PCH Roadtrip – Santa Cruz – San Francisco

Day Four

Carol Blog today.  First one ever.

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the ocean in Santa Cruz. Robert popped out for a morning coffee and we sat on the terrace having our Solvang pastries for breakfast with a beautiful, fresh view.

After breakfast we set out on the road heading for San Francisco.  Not too far into the journey we saw a local park with a covered bridge. Felton Covered Bridge.  A long time dream of mine was to see and photograph an old covered bridge. A few photos later, we are back on the road.

The next part of the journey was simply amazing. Coming off the coastal route today we headed through the redwood forests, stopping at Henry Cowell State Park. Parked the car for an hour and took a hiking trail down to the water…these trees are some size.

Not as big, we hear, as other redwood forests further north but still very impressive and bigger than we’ve seen before in height.

After our morning hike we headed back on the road to our next stop enroute – San Jose. We stopped here so that we could visit the Winchester Mansion. After watching the movie recently, I was expecting it to be spooky and was apprehensive about going on the tour.  However, when we arrived we paid our $40 for the tour as I was pleasantly surprised.  It was such a fun, quirky, beautiful house. Full of amazing craftsmanship and lots of innovative designs for the time. Mrs Winchester deserves quite a lot of credit for this.  Definitely glad we took the tour.

 

Feeling a bit hungry after the tour we stopped off at a local Burrito deli for a spot of lunch.

Excitedly, late afternoon we arrived in the ‘City by the bay’, passing over the Golden Gate Bridge. A first for the me and it didn’t disappoint. Amazing piece of engineering.

We were staying in Tiburon so headed there to check into our hotel before exploring the big city. Tiburon has a ferry service commuting to San Fran…this seamed a more relaxing option rather than driving into the city and trying to find a parking space.

It was a pleasant 5 minute walk from our hotel, the Lodge at Tiburon, to the ferry port. What a lovely 35 minute sail, passing the Golden Gate Bridge , the Bay Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Saved us a Bay Boat Tour.

Once in the city, we wanted to tick off the cable car experience. We were only spending a few hours in the city so we were happy with jumping on the cable car down to Fishermans Wharf for some dinner. The Trolley Car driver was sorry there were no seats for us and we had to hang off the edge. Little did he know this was my dream way of travelling on the tram!

A little bit chilly at this time of day, we were happy to try some clam chowder to heat us up and some Calamari.  Washed down with a local beer.  Tummies full and happy with our San Francisco whistle stop tour we headed back to our hotel. Missing the last ferry we got an Uber for only $5 extra. Arriving back at the hotel for 9pm we decided a night cap was needed at the hotel bar, before turning in. An early start tomorrow for the journey home…☹

Roadtrip #3 – Day Seven – Orange Beach to Lake Charles

Day Seven.

Another travel day but with a stop.  We set off later from Orange beach because it was such a nice view and we got to wander on the beach.  I went down for a wee dip in the Gulf of Mexico but it was pretty cold.  The hotel obviously had a sense of humour which was nice and it was a nice relaxed way to start the day.

After our complimentary breakfast (Carol is obsessed with ‘complimentary breakfast’) we hit the road for a 3.5 hr drive to New Orleans (or N’awlins as we now call it).  This was our second roadtrip that took in a stop in New Orleans. I have to say it’s a bit too much for me really.

She’s on her holidays and she shared with her brother!

Very busy, very dirty and very touristy.  Bourbon street has a smell all along it which I am pretty sure is illegal unless you go to Canada or Colorado!  The roads are a nightmare and it literally took us 90 mins to find a place to park and fight our way across town to get to it.

Having said all of this I think we have been getting the town at it’s worse as it was Friday night and it was Thanksgiving week.  We’d like to come back at a quieter time to see if it felt as intimidating and frankly uncomfortable.  A lot of homeless people and beggars and people out to make a quick buck.  It’s the bane of all tourist places I suppose.

 

We did do the rounds though – visited the French market, had Beignets and did Bourbon street (albeit briefly).  One last criticism – being from Austin and listening to excellent live music every day meant that the Bourbon street banging and crashing sounded amateurish…anyway. One of our family guilty pleasures is NCIS and Carol and I watch the New Orleans version of it so it was interesting to hit the sites from the TV show.

 

We visited the bar that is owned by the lead character in the show, Dwayne Pride, and it is always interesting when you see TV sets.  The bar looks the same on the outside but obviously it’s a sound stage for the show so is completely different on the inside.  The same with the main office location.  It’s a realtors car park but they use it for the base in the show.  Nice to see but I was glad when we paid the car park fee and got on the road.

Our last night on the road was at Lake Charles on the border between Louisiana and Texas.  The journey was interesting as there was a thick fog all the way and it was dark so there were no travel highlights!

Checking into our hotel was interesting as we did it all on the Hilton app.  We checked in then used my phone to open the room.  So no conversation with anyone at the hotel! We’re going to see if we can check out without a single human interaction…it’s an experiment we’re not anti social ;-).

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Roadtrip 2 (Day Two) Odessa

Day Two.

Still in Odessa

Unlike our previous roadtrip we tried not to go too far each day (we had a deadline last time) so we stayed in Odessa for an extra day to explore the area.  We are glad we did though.  We got to do a lot of things that were great fun.

Morning

After breakfast we headed to Sandhills state park in Monaghans.  This is an amazing area of the world.  Like being on Tatooine with all the sand dunes etc. For a couple of dollars you can hire sand sledges for sledging down the dunes…and slide we did!  Great fun and well worth the effort.  The place itself is beautiful also.  We also bought some excellent walking sticks from the shop.  I got a Moose (Our Boy Scout troop adult troop is called the Moose Patrol), Ben got a Wolf and Sophie got a paw print one. 

‘Talk softly and carry a big stick’ is my new policy.

 

Afternoon.

After grabbing some lunch at a highly rated Chinese buffet in Monaghans (it looked terrible from the outside but the food was good).  We headed to the 2^nd or 3^rd largest Meteor crater in the US (6^th largest in the world) – one sign says it’s the 3rd and the leaflet says the 2nd – the Odessa meteor crater..  We had tried going there first but it was closed till 1pm on a Sunday so it became our afternoon thing.  It looked great but unfortunately we didn’t get to go down into the crater as there had been a rain storm the night before and the clay floor was too slippy.  Cool place though.  Whilst there the leaflet for the place mentioned other things in Odessa to do…so 15 mins later we found ourselves taking pictures next to the largest Jackrabbit in the world!  We’ve seen a ton of Jackrabbits this trip (especially on the road to the meteor crater).  The roadside attractions are one of my favourite bits about roadtrips!

Evening.

Swimming, Hot tub and Sauna followed by a free bar for 1.5 hrs…that’ll do…