South of SF on the coast 19-21 Oct

Mon 19th
Happy Birthday Tristan (and Pablito in Quito) - Tris managed to wake up not too early (to our surprise) and then he opened his presents. It started as another coldish, drizzly sort of day and we had to go and find an Internet cafe and try to get the computer fixed. After a lot of looking (due to the incredibly poor signage they have over here) we finally found a chamber of commerce who managed to point us in the direction of a place that might be able to help us with the computer strangely enough in a Chinese restaurant called Mr Hong's Chinese! Mr Hong was a lucky charm as the computer started working straight away and then he kindly printed out some documents that I needed to sign and then scanned them back into the computer so that I could return them to the UK. Celso ate a large plate of Chinese food and Tristan sat playing his new birthday DS game whilst I caught up with the blog and loaded our photos. Then after a nifty bit of shopping to buy Tristan a carrot birthday cake we got on our way in the sunshine to San Juan Bautista to camp. So not a very exciting day for Tris' birthday but he has been engrossed all day; first with a 3D vision book and then with his new DS games. We ate cake and sang happy birthday at tea time when we had stopped in a campsite in San Juan Bautiste, the site of an old Catholic Mission. The town is full of, what I call, the typical, low, fat walled, white Mexican style buildings, with their rounded contours and red roofs. We went out for an amazing Mexican,Tristan birthday, meal in one of these buildings with a large cactus filled garden. It was the best Mexican food I've ever eaten and we left loaded with left overs and very bloated and sleepy.
Tues 20th
We drove down the 101 to Monterey Bay and parked up by the sea in the old cannery area of the town with divers emerging from the waves. It was hot and sunny and the wharf area was so clean and manicured with 1cm lawns and spotlessly swept sidewalks that it seemed to be some sort of Theme Park, with the podgy curvaceous stone buildings painted in an array of pastel colours and people standing in the doorways of the little shops asking passers-by 'How are you doing?' or such like. The Aquarium was quite expensive but well worth the fee, it happened to be the 25th anniversary of their opening so there was cake for everyone and special events. We spent over 1/2 an hour just watching the sea otters, they are the most amazingly beautiful and cute animals. The double glass meant that you were only about 10cm from them as they floated on their backs and attended to their cleaning, they opened their jaws and rubbed their cheeks and their heads just as though they were washing their hair, or having some sort of deliciously relaxing head massage. We were lucky enough to have a great spot to watch them being fed but sadly they didn't give them shellfish that they could break open on their stomachs with their little rocks (even though one of them was carrying a rock), instead they gave them squid and prawns with they chewed noisily and with very little manners at all! So we still need to go and search for some more otters in the wild so that Celso and Tristan can see them eating shellfish but I am glad to have been able to see them at such close quarters. The next most amazing exhibit was the sea horses, I didn't know that there were so many different types; and I felt happy about each of the enclosures that housed the creatures as they were really large and filled with corals and weeds, what I hope to be, a very natural environment for them. There were also 3 storey tanks that housed huge tuna, shoals of mackerel, sardines and anchovies, and another that was the first ever, in the world, to grow live kelp; into which a diver descended and then all the fish appeared to get fed, small tiger sharks, rockfish, eels and various types of bass. We spent over 4 hours in the aquarium (plus an hour when we went out to make sandwiches in the van), started by the Packard family (I believe of Hewlett Packard), in the last cannery building to be closed in Monterey, and then growing to use many more of the old cannery companies along the wharf. Near the end of our visit, at one end of the aquarium, we came on some large floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the bay and we sat and watched for a while. How lucky were we, three sea otters were there in the water about 100m off shore (and there are less than 1000 left in the wild), they were diving and playing but unfortunately not feeding, but amazing anyway. Then we drove south along Route 1, which is the coastal route to Los Angeles, and again we twisted and turned along cliff side roads in and out of coastal fog - I think I'm used to this sort of driving now! We stopped at a campsite as dusk fell, down a steep embankment to the edge of a river and went to sleep listening to the tinkle of the water over the stones in the river bed.
Wed 21
We awoke to the tinkling of the river and got up into sunshine beaming down through the trees. On the far side of the river there were at least 5 wild turkeys scratching about in the woods with one male snorting and gurgling and showing off his tail and several females following him around.
We drove 60 miles south along the coastal road; up and down, twisting and turning (again); in and out of coastal fog that could be seen coming up the cliff and billowing across the road in front of us. There were some fantastic views and some extraordinary little towns; one, called Lucia, consisted of a church and a small hotel, as far as we could see. We kept on stopping to look for Sea Otters, even at a place I remember that mum and I saw several about 15 years ago when we drove the California coast together, but we saw absolutely nothing. Then just after the Point Piedras Blancas Lighthouse we could see loads of, what looked like, logs on a beach. We stopped and spent over an hour sitting in the sun watching juvenile elephant seals on the beach and in the water. The adults are all out at sea fattening up for breeding season at this time, but the juveniles stay in near the coast, the young males trying out their snorting and flaring of their nostrils, play fighting and sorting out who was dominant to whom. The females were mainly sunbathing on the beach, they were much prettier without the oversized noses, but all were covered in the most enormous swarms of flies.
We reached Hearst Castle around 2pm and went for a tour around this rediculously oppulent property which cost $6000000 to build over 40 years at the start of the 20th century. At one time the property consisted of over 250,000 acres with a private pier at the sea, a zoo with bears, wolves and other predators and free roaming kangaroos, zebra and elk along with beef cattle and bird raising areas for chicken, quail, turkey, pheasant etc to feed the household. Hearst made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, he collected art from all over the world and used many original pieces in his building such as a 14th century ceiling from Spain in his bedroom. Sometimes the things he bought did not fit exactly into his plans so he would either extend them with modern peices but carefully made up to look authentically old, or sometimes he split the pieces and divided them between rooms. The building techniques were state of the art for the time using reinforced concrete for the main structure, though the detail was exquisite, but a very odd mix of many different styles. We were swept through the house by a very knowledgeable guide and we were all a bit dumstruck by the amazing quantity of beautiful artefacts, finishing in the indoor pool with gold leaf tiles. I came here 15 years ago with mum but it was just as astonishing the 2nd time round.
Finally we drove another 10 or 15 miles further south to Morro Bay and we are camped by the beach under the Montana de Oro which we intend to investigate tomorrow.

Around San Francisco 15-18th October

Thursday - 15 We awoke to a fabulous view from our bed out over the lake and up to the mist covered hills beyond. The ducks were quacking and there was a slow drip of water from the tree down onto the van. Celso went fishing (of course) and Tris and I pottered about, fed the ducks and read a bit until we decided to get under way and head out for a drive around one of the big lakes in the region called Clear Lake. The countryside around here is so completely different from the coast where the Redwood are. The trees are small and spindly, many are draped in moss that hangs in ghostly fingers from the branches, most are turning into their winter colours of gold, red, orange or brown, the ground is covered in yellow brown grass (like hay), and where there is any cultivation there are endless vinyards, all the vines heavy with dark blue grapes. We stopped and did a bit of shopping in a town by the lake (that wasn't very clear at all but was full of a green gooey looking algae. Then we made our way to a state park in the area which was beautiful and full of quails, squirrels, deer and birds but it had started to rain again and so we made the snap decision to drive to San Francisco! On the map there seemed to be an easy route via the 175 back to the 101 and then straight down to SF, but it was not to be, the 175 had restricted access (no vehicles longer than 30ft, no trailers longer than 12ft etc etc) and turned out to be another of the roads that wound its way up and over the mountains. It was a bit hairy but not nearly as bad as THAT journey to Honeydew! I'm sure the views would have been great but again we were shrouded in mist!! And so here we are in south San Francisco, ready to go off early tomorrow to see the sights. We arrived via the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped on the headland just before to take a walk up and have a look over the bay. The bridge was swathed in fog, boats somewhere far below in the mist honked and bellowed, and the city looked like a dream. Did you know that in the two main cables of the bridge are many smaller cables that if laid end to end would circle the earth 3 times at the equator?!! Friday 16 We got up early (for us anyway!) at 7.30am and found our way to the BART which is a semi-underground system for San Francisco, limited stations and coverage but very fast and it whisked us into the centre of SF at Powell St. From there we took the old trolley (they call it the cable car) down those very steep streets with Tris and I sitting facing out into the road and Celso hanging on for dear life and ducking in when a tram or lorry came in the other direction. (I'm sure nothing like this would be allowed in the UK, the passengers hanging on to the running boards on both sides are so close to either parked traffic on one side or moving traffic on the other, in fact I'm really suprised it is allowed here with their law suit ways.) Anyway it was great fun and as we went over the brow of one hill we went from blazing sunshine into thick fog, apparently that is common for here in SF but it is certainly a shock to the system for those not expecting the sudden change in temperature from one side of a hill to another. We wandered along Fishermans wharf to pier 33 to buy our Alcatraz Tickets and then, with nearly 2 hours to wait for our ferry, went pack to pier 39 and all the shops and restaurants around the SF Aquarium. We had an amazing bowl of soup served inside a bread roll (they call it a sourdough roll) and then explored the shops. Half way out along the pier that old familiar smell of acidic fish and the honking of sea lions called us to the west side of the pier. The ladies were there in their hundreds, in fact SF is having a real problem with them, usually they number around 300 but for some reason this year they have around 1500 and the water polution and occurences of boat strikes are becoming a serious problem. They are much more genteel than the gents we saw in Newport, but the smell was just as lovely! They seemed much more playful with several doing side swims with one flipper in the air and others doing handstands against submerged posts. 1.10pm and we got onto the 12 min ferry ride to Alcatraz, a fascinating 2 hour exploration of the island revealed many of the myths; the Bird Man never had any birds on Alcatraz; the film The Rock wasn't filmed on Alcatraz; Al Capone was mad from syphylis by the time he was at Alcatraz; prison officers and their families lived on Alcatraz and loved it there; before it became Alcatraz the prison it was Fort Alcatraz and has a long military history though it was never actually involved in any fighting at all; there is no evidence that anyone ever succesfully escaped from Alcatraz out of the 36 attempts, 5 prisoners are unaccounted for but they think they probably died in the sea; there was no 'death row' facility at Alcatraz; the cells were absolutely minute (about 1.5 by 3m) and prisoners spent up to 23 hours a day in them; 'You are entitled to shelter, food and medical attention and nothing else' was the main moto of the prison, if you wanted anything more than that you had to earn it by good behaviour and by working, then they could spend some time outside in a small high walled recreation area or get books or correspondance courses from the library; it was definately a place of punishment rather than rehabilitation. Returning to the mainland we caught a VERY full rush hour time bus to Chinatown and ate a fantastic meal in a small restaurant that we found on a side street packed with Chinese, it was very cheap as we were eating in happy hour (from 3-5:30) and delicious, then a walk around the shops, a return journey on the BART and we were very pleased with ourselves but exhausted! Sat 17 A later wake up, a clean of the van and emptying the tanks etc meant that we didn't get under way until around 10:30am. An unsuccesful stop at the library where we had hoped to connect to the Internet meant that by 11:45 we were just beginning what we intended to do for the day - it was Tris' choice as it was so near his birthday and he wanted to go to the Exploratorium, a science based, hands on centre down near the Golden Gate Bridge. We parked up the van near a bus stop that would take us all the way there and then spent 4 1/2 happy hours playing with the exhibits - a fantastic place - a bit like @ in Bristol but better. With sore feet we trudged back to the bus stop and after a very long wait got a train back to our van. We stopped at a big shopping centre to go to a big bookshop that has Wifi but I couldn't get a connection and then we drove south and found a campsite. Sun 18 Up, showered and laundry done, we headed further south to San Jose where we went to the Winchester Mystery House. The house was built by a widow of the family of the Winchester Rifle fortune (supplied to most of the cowboys and the US army). This 4ft 1inch widow was convinced by a psychic that the misfortune that had fallen on her family (the death of her daughter at 6 weeks and her husband a few years later from TB) was due to the angry spirits of all the victims of the Winchester Rifles. In order to appease them she was to build a house and keep building..... and 38 years later when she died the building was still continuing and she has left behind the most bizarre mansion you are ever likely to see. She designed all of the building herself after consulting with the spirits in the seance room which only she had access to. It has doors that open onto walls, and one door that opens to an 8ft drop into a kitchen sink, another that opens from the first floor to the outside (with no stairs on the other side), there are windows in the floors, the number 13 features heavily with 13 windows in many rooms, chandaliers converted to have 13 candles, 13 sections in lead glass windows etc. The building cost $5,500,000, but that wasn't much for her as she had a $20,000,000 fortune pus an income of $1000 a day (and that was back at the start of the 19th Century), the shopkeepers would come out onto the street to serve her as she sat in her carriage as she was such a good customer, if she liked some cloth she would buy the whole bolt as she didn't want anyone else to have the same material as herself. She was the first in the area to have a shower, gas lamps that turned on and off at the flick of a switch and a generator for electricity. The house has 160 rooms, 43 bedrooms (although she never had guests), the pillars were all put in upside down to appease the spirits and the servants and the builders, who were paid in cash and could be fired and hired at any time, were not allowed to comment on the building or its design. It was a very interesting tour through the most extraordianary building I've ever been in. Then further south we went towards Monterey and stopped in a campsite with Wifi only to find that I couldn't connect again, there is something wrong with one of the modem drivers on the computer. PITA.

Northern California

Monday - We slept quite late and decided to have Tristan's maths lesson before we left our campsite on the banks of the Klamath river. I had set some maths work on Mymaths, a computer maths site that self marks his work and we didn't know when again we would have a Wifi connection. Of course Celso didn't mind - he went fishing with his new lure! We set off around midday to drive down the old highway 101, the new road is a longer two lane each way highway with a 65mph limit whilst the old road is single lane each way road which winds through groves of Redwoods. Our first stop was at an old logging road called the Ah Pah trail. The road was a logging route, last logged in the 1940's, but the road had been pulled up in 1995 as the state park tried to restore a lot of the damaged land. After several attempts trying to prevent erosion after the tarmac surface was removed they left nature to do its bit and now, apart from a few big stumps, it is really hard to see where the old road went. You can see from the photos how tall some of the trees are and how thick the undergrowth is. Our next stop was at a place called 'Big Tree' which was a huge tree that was saved in the early 1900's from a homesteader who wanted to chop it down and make the stump into a dance floor! Next we stopped at an information centre where we learnt the difference between Redwoods and Sequoias. Redwoods grow on the coast and get at least 30% of their moisture from mists, they can grow up 350ft with a girth of around 65ft (diameter 22ft) and live up to around 2000 years. Mostly Redwoods sprout as shoots from damaged trees but will occasionally grow from seeds, they get up to 30% of their water from the coastal fogs. Sequoias live further from the coast (e.g. Yosemite) they can live up to 3200 years, grow to about 250ft and can have a girth of 120ft (diameter 40ft), they grow from seeds after a fire, they can have bark up to 3ft thick! There was also a fascinating piece of wood that was a tree that it is assumed an elk was rubbing to relieve itself of its antlers or antler fur, its antlers got stuck and the elk died, then the tree grew up around the head and the horns so that they now stick out of the trunk, at the back you can see the back end of the skull sticking out!! Finally, we stopped in the town of Eureka to go and get a book for Tristan and to explore birthday presents for him in a big mall. I bought this months National Geographic which amazingly has a story all about the Redwoods in it and the most brilliant picture (a five page pull out) showing the magnificence of one of these trees - exactly as I would love to have been able to show you. You must either go and get a copy or at least go and look at the picture! Then to our current campsite at the Eureka fairgrounds where they hold car racing rallies and rodeo shows, but luckily none of that today! Tuesday -13th It rained and it poured last night. The wind nearly blew us away, I looked on the Internet in the morning and their is a tropical storm in south California that is reeking havoc down there and we are experiencing just the edges (and that is bad enough). The advice was not to drive in high sided vehicles until after 3pm so we set off to watch a film and get the oil in the van changed (we had to do it after 5000 miles and we've done 4800 so we thought that would do!) At 3pm it was definitely much less windy but still raining, however we decided to continue our journey southwards through more of the Redwood groves. Even though it rained on and off we managed to take some fabulous photos of the road winding through the trees and then we stopped to ask some people where we should go to see the best trees as we didn't want to keep on stopping and getting wet! They sent us on the road to Honeydew and told us to stop at the Rockerfeller Grove, they warned that the road was a bit bad but that we'd be ok. We stopped at what is considered to be the tallest tree in the world, we had to cross a swollen river to see it on a fallen log, it was starting to get really dark by then so I don't think the photos do the tree any justice, then we continued on our way to Honeydew. 3 hours later we arrived tense and weary at Garberville ... the road was horrendous, narrow, winding, with hair pin bends and steeply inclined, up and down, with edges that dropped away steeply to the right and then the left. When turning to the right the headlights did not illuminate the right side of the road so I was turning into the unknown, there were no road markings to help and the fog came down around us like a blanket. At one stage there was no tarmac, just gravel which was wet and slippery from the rain! We were excited when we finally hit a 'sane' bit of road and hit 30mph!! I will not be following suggestions from strangers with such confidence in their suggestions in future! We camped next to a DIY store and the heavens opened up again and pelted us with rain that sounded like a pile of pebbles being dropped onto the van... however I slept really well after THAT drive. Wednesday 14th We awoke to more intermittent rain and headed south again, determined today to stay on only major roads. We made only two stops, the first at a house that in 1944 was made out of a single redwood log that was hollowed out by two men over 80 days and fitted with a kitchen, bedroom, dining room and toilet. You can see the photos. The second stop was at a little tourist place that has been open since 1949 called the House of Gravity. It was a small building built on the side of a hill on a angle so that when you go inside you feel all odd. We stopped early at a campsite to sort ourselves out and to have a relaxing afternoon, so here we are at a little place called Lakeside, next to a lake (believe it or not) feeding lots of ducks and Celso tried a spot of fishing (believe it or not)!

Into California 10-11 Oct

Saturday. It was a really hot night last night and even though we had put the van up on chocks we were still on a bit of a slope that made me slip down the bed and I became all entangled. So I got up and went for a walk on the beach as the sun started to come up over the Humbug mountain behind me - beautiful, and the sky and sea were so blue. The beach wasn't the most amazing for me.. too much sand and not enough rocks and shells, but I kept myself busy for over an hour watching some grey pelicans fishing, some seagulls arguing over a dead crab, a grey heron stalking prey in the only rocky area and I found the biggest mussel shell ever, at least 20cm long! When I returned to the van the boys were stirring and we had a cup of tea before packing up and getting underway determined that today we would make it to California. But it is never as simple as that.... first, since we have been staying in State Parks which (apart from one exception) have no Wifi, we wanted to find a place to download photos and publish our blog, secondly there are always too many signs to too many places and too many sights to see. And so we spent 2 hours in a small town library which had free Wifi and was having some sort of Womens Institute meeting on the history of the handkerchief!!! They all seemed to be enjoying it anyway and I did hear mention of Peter Rabbit so it can't have been quite as dire as it the brief snippets I could overhear sounded to me. On the way into the town we had crossed a rather amazing bridge and then a boat that had sunk at its moorings and never been recovered, the algae were the most brilliant green on its hull as you can see in the photos. Further along the coast we went for a short walk out onto a headland to see Arch rock which was one of a huge number of rocks off the coast, and then even further south we went for a walk through an amazingly dark pine forest to get out onto a headland to get the view back to a bridge that we were going to cross. Then after some shopping and the gradual increase in the size of trees (!) we finally made it to California, the first state border where we have been stopped to be asked what we are carrying in the way of fruit and veg and firewood. Nearly immediately we turned into the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and we couldn't even see the tops of the trees because of the front overhang on the van, a large river flowed down the right hand side of the road and Celso was getting more and more anxious to get out of the car and have a look. Just in time a state park camp ground appeared and we had to pull in both mirrors to get in an along the road between the trees. Perfect, a site right on the river with enormous trees (see the picture of Tris infront of the biggest one we found round here) and a huge pile of wood that someone else had left to make ourselves a roaring fire. Tristan found several small frogs in the rocks by the river and Celso was even tempted into the freezing river by the leaps of enormous trout on the far side of the bend in the river where it was much deeper. It was hilarious to watch him suffer the cold - now maybe I understand just how much he loves his fishing! Sunday We awoke to a mist over the trees on the far side of the river but luckily we were bathed in sunshine as it was cold out there! Our tremendous fire from the night before was rekindled with a simple movement of the remaining logs which lifted the spirits too and the fish jumping in the river made Celso all a jitter to get out his rod again. We drove a short way (after some very expert manouvering, even if I say so myself, through some very tight spots - see photo), to a place where a trail was marked. There was a notice explaining that a fungus was infecting several of the trees in the area and causing them to die, so we shouldn't walk off the trail and definately make sure that we carried no mud into or out of the wood as the spores could lie dormant for up to 7 years - scary! Off we set amongst the giant trees and huge ferns for a two hour hike through the woods and along an amazingly aquamarine/turquoise blue river. The trees are so beautiful and we just can't capture their grandeur in a photo, you can't get both the bottom and top in the same photo for a start, and the 3d nature of their bark just doesn't take in the photos. The bark is amazingly spongey to the touch; a bit like those bathtime foam shapes that you can get for kids that stick on the tiles when wet! Then on to Crescent City (the first major town in California on the 101) to try and find some sort of information centre. Crescent City was hit by a tsunami in 1964 after an earthquake up in Alaska. They appear rather pleased with their misfortune and we found the State Park info centre next to the strangely named 'Tsunami Landing' building, there were also leaflets about the Tsunami scout groups and various other Tsunami related street names! Newly informed about our likelihood of seeing whales swimming south and a couple of places 'not to miss' we headed further South on the 101 through more enormous trees. We were just stunned by the whole experience, it must be what Gulliver felt like in the land of giants! Soon we came across the oddly named 'Trees of Mystery' with an enormous statue of Paul Bunyon and his giant blue Ox called Babe ... we didn't know much about Paul Bunyon, but we will soon because I bought a book about the legendary lumberjack hero who, apparently, was so large that one day when he went from Fargo to Seattle dragging an axe behind him he made a rut that is now called the Grand Canyon! At the Trees of Mystery we went for another fabulous walk through more redwoods and other trees but this time with explanatory signs about all the different kinds of trees and some of the ways the redwoods behave. For example, when a redwood tree falls over but remains with a sufficient root system, the once horizontal branches now grow vertically up as new trees so that multiple trees grow up out of the fallen trunk. These new 'trees' don't make their own root systems but the original roots support all the new 'trees' that grow. There was a cable car that took us up to the top of a hill to overlook the top of the trees (of course terrifying for me but fascinating for Tris and Celso) and then we walked down a very steep path labelled 'for expert hikers only' (! probably some way of them relinquishing any blame if you fall) and then through an area of the wood that had been logged in the 1950's enabling you to see how the area was recovering. There were lots of the most enormous stumps with trees growing out of them; they didn't look like new trees but rather the stump regrowing, but I'm not sure! Then we went into a fabulous little museum about different Indian cultures, their clothes, pottery, basket work and the like at the base of the hill; but we were so hungry after our two walks that we didn't spend enough time there to really appreciate it all I think. Now we are showered, fed, laundered and content in a campsite in Klamath, a small Indian settlement on the Klamath river, an enormous river that as yet has not tempted Celso out with his rod, but he is thinking about it and at this moment is sitting tying feathers that we found a couple of days ago at the Safari park onto hooks to make the lure to catch The Big One!

Central Oregan Coast 7-9 Oct

Celso and I awoke and, leaving Tristan to sleep, went for a 1/4 mile walk down to the beach. On the path there were markings for the sea front postion at various different years. Since 1854 more than 200m of new land has been formed after the settlers there built two stone piers out into the sea from the mouth of the river in Newport to allow safe passage in and out of Newport's harbour. The piers trap sand that is borne Northwards by the tide and now is covered in a low forest and damp grassland which is full of deer. We met a young one on the path, a black tailed, white bottomed deer with big Bambi eyes that rushed off into the long grasses so that only its head was soon visible. We decided to go to the Oregon aquarium in Newport and spent 21/2 happy hours especially in a hands on rocky shore exhibit where you could gently touch sea cucumbers, anenomes, crabs and small fish. Then it was feeding time and total chaos in all the exhibits as all the creatures bent, curled, clutched, swooped and argued over little bits of shrimp and fish. There was one of those excellent walk through tunnels with sharks and rays, enormous sturgeon and shoals of anchovies. As we left we could hear the honking of seals and went to investigate. It turns out that a large proportion of male sealions spend much of the year in Newport harbour on several floating jetties; I don't know what they were originally for but they are now very much the territory of the sea lions. They leave to go and visit the ladies who remain in California all year round. It was a very unruly and raucus scene, each sea lion vying for a space on the jetty and fierce scuffles breaking out if any new arrivals tried to get a spot. We spent over an hour watching them whilst eating fish and chips, occasionally having to put up with acidic, fishy, foul smelling burps that were sent forth in a visible cloud of steam after much heaving and snorting by the large lads (sea lions) below us! By mid afternoon we set off south again and were stopped every few miles by more amazing views. At Strawberry Hill we stopped to watch seals in some viscious white water on the surf line round some rocky outcrops (more igneous rock that has withstood the erosion). They seemed just as interested in us as we were in them and stopped to stare at us, some failing to keep a careful enough eye on the incoming rollers were tossed by the waves as they passed. Incredibly the road is sometimes right next to the beach about 20m from the sea, it seems so exposed to the enormous expanse of the Pacific; it is also a little unnerving to keep on coming across signs that say 'Entering Tsunami Danger Zone'. The road will then rise up through forests and onto precarious narrow stretches round the cliffs until it drops again next to the beaches. There are very rare detours away from the coastline mainly to circumnavigate estuaries, though many have enormous bridges (like the one in Newport that you can see in some of the photos). A pretty place we stopped was called Point Perpetua, it was howling with wind and the sea was crashing around its base. It was named by Captain Cook who after naming Cape Foulweather (that I told you about in the last entry) spent 5 days trying to get south to this point. The Point was in view for the full 5 days but the weather so bad that it never seemed to get any closer and so he named it Point Perpetua (or that is the story anyway!). Further down the coast again we stopped at a look out point called Heceta Head and were greeted, as we left the van, by the familiar honking of the sea lions. There on the beach below was a huge hoard of sea lions, perhaps 150 individuals strong, with yet more in the sea round about. We camped in another State campground at Jessie M Honeyman State Park, just South of Florence) which is in a beautiful wood just behind some enormous sand dunes and then the beach; .......or so we thought; but in the morning (Thursday) we found that we were 3 miles from the beach and we had entered an enormous sand dune system (called Doons in American, that stretches for 45 miles along the coast at this point. We wandered up the dunes and built a sandcastle at the top, it probably shan't last very long as not only is the sand dune system an active one (with shifting sands all the time) but we placed our magnificent construction right on the edge of an off road buggy, quad bike area! Strangely the dunes went straight down into a lake which was surrounded by some very lush forest including pitcher plants which I always associated with rain forest. We drove south through the dunes that sometimes almost spilt onto the road through gaps in the trees and stopped at an information centre to learn more. It turns out that the sand comes from thousands of years of erosion of the Cascade Mountains that run North South from Washington State down through Oregon. The sand is deposited in the sea by the hundreds of rivers that flow down from the mountains. Along most of the coast there are ancient volcanic rocks that form cliffs and headlands and prevent the formation of dunes, but in the 45 miles stretch from Florence to Coos Bay there was no volcanic activity, so no cliffs, the land is flat inland until the mountains and so first the tide deposits the sand on the beach and then the wind can blow all the sand up onto the land. It is a constantly shifting system; at times old growth forest is slowly engulfed, rivers are blocked to form great lakes and the dunes slowly migrate over the landscape; at other times (mainly due to human interference) the winds are blocked and plants manage to take hold, first grasses, then small shrubs and later larger plants like rhodedendrons and trees. Our curiosity about the dunes satisfied, we continued south, stopping for lunch at the strangely named Jack Ripper Saunders Lake. Several fishermen were casting lines from both the bank and various types of boats. Celso joined them, of course, and had several bites and finally caught a decent fish (that he said was too small for me to photograph, but I can say that it was a fairly large rainbow trout, at least as large as those we buy at home!). Celso's face got splattered with blood as he despatched his fish -- that was rather apt (I thought) for the Jack Ripper lake. Tris and I ate cheese and biscuits in the van, because a cold wind was constantly blowing down through a gap between the sand dunes that surrounded us, and watched Celso's efforts through the window! We then got on our way again and crossed a fantastic long bridge into Coos Bay; despite our efforts we were unable to find a spot from which to photograph this great bridge; and then we followed the coast road through thick fog to Charleston to stop in another state park, where Celso nearly lost his gutted, cleaned and seasoned fish to a cat. Later I went to have a shower and walked by torch light to get to the 'restrooms', the fog was incredible with distinct droplets of water in the air visible in the torchlike, just like when you see the dust in the air in sunlight. A fog horn sounded nearly all night which kept Celso awake but I slept like a baby! Friday - Celso got up really early a little crotchety for his bad nights sleep, he went out and did some exercise. We got up and on our way quite promptly and found that we were really close to the edge of a small cliff down to the beach - we hadn't been able to see that the night before in the fog! We went down to check out the beach and, though the sun was blazing, it was quite chilly in the strong wind that blew in off the sea so we set off again to head south along a very narrow coast road through a working forest where various different aged trees were growing and some areas were clear cut looking like some sort of war zone. We reached another secluded beach were a small river emptied itself onto the sand and we decided to stop for a walk. The stink of a dead seal was overpowering for a short while but then we hit the open sand and headed for some curious looking rocks, at first I was convinced that they were some sort of man made structure because of the weird completely circular protrusions or indentations in it, but in the end we concluded that they were some sort of sandstone that must be millions of years old; some of the protrusions were grouped together in, what Tristan described as, a dinosaur eggs in nest formation! Who knows? In a town called Bandon (which Tristan joked should be called Abandon), the best thing was the beach and rock formations. One called 'face rock' has been known of from ancient native stories to have looked that way for atleast 1000 years (so not eroding much even though it is in the surf line). The story is that a child did not listen to their elders and went into the sea when they had been told not to, it was very rough and she nearly drowned. The girl was turned to stone with her head just above the water staring up to the skies...... that's one way to scare the kids into doing as they are told! You can see the face in a photo; as we looked at it she was staring up towards the moon which has been visible all day in the sky for the last few days. Past Bandon we stopped at 'America's largest petting zoo' which had an amazing variety of animals from goats, deer, donkeys, sheep and geese which flocked around you to be fed, to Serval cats, puma, mountain lion, llama and lynx. Some of the baby animals were brought out to be introduced to the visitors too and we got to cuddle a baby opossum called Spooky and some ferrets and stroke a 7 month old lynx, a 6 month old leopard (which sat in Tris and my laps as it drank milk from a bottle), an 8 month old lion, an 8 year old skunk, an 8 month old fox called Todd and a 10 month old Wallaby called Jack. You can see the photos. From there we continued south, occassionaly stopping for more breathtaking views, until Celso started to fall asleep (it didn't take long!) and so we stopped at Humbug Mountain State Park in a small campsite under the trees about 100m from yet another sandy beach under a huge vertical cliff.

Southwards on the Oregon Coast 5&6 Oct

And so our Southwards journey began. Amazing coastline, fabulous sunshine. Such a diversity of landscapes from bare rock to cloud forest with mosses and ferns; spindly aggressive pines bent by the coastal winds to majestic; tall and straight Spruce trees; gentle swirling estuary waters to the crashing Pacific waves; damp forests to bone dry sand dunes.
We left Cannon beach and headed up and up until we had a view back over the beach and the Haystack. After about a half hour of wending our way through thick damp forest with mossy tree trunks and enormous ferns (like a scene from a Jurassic Park film) we made our way back down to sea level and stopped for a quick look on the beach where some rock formations had formed an arch just off the beach. Then on again repeating the up and down and the twisting and turning with a new view around each turn. Finally we turned of the 101 (the road that goes all down the coast) onto some smaller roads (a bit hairy, narrow and even more bendy than the 101) to go to Cape Mears and the enormous Spruce forests... and we weren't disappointed by the effort, the trees were amazing, mind boggling how enormous a tree can get just from absorbing water and minerals from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air!!!
Then, just as we were thinking it was time to be stopping, a campsite appeared ahead and we stopped about 50 metres from the Netart Estuary. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching seals flopping about on the sandbanks that appeared as the tide went out; Grey Pelicans who put on a show dashing about a few cm about the water and then looping upwards to then fall and crash diving into the water to catch fish; and the ever present cormorants gliding about the surface of the water and then silently ducking under to emerge with their prize. Earlier on in the day we had stopped and bought some binoculars which came in very handy!
Today we didn't leave the campsite until midday because we were doing the tedious laundry and bed making (Tristan's bed in the bit over the cabin is incredibly difficult to make, completely exhausting, as you have to kneel on the bed whilst also trying to make it!!!!), giving the inside of the camper the once over etc.
But our continued journey southward was no less full of surprises than yesterday; once past the first high point which was in more cloud forest we descended into a desert... an inland system of sand dunes where the coastal features had created a sort of passageway down which a relentless wind blows so that no plants manage to take hold and so have left an enormous barren section which now is split between an area for locals to go 'off-Roading' on sand buggies, motorbikes and all other types of loud and fast contraptions, and the other half is protected and studied and inaccessible to the likes of us. We sat and pondered the sand for a while and then watched a few 'off roaders' who seemed to be playing some sort of motorized tag game as they whizzed around and then hid behind various outcrops of trees for a while and then whizzed off again - very odd.
We continued our journey winding our way around the coast and stopped for lunch at another estuary where the water was rushing in under a bridge and a mass of white egrets and grey herons waited on the sandbanks for a passing feast (I suppose). Tristan and I sat in our deck chairs with a table laden with cheese and biscuits, tacos and salsa and a huge fruit salad and basked in the sunshine as we ate, watched very carefully and with a great deal of suspicion by a very large seagull! Where was Celso?? Obviously he had gone fishing! (Nothing more to be said about that - he didn't catch anything... again!)
Further south we stopped at another beach just outside Lincoln City that we had spied from up on a hill and appeared to have loads of seals on it. It turned out to be an enormous number of tree trunks that had been washed up onto the beach. I asked a woman who was beach combing amongst the logs why they were all there. She told me that some where ones that had escaped from loggers further up the rivers that flowed down into the bay, and some were whole trees that were swept into the rivers by the snow melt and huge storms that occur from December through February and sometimes into March. She added that people were sometimes killed by the trunks that crashed up onto the beaches during the storms! Across from the beach was the spit of land that made the bay so treacherous as it narrowed the exit of 3 rivers to about a hundred metres and you could see the rip tide at that point. On the spit were an enormous number of Grey Pelicans strutting their stuff and occasionally all swooping up into the sky together to go and dive into the sea with great splashes sounding every few seconds.
Then up and up again to the ridiculously named Cape Foulweather which was named by Captain Cook; it was the first place he stopped when he came to map the west coast and apparently on the day that he arrived there were 100mph winds and lashing rain; and so it came to have its name. Nice view from the top though!
Now we are camped at South Beach State Park just south of Newport. Tristan has been learning all about reproduction so the van has been rocking and rolling from his embarrassed laughter about the finer details of the process and the joys of puberty!!!

North West through Oregon 1-4 Oct

We have spent four days travelling through Oregon and are now in the far North West in a place called Cannon Beach (just South of Astoria; our most northerly point; on the Columbia River which forms the boundary between Oregon and Washington State). We travelled about 17miles on the North side of the river in Washington and were intending to do more but the road passed through tunnels that were just too small for our van at 12'9''. But it was another state to add to our tally.
We have spent quite a bit of time just driving and one day where we just sat in Farewell Bend State Park by the huge Snake River and tried to take in all that we have done so far. The river was down about 5m so it had huge muddy shores that made wonderful squelching noises as Tristan threw rocks into the mud, they were also perfect for footprints... deer, buffalo, loads of birds and raccoons had been visiting, and for Celso the low water mark meant that lots of trapped fishing line on once submerged obstacles was now obvious as you walked past and so he collected loads of new pieces and then spent about 2 hours cleaning it all up and putting it all together in new combinations. I don't know why we didn't take any pictures of the scene, it was amazing but we were all feeling a bit zombified I think! On Friday it was a grey sort of day with drizzly rain so we decided to stop off and see one of the Oregon Trail town museums and the spot that was chosen was Baker City... this was a tiny town that the pioneers passed through on their way further West and North, it wasn't really settled much until a gold rush in the 1830's and then it became quite large. The museum now houses donated items from families descended from original pioneers, such as bonnets, quilts, tea chests and cutlery from the journey, carts and tools and early imported items such as printing presses, beds and other furniture. There was also a fabulous collection of rocks from 2 sisters (now departed) who in their 90s in the 1990s had donated it to the museum. In the 1930s they had found a large fossil bed and they traded fossils with people from around the world in exchange for rocks! Enormous Gypsum crystals (pieces as large as a 2 seater sofa!), desert rose, fools gold, etc etc, and a large collection housed in a light tight room with UV lights that glowed in all the colours of the rainbow. There was also a fab little collection of clothes through the ages and several kitchens laid out with items from different eras. My favourite was the 1950/60's kitchen with all the gadgets and gizmos and rounded frumpy looking white goods. Another of my favourite exhibits was a stage coach that used to run between Baker City and Eugene (nearly on the West coast) in the 1890 to 1910 era, taking 3 days. It had some great notices inside that I took a photo of so you can see for yourself.
Saturday we woke to yet more drizzle that turned to snow as we drove up and over the Blue Mountains. The pine trees, with a fine powdering of snow, and mountains in the background were like some sort of winter wonderland, beautiful but cold! But eventually we came down the other side into warm sunshine and met the Columbia river. We drove for some of the way on the old road (from before the 2 lane highway) through autumn coloured oaks and chestnuts past amazing waterfalls; one, the Multnomah falls, cascades 620ft and is the 2nd highest year round falls in the states . The road was VERY narrow in places and we had to stop and pull in our mirrors in order to pass vehicles from the other direction, a bit hairy but worth it as you can see from the pictures.
The Columbia river used to be a narrow white water river that some pioneers used to build rafts and find a way down, but most avoided because it was so wild. But now the river has at least 3 dams (3 that we have passed anyway) and is probably over 100m across due to the backed up water. It makes an amazing sight but sadly many old features such as the salmon run cascades, where bears and Indians alike used to stock up for winter, have been lost to the waters. The River now transports almost 40% of all wheat produced in the US along to Portland in enormous barges so there are huge loading depots where road transport can transfer their cargoes to the barges.
Today, Sunday we followed the Columbia river North West to the sea at Astoria, there were some amazing views along the way, the river is so huge, the countryside so hilly, the trees so autumn orange, brown and yellow and the sky so blue - amazing. Along the river some of the houses had been built on stilts in the shallows, I don't know why, there is so much land to be had! Astoria also had lots of buildings on stilts all along the water front, and a small Sunday market with arts and crafts and fruit and veg through which we wandered spying on the locals! We stood and gazed the enormous ships passing on the river and watched a throng of cormorants diving down to catch fish, we thought we could hear a seal honking, but we couldn't see him.

Our first stop at the Pacific Ocean was in a tiny town called Seaside which had an enormous windswept beach and large rollers crashing in, Tris had his first dip (feet only) in the Pacific whilst Celso cringed at the wind!
Now we are happily camped in a little hollow outside of Cannon Beach, the sun is blasting down, rabbits are frolicking around the van and we are getting ready for a hike down to the beach and through the town to see what is there to be discovered!
What an amazing 3 1/2 hr walk, a river from the campsite leads about 200m down to the beach so we walked along its edge and were treated to the antics of a family of 5 otters that were fishing, frolicking and feeding in the river, squeeking, diving and splashing. Further towards the sea, a multitude of seagulls, pelicans and ravens (for some reason) were bathing in the fresh water. The beach was enormous and had some amazing rock formations at both ends; one set to the South called the Haystack and Needles, and the other set to the North called Bird Rocks. Low tide was at 8.30pm so we wandered into town and had a bite to eat and then returned to explore the low tide rocks. You can see that there were amazing anenomes, starfish by the dozen and hoards and hoards of mussels that seemed to be whispering to us. The sun went down as we neared Bird Rocks and we walked home with the amazingly orange sky over the sea.