CALIFORNIA CRUISIN'- a road trip

After picking up the hire car we headed south towards Monterey Bay. It was mostly freeway driving & not particularly interesting although there were some nice views towards the end.

Decorative front on the old theatre in Monterey

Next morning we tried to get an early start so after a very uninspiring breakfast at the motel we headed off on a coastal drive called '17-Mile Drive' which ran around the headland, past some lovely scenic spots, multiple golf links (as distinct from golf courses as links are built on sand dunes) including Pebble Beach, even we have heard of this one.

Spanish Bay, this is where we saw the sea otter & loads of harbour seals

The actual lone pine, used in the Pebble Beach company logo, 250 yrs old

Eventually we ended up at Carmel & before you ask, no we did not see Clint Eastwood! Carmel is a strange sort of place there are no street numbers & your address is just east or west, north or south of the town centre....weird, I would hate to be a postie here.

This is Bird Rock, so named for the hundreds of birds that call it home,
but those darker lumps on the top are hundreds of seals

So by about 9.30am we were on our way south on the famous California Highway No 1. The views were amazing, cliff edges, gagged rocks, vertiginous bridges & some wonderful wildlife.

One of the concrete arch bridges built in the 1920s,
there are at least a dozen just like this one



This gives you a good idea of the whole stretch,
absolutely wonderful!



Getting a  feel for the steepness of the cliffs, no guard rail on the road
....aaaahhhhh!

We arrived in Morro Bay about 4 pm with just enough light left to have a wander round the town centre, to walk along the embarcadero & look at the marina. It was well & truly dark by the time we got back to our motel room. It is a really lovely town with a huge volcanic rock in the bay connected by a sand spit & a fishing fleet. There were lots of fresh seafood restaurants here but the hiccup is that some fool thought it was a good idea to build a power plant right next to the town with three chimneys.



Just to show where we were, on the famous Highway 1, no we didn't cycle it!!



Dusk at Morro Bay with the granite 'island'

We drove over the Coastal Ranges the next morning & through the fruit growing areas with views of the Sierra Nevada snow-capped mountains off in the distance. We passed through a couple of lovely townships, naturally we stopped at the fire stations & had lunch at a typical US Diner with red checked tablecloths & old movie posters decorating the walls.

 

Chips with that, Sir

Visalia, one of the beautifully restored buildings in the old downtown area

We arrived at Three Rivers mid-afternoon & after a cuppa in our motel room we headed up to the entry gate to the Sequoia National Park to check out the requirements for travelling in the area the next day, snow chains weren't required but part of the road we wanted to use was closed until April so we needed to rethink our plans.

A section of sequoia marked to show the growth rings, Paul Bunyan thrown in for fun

It was a very winding trip on a narrow road up to 7000ft in the Sequoia National Park but it was worth it to see the giant sequoia trees. They are truly majestic & superlatives fail me to describe their size. The largest living tree on earth, the General Sherman Tree is here & it is honestly absolutely huge, not the tallest but by sheer volume it outstrips all others. It is thought to be 2,700 years old, they cannot actually see the rings of course but they calculate the age based on the rings in younger trees that have been felled or have fallen & the circumference of the living tree.

Entrance sign

General Sherman Tree

There was even a little bit of snow to make it even prettier. On the road there were loads of opportunities for panoramic views that on a clear day would surely extend to the Pacific coast.



Cross-section of a fallen sequoia, just a little one, 1700 years old

Unfortunately the highway through the park was closed due to road works so we had to do a bit of backtracking & drive up another river valley to get to the other end of the road. This lead us to Kings Canyon National Park which also has amazing stands of these incredibly old trees. At this end we saw Grant's tree, well it is actually General Grant's Tree, again a massive tree, with the largest circumference. In this grove there was a fallen, hollowed out trunk that has remained unchanged for 200 years (tannins in the wood make sequoias resistant to fungi, rot & insect damage), it was used by pioneers as a shelter, stables, a pub & shop. A quick 50 mile drive & we were in Fresno for the night.

General Grant actually



Had to stand back quite a way to get this
all in one shot

View from 7000 ft

On the road again the next day! This time to the famous Yosemite National Park, it was about a two hour drive to the entrance gate from our hotel. The granite cliff faces & meadows in the valleys make this area so pretty even in the winter when most of the trees are leafless.



A roadside view



Granite cliffs of Yosemite

We were fortunate that several of the waterfalls were flowing, they are naturally much larger in the spring melt but it was great that we were able to see them running at all. We seemed to be pulling over for a photo opportunity almost every five minutes, it is a wonder we made any progress at all. We visited the Anwashee Hotel, built in the 1920s of stone & timber, it is beautifully decorated with native american flooring patterns, friezes along the cornices, art works in the store & plateware in the restaurant.



Granite cliffs & waterfalls....perfect combination



Stone & timber, perfect combination, Anwashee Inn

At the tourist information centre there was a 30 minute documentary film on the early years & the people who helped save this special area for future generations. After the movie we popped into the Native American Museum, lots of great original baskets, clothing etc. Just to make it extra special there was a little, old lady (no not me, she was native american) was making a beaded basket, she told us it had taken her a year, on & off, to get to this point as she only uses traditional methods & selects, dries & treats all her twigs, reeds etc.

Just to make us feel comforted

Had to get a few miles under our belt next day but it was a scenic trip through 'Gold Country' where in 1846 gold was discovered in California, naturally starting the gold rush. Numerous 'cute' western style towns, gorgeous river & lake scenery, more history than we could keep track off....such as Mark Twain's short story being written about the frogs in Angel Camp in 1865. We spent an hour in the middle of the day wandering round the township of Sutter Creek & talking to the lady in the tourist information office. No gold these days but liquid gold in the form of vineyards & wine is slowly bringing the area back to life. With Sacramento only about 50 miles away & San Francisco & Reno a couple of hundred it is becoming quite the 'Hunter Valley' of the San Joaquim valley.



Take away the car & replace it with a horse & you have an old western movie

We had initially planned to take one of the mountain routes to Lake Tahoe but that plan fell in a heap when they closed two of our options & made the other choice suitable for snow chains only. So we had to settle for Highway 50 which, as it turned out, was a pretty good choice. The scenery was lovely with pine forests all round, steep-sided river ravines, granite boulders with a smattering of snow as we rose slowly beside the South Fork of America River (that's the one where they actually found the first gold) to 6000' where a vista of Lake Tahoe opened up before us as we drove over the ridge. Much more snow at this altitude but not enough to close the roads which were clear & dry so nice & safe for we amateur snow drivers.

Lake Tahoe, a sandy beach with snow on it...there is a first time for everything

We awoke to a glorious fine & sunny day in our gorgeous motel room, talk about striking it lucky, they upgraded us into a king room with small kitchenette & gas-fired wood fireplace, it was so homey. Up we went in the gondola from Heavenly Village to the top of the ski hill. The first stop was an elevated platform/walkway that encircled a rock outcrop, from here we got magnificent views over the entire lake.



Lake Tahoe panorama, taken from the scenic platform



Emerald Bay with its little island, most winters this would be under snow

We enjoyed our scenic drive around the western edge of Lake Tahoe, stopping at all the vista points to enjoy the scenery. This road lead us to Tahoe City where we naturally called in to the Fire Station. We passed many wonderful snow covered building, mostly timber or stone or a mixture of the two & all fitting beautifully into the surrounding forest. It was definitely unusual to have an area with both beaches & ski slopes within 500 metres of each other.

Truckee township, where are the horse & buggies?

After Tahoe we headed directly north to Truckee, we had passed through here on the train trip but it was lovely to be able to have a better look. The town has a fabulous 'old frontier' type main street. From here we followed Interstate 80 through Donner Pass, again we travelled through here in the train but it was lovely to have a different perspective this time. 

The exterior of the covered bridge, with its thousands of wooden shingles



Inside the covered bridge....still sturdy after 150 years

Heading west we turned off the main drag at Nevada City & went bush a bit, to see a piece of history.....the longest clear span covered wooden bridge in the world. Remember the Bridges of Madison County, well it is one of those but it is 233' long & was built in 1862. Regretfully it is closed to traffic now because of safety concerns but it is still an amazing structure, the beams are huge & it is still as solid as a rock. The exterior is covered with wooden shingles.

Clear Lake, the largest fresh water lake in California,
apparently great fishing here too



Crikey...the animals you see grazing here are huge!

From the bridge it was a winding drive through the mountains to get to our next night's accommodation in Yuba City. The route from Yuba City to Leggett the start of the top half of Coastal Highway 1 was uneventful, mostly just rolling hillsides & valleys but we did travel along beside Clear Lake for a while. This is the largest natural lake in California with a shoreline of over 100 miles. Early on in our trip we drove through the orange growing centre of the state but today at a higher latitude we went through the apple, pear & walnut centres, there was a town named Williams & one named Bartlett too.

We spent the night at Leggett in a motel with no TV, radio, cellphone reception or internet - definitely off the highway now! Late in the afternoon, just before closing time we made a quick trip to the Chandler Tree, a giant coastal redwood (they are a type of sequoia too) but rather than gigantic trucks these are the tallest tree in the world. Anyway the Chandler tree is a 'Drive Thru' tree with a road that goes right through the archway that was carved in the base of the tree. Who cut it out & why they would do that I'm not sure, but it certainly has novelty value.



That is Grant in our hire car, just had to
 push in our wing mirrors

Off down the coast Highway 1 towards San Francisco next & what an amazing trip it turned out to be! The road hugs the cliff edge for a hundred miles or more (must say it was nerve racking to be the passenger as travelling south I was on the cliff side).

 

Beautiful rock formations in the stormy seas

There were plenty of these, both
arriving & leaving

We stopped half way along the journey at Timber Cove Inn, a gorgeous weathered-timber hotel clinging to the clifftop for the night. Continuing the following morning along, what turned out to be even more terrifying cliff edges. In the passenger seat on the ocean side with no safety rail I was closer to the edge than I would normally go at a lookout. So terrifying, I had to shut my eyes for long stretches opening them when Grant pulled into a 'turn out' as they call them here to enjoy the views. The ocean was quite wild with waves crashing round the off-shore rocks, there were tunnel/arch rocks everywhere & what sand there was, was black volcanic. 

Glorious vistas from the roadside

This area is famous for its whale watching during the winter months but unfortunately we didn't spot any, just hundreds of seals sunning themselves at the mouth of the river at Jenner. Just south of Jenner there was a cliff edge that I had just bought a postcard of, anyway it doesn't look anything like the postcard now, where there used to be twenty luxury homes now there was just crumbling cliff face, they had all been claimed by the sea. All that remained was a few pylons that had been the footing & foundations of the mansions overlooking the Pacific. The cliff was almost back to the road, guess they will have to relocate the road too eventually. It was dumbfounding to hold the postcard in one hand & to look at the current situation at the same time.

Mouth of the river at Jenner,
can you see the seals on the sand near the channel?

There used to be a row of mansions along that cliff top, before the sea
reclaimed them

Another seaside spot we drove though was Bodega Bay, made famous in the Hitchcock movie 'The Birds', pretty spot with a marina/harbour full of very expensive boats & yachts. Turn left, travelling inland & we were on the last step of our two week trip, driving through dairy farm country till we got to Santa Rosa. From here it was just a short drive to take the car back & catch the train to Portland, Oregon.