On the Road Again !

Well as most of you know, Because of the poor economic conditions in the US, last year at this time, we had a chance to book a winter stay in Hawaii for this year at a very reasonable price so, we took advantage of that opportunity and made arrangements to go to Hawaii this winter.

Also, Air Canada's has a policy that allows customers using Aeroplan flight points for their trip, to do a long term stop over without utilising additional travel points so we decided to take advantage of that opportunity as well. When we did our 14 week road trip to the Southwestern United States in 2009, we had planned to travel the famous Pacific Coast Highway (PC HWY) in Southern California but because of a rainy and foggy conditions during the period we were here, we weren't able to do this much talked about coastal route. So, since we were coming this way this year, we decided to stop over in Los Angeles on our way to Hawaii, rent a car for a week and drive The Pacific Coast Highway.

We had planed to leave for LA on Saturday January 22nd. Our "Sunday morning breakfast club" friends had organised a restaurant get together for us on Friday night. By Wednesday night last week, they were forecasting a huge weekend winter storm in the Moncton area so, Rosella and I decided to see if we could change out departure plans and leave on Friday instead of Saturday. We were very lucky, arrangements we confirmed, we would be on our way bright and early Friday morning and the restaurant plans were moved ahead to Thursday night.

Breakfast Club send off party

After the restaurant on Thursday night, we went home to take care of the last minute preparations the were supposed to have all day Friday so we were both to bed very late. For some reason, the alarm didn’t go off at 3:30 am. Rosella woke up at 4:30, Gerry our brother in-law was already at the door waiting for us. We got up in a flash and were out the door in 10 minutes. Luckily, Air Canada wasn’t very busy when we got to the airport. We managed to change our seats from Montreal to Los Angeles and were assigned exit seats with more leg room. What a bonus! We breezed through US customs and Immigration in Montreal and were on our way to LA. We arrived on schedule at 11:00 am local time and checked into our hotel

 
I had booked our car rental last May and had gotten a ridiculously low price on the rental. When I tried to extend the period by one day, Hertz told me that to do that, I needed to cancel the original reservation and re-book. The new quote was more than $400 more than the original booking so we decided to wait out the extra day in LA. So, after checking in at the hotel, we had lunch in an Italian restaurant and decided to go to a movie and ended up seeing The Falkers, only a so-so movie! .

Our Mustang convertible!

Saturday morning, we were up bright and early, had breakfast and headed to Hertz to pick up our car, a blue mustang convertible for out Pacific Coast Hwy (PC HWY) road trip.

Freshly made corn flower tortillas

We really enjoyed our drive along the coast.  At noon, we stopped in a place called Oxnard and had a real Mexican lunch at a place called Cabo.  They make their tortillas right in the restaurant,  it was an excellent meal!

From there, we continued our trip traveling the PC HWY, stopping to admire the great Pacific Ocean many times along the way.  We had booked a room at the Best Western in San Luis Obispos  The room was excellent, the young man at the front desk was very helpful and polite, the kind of a person you would hire in a flash if you owned a business.

Casa Grande - The Hearst Castle, San Simeon California

Sunday morning, we were off bright and early headed for the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. This castle was constructed by Patty Hearst's grand father in the early 1900's.  Patty Hearst's name became famous in the 1970 because she had been kidnapped.   The tour which lasted one hour and forty minutes was very interesting.   

Tail gate picnic in the Hearts Castle parking lot

At the end of our tour, at about 1:00 pm, we had a tail-gate picnic of fresh fruit and sour dough bread on the trunk of our Mustang convertible in the parking lot of the Hearst Castle before proceeding to see the movie about the man and the history about the building of this extraordinary structure.  After the movie, we headed north to continue our journey along the PC HWY.  



BBQed oysters on the beach



We stoped on a rugged beach to admire the surf where we came upon a young California who were cooking oysters on a charcoal BBQ.  We weren't sure what they were cooking so we asked and they were BBQing Oysters and insisted we try one, so we did.  It was really good.  Further on down the beach, we stoped to ask a few questions from three locals who come to the beach on a regular basis to pick up jade stones and one of these people gave one he had just found to Rosella.



Elephant seals frolicking on the beach!



Shortly after that, we came upon a beach that had hundreds of Elephant seals lying on the sand taking in the California sunshine, We watched them playing in the sand, the daddy seals at over 1500 kilos, the mama seals at approximately half that size and the baby seals who were born within the last month. It was quite an interesting experience.



After that , we continued our journey towards Carmel, where we were going to stay for the night.  Just b efore Carmel is the small town called Big Sur and just past here, we decided to stop to admire the setting sun. 

Not far from where we stopped, there was an artist called Julia Ingersold who was set up there finishing a painting and we struck up a conversation with her. Turn out her mother was born in Lyons France, Julia speaks perfect French and has a studio in Big Sur.