up the track and at one point we had to have four run ups to get up a particularly steep narrow section with a sheer drop on one side and cliff face on the other.

Lesley, Doug, Leanne and the resident caretaker at the Big Creek Research Station which belongs to University of California (UC) Santa Cruz.

We had a magic night at Big Creek with good food, lots of wine, good company and amazing scenery.

Next morning we continued up the PCH to Monterey, out came the bikes again and we cycled up and down the foreshore, feasted on clam chowder at the renown Cannery Row and saw other places made famous by the novels of John Steinbeck.

By mid afternoon we were in Santa Cruz and checked into our luxurious suite at Days Inn and Suites - just a tad classier than the Motel 6 at Santa Barbara!

The next couple of days Lesley attended her conference at UC Santa Cruz whilst Keith biked around the city, got sunburnt and enjoyed the hospitality.

Harbour Seals at Santa Barbara Pier

Big Basin Redwoods

A spot of illegal parking to take photos

You can get anything you want at Alice' Restaurant - excepting Alice that is - and excepting it's in the wrong state!

After the conference dinner the previous night we were fairly slow moving when we checked out on Wednesday and continued our drive North. We diverted inland for a while and drove through the impressive Redwood Forests and  had coffee in Boulder Creek an old but still thriving old  timber town. We stopped at Big Basin Redwoods State Park for a photo opportunity and lunch at Alice's Restaurant which pretends to be the one made famous by  Arlow Guthrie but we know better!

Back to the coast and overnight in a very nice Inn at Half Moon Bay after yet again pulling out the bikes and doing the foreshore ride.

Next morning we continued up the Cabrillo Highway to San Fransisco. We drove straight to The Presidio which is a park near the Golden Gate Bridge. Checked out Fort Point which is an interesting old barracks right under the span of the bridge with most of the old cannons still in place and  amazing views of the bridge. The bikes came out of the car and we cycled across the  bridge along with several thousand other pedestrians and cyclists on a fairly narrow pathway right next to the 8 lanes of traffic!

Golden Gate Bridge with Fort Point tucked underneath. When the bridge was being planned the fort was originally destined to be demolished but the design was changed and an extra span added to go over the fort

Lesley in the powder store at Fort Point

The Golden Gate bridge is rather dwarfed by other bridges that cross the SF Bay. The Bay and San Rafael bridges are at least 5 times as long

The Richmond San Rafael Bridge is 5.5 miles long

 We were lucky to have lovely weather the first day, but then the SF fog came in from the sea and the day we drove north along the coast to the lookout points across SF, there was nothing to see, every now and then the top of the Golden Gate Bridge would appear and then disappear again! Anyway we had a great time.

It was the same fog for the next few days, the locals call it the marine layer, it was really thick in the morning but by early afternoon it is lovely blue sky (much the same in OC and all along this coast).

From the Coits Tower on Telegraph Hill (the highest point in SF) we could see the whole city skyline hidden in the fog . One of the places we wanted to go to was Alcatraz, but you apparently need to book before you go and the next available boat trip and tour was a week after we were due to leave SF, so we just took a photo of it looking quite menacing in the fog!

 One of the highlights of our stay in SF was the ride on the Cable Cars

The cable cars travel up and down the steep hills of SF, driven by underground cables powered from one location at the Cable Car museum and Power Station.

Massive great wheels drag the cable along and huge sheaves and pulleys direct the cables under the streets of San Fransisco.

The cable car operators have to pick up the cable to travel along then drop it to stop. It is a very energetic job and involves a lot of skill and coordination between the "Gripman" man and the "Brake man’ to control the car, not just on the steep hills, but also through all the intersections they have to navigate!

This shot give some idea of how steep some of the streets are in SF!

There is an old and established China Town in San Fransisco and we were a bit taken aback by some of the produce for sale - dozens and dozens of shops all with huge amounts of dried sea cucumbers, seahorses etc

This is Lambert Street -  very steep and windy and features in a few Hollywood car chases. That's our trusty Dodge on the way down at a more sedate pace.

On the way back down from SF we stopped at Monterey again as we had been invited to stay with someone we met at the conference (John & Vicki Pearse). They are a lovely couple well into their seventies, but still really active physically and mentally. Vicki’s parents wrote the text book “Animals without backbones” that we used at Murdoch for many years in the 1970’s and 80’s, and then John and Vicki revised it and renamed it “Living Invertebrates”. They are both still writing papers and books. They have a lovely house right on the beach at Monterey with massive windows that overlook the ocean. We sat and watched the sea otters in the kelp forest and harbour seals on the beach opposite while we had breakfast!

Lesley and John at the Hopkins Marine Station

 We kept a lookout for whales, but it is apparently not the best time of year for them. John gave us a tour of the Hopkins Marine Centre owned by Stanford University that is just across the road from their house. It was great to hear about the history of the place and see the library with ocean views just as lovely as from John’s house, where he goes to every day to write! John also gave us guest passes to the Monterey Aquarium the day we got there and we spent the whole afternoon and still did not see everything! It is great to see an aquarium so different from the usual exhibits, with the emphasis on the amazing diversity the kelp forest sustains. But I also loved the jellyfish exhibition (very relaxing), and the seahorses, even though most of them were Australian species!

Monterey Aquarium

 Cannery Row,  Monterey - outside Bubba Shrimp Company

The last leg of our trip was back along the spectacular coastline via the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), but this time we were driving on the coast side of the road so got much better views.

Lots of great lookouts on the PCH

 We stopped for lunch at a real American diner, superb hamburgers!

We got back from our trip in time for July 4th celebrations. We went to the Fullerton celebrations, but apart from the long legged girl dressed in the stars and stripes it was crowded and there were immense queues for the food, so we went home and sat on the balcony of our condo to watch all the fireworks across town!

Week, 2 June 14-20

Thursday saw us at Fullerton markets - a mostly produce and giftware market in downtown Fullerton held every Thursday evening, not terribly inspiring but a good beer garden. Without wanting to sound alcohol obsessed - the local beers are surprisingly good and much more like English beers, most bars have 10 or so beers on tap and there are plenty of boutique breweries, one of which Doug took us to after the markets.
 Our first weekend in Southern California (SoCal) and the weather is warming up. Every morning there is a thick fog (which to our discredit we first thought was a pollution haze!) which is sometimes called the marine layer as it is a sea mist that rolls in every night and keeps things cool until it burns off at about noon.

Saturday we were up early to scour the Yard Sales for a bike for Keith - not early enough to have any success as used bikes are keenly sought after. Yard Sales/Garage sales/Estate Sales are everywhere on Saturdays - tempting to buy lots of "stuff" but know we can't bring it back to Australia. We ended up going to a bike shop and buying a very nice used mountain bike.
So on Sunday with both bikes in the van we headed to the nearest beach - Newport Beach.

 Newport Beach still plenty of morning sea mist but no shortage of bathers.

 We took a cruise around Newport Harbour - lots of expensive waterside houses to see, bit like doing the Mooloolaba harbour tour just different peoples houses. We were impressed by by the Coastguard chase boat with three 300HP outboards.

Week 1 June 6-12

After a sleep-over at Bill and Pat's place the night before we finally dragged our nearly 100Kgs of  baggage to Brisbane Airport. Our flight to LA was uneventful and our passage through US customs and quarantine remarkably easy considering we had to declare  the chitons  Lesley had brought with her.
Lesley's colleague from Cal State Fullerton, Doug,was at LAX to meet us and took us on a whirlwind tour of the area in which we will be living and working for the next 4 months. Luckily for us Doug's car had broken down the day before (he collected us in a University vehicle) and on calling in to his mechanic we found he had a car for sale. So within 2 hours of being in the country we had purchased a car, sorted out insurance and registration, organised Sim cards for our phones and internet for our computers.

This is our car - a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan - not what we had anticipated buying for just the two of us but has proved ideal, all the seats fold flat into the floor giving us a huge space to carry our bikes etc

We checked into the Marriott at Fullerton, spent the next couple of days trying to remember which side of the road to drive and moved into our condo (like the lingo?) on the Sunday.

 We were amused by the fact that there are oil wells scattered all through this district, right in the heart of suburbia. This one is on our street corner

 Took a while to work out that this strange looking tree is actually a mobile phone tower!

 This is the view from our condo. The pool is part of the deal -so far we are the only ones to have used it.

This is the inside of the condo. If you look very hard at the view from the window you can see Disneyland. we get a ringside seat to the firework display every night at 9.30pm sharp.


The second evening here we sat down to watch TV and suddenly everything was moving - our first California earthquake.
There is certainly no shortage of shops and shopping centres and just about everything is CHEAP compared to Australia. We made the mistake of buying duty free booze on our way in only to find it is much cheaper here in the supermarkets. A 1.75litre bottle of Ballantines Scotch cost me $18. Corona beer (the real stuff bottled in Mexico) is $19 for a carton of 24.

Lesley started work and within a day or two had borrowed a bike from Doug and was cycling in every morning, followed by a session in the University gym.
Keith provided moral support and spent time recovering from arduous bag carrying/trophy husband duties