LA to San Francisco!

After a beautiful drive up the Pacific Coast Highway, we've made it to San Francisco! We picked up our rental car a couple of days ago in LA. We wanted another Cobalt but we got a PT Cruiser instead... I guess it's better, but we hate it. Oh well. It'll do. We toured LA with it, walked down Hollywood Blvd, drove through Beverley Hills, Bel-Air, and along Mulholland Drive. We tried to find some star homes in Beverley Hills but most places had large hedges and big gates.
We relaxed a bit at Julie's but still drove to Venice Beach for a walk along the crazy beach side shops, enjoying the setting sun. We visited the Santa Monica Pier and continued walking to the 3rd Street Promenade, which is three blocks of pedestrian street with lots of cool and trendy stores. We had burritos at La Salsa, then returned to Julie's shortly after 9pm. A nice, but busy day. Ready to head up the coast.

Yesterday, we drove up Hwy 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. Through Malibu, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Cambria, and stopped in Big Sur. Beautiful coastline for the 50 miles before getting to Big Sur. Lots of winding roads and amazing vistas. We left LA shortly after 9am, and we didn't reach Big Sur until almost 6pm. Crazy. Took forever. Although we did make several stops at vistas, and we also stopped to buy white gas for our stove, and about a week's worth of food. One vista included a pack of Elephant Seals! Many seals on the beach, some swimming, and we also so pelicans and very friendly squirrels.
But we didn't have a campsite booked... We stopped at the first park that didn't have a CAMPGROUND FULL sign up, and we lucked out. The Riverside Campground was quite nice. A river running through it, and they had rope bridges between some of the trees.

We set up camp and made a pasta dinner. The white gas worked well with our multifuel stove, and we were quite impressed that our 1.5L pot made pasta for 2 quite easily. Even with cut up broccoli, onions, and ground tofu in it. Good stuff! It started to spit as dusk settled in so we did a crossword in the tent before going to bed shortly after 10.

It rained for much of the night, but it stopped shortly after 6am. We got up shortly after 6:30 this morning because we had a date with Alcatraz! Packed up our wet tent and had granola breakfast on the road. The rest of the trip was mostly boring... A few nice views in the Monterey area, but no views from Santa Cruz. Continued to rain most of the way up the remainder of the coast to San Fran.


Arrived in San Fran and managed to find a decent parking area close to the piers by 11am. We managed to buy a cup of ice from Safeway for only 25 cents for the small cooler that Julie lent us. We ate lunch, then walked to the MarketPlace at Pier 2 where there was a fresh produce market. Quite cool and well laid out. Then walked quickly to Pier 33 to catch our 1:10 ferry to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz was pretty cool. It is now a National Park, so our ferry ticket included an audio tour. Quite interesting to walk around the cell area, and to learn about the history of the inmates. We left the island shortly after 3, visited the crazy busy Pier 39, walked past Fisherman's Wharf, and carried on back towards our car via North Beach (the Italian district). We decided to take in the experience and had dinner at Viva Restaurant. Very yummy.

Now we find ourselves in the YMCA Hostel, in a nice room with a double bed, walk-in closet, sink, free internet, and continental breakfast to look forward to. A little more touring of San Fran tomorrow morning then we're off to Yosemite National Park!

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