Bunces in California - Oct 2014

As well as the rocks we also avoid pretentious and prim Carmel, getting onto the 17 mile scenic drive around the Monterey Peninsula instead.  Carmel is the place that Clint Eastwood was elected Mayor.  Don’t you think “Make my day, punk, vote for me” would have made a catchy election slogan.  The scenic drive is really just that once out of the trees.  It’s a gated drive with some very expensive and surprisingly ordinary looking houses on it, several top class Golf Clubs and some great white sand beaches.  Doing the drive now was a mistake because we’re well overdue for some food and drink.  We finally get what would have been lunch after booking into our hotel and finding a café.  It’s 3.30.  Monterey we like.  Our hotel is fairly close to the sea and the Old Fisherman’s Wharf where I had the best meal of the whole trip.  Macadamia crusted halibut on a bed of sweetened sweet potato with a papaya salsa and lighted steamed spinach....

This is the day Heather realised that she’d lost her i-pad.  Bags and the car were searched more than once, even in places too small for an i-pad to fit into – but it had gorn.  The last place she definitely had it was a café we’d had breakfast in where she used it.  I’m certain she left it there and one of the staff just kept it, because when not being used it was always carried in a zipped up back-pack.  When we phoned no one admitted seeing it although when we left, the staff had been on their way to clear our table and only one other table was occupied.  Heather, being more generous than me thinks it fell out somewhere but has no idea how this happens with a zipped bag.  Anyway we are -1 i-pad. Having no interest in Los Angeles we hit the coast just north of it at Ventura, heading towards Santa Barbara for the night.  There are lots of places now which are familiar from song titles.  American towns seem to lend themselves to it more eas...

As we leave Barstow (I keep thinking of Stan), we decide we’re not going out through the most salubrious area.   At a set of lights we notice a Wedding Chapel to our right which looked like an ordinary shop but it also offered flowers, hire of wedding dress and hire of tuxedo.  On the corner opposite stood the Domestic Violence Center right next door to the Pay-Day loan shop.  All on Route 66 again.  After what seems like another light-year or so of driving we check into our hotel in Twenty-Nine Palms, a town mostly one block deep but spread along about 10 miles of the interstate just to the north of Joshua Tree National Park.  We have one of the cabins which are painted in bright colours which of course get even more vibrant in the harsh sunshine.  Ours is mauve and pink and it looks surprisingly ‘right’ in this location.   Chatting to the receptionist she asked where we’re from and when I said originally London she asked where....

So we leave the sand dunes in the bottom of the valley and skip for about 30 miles across the border into Nevada to the nearest town, Beatty.  It’s now dark and as we drive past the RV park on the edge of town I say quite reasonably “what’s the name of our hotel ?”  The answer is “Oh I forgot to write it down but I’ll know it if I see it”.  It turns out to be the Death Valley Inn.  The town is eminently forgettable, on a crossroads and to give you an idea, the town brochure lists 8 reasons to visit.  The first five are a drive away, another is that it’s cooler than Death Valley, one is “reasonable room rates” and the last is about seeing a shoot-out in downtown Beatty.   We need access to the Valley so we stay 3 days in a very comfortable hotel with breakfast available across the road at a real old fashioned diner with real friendly waitresses.  The second breakfast we had, there was a different waitress on and “SIT ANYWHERE” was our greeting...

You’ll know that my natural suspicion is that all the bear stuff is to make visitors feel that they’re really in the wilds rather than a tamed down version of it.  However, as we left our camp for the day, dead on 9.00 and about 400 yards from the site, there walking alongside the road were three bears, possibly looking for porridge but probably not.  One full grown mummy bear and two liddle baby bears make an impressive sight just strolling along completely unconcerned.  Unfortunately, much of the wildlife is habituated to humans, making the animals potentially more dangerous because of their lack of fear and this makes them more liable to be killed if they stray over the boundary of what is considered acceptable, such as eating people.  Deer with full sets of antlers wander around with people taking photos no more than 8 or 10 feet away, squirrels run around our feet and some birds are very approachable.  I daresay a startled and antler loaded deer at speed...

As I write this in the Yosemite Valley, the peak of one of the great monoliths, El Capitan is capped by a pall of smoke from a forest fire to the west which has closed one of the interstate highways.  Clearly this is out of sequence but it is very dramatic.  On the way here we passed the fire devastation caused by an out of control illegal campfire in 2013 which destroyed 400 square miles of forest.  The info. boards say that the suppression cost was $127M.  By the way, Dorset is 1024 square miles. San Francisco is expensive with accommodation and meals costing more than we paid in London two weeks ago.  We redressed the balance a smidge using the excellent public bus and trolleybus system.  As ‘seniors’ a flat rate fare was 75c (50p) and this was valid for 3 hours however many transfers we made.  It is a very hilly city and in October very hot with our first day in the high 80’s F rising to 93F by the time we left.  Naturally we were out...