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Day 11: Friday 27th April A word of caution to anyone staying in a motel, don't ever accept a room that is next to the highway! I think I must have had a couple of hours sleep all night because the noise of the traffic was so loud. We were disappointed to see that the sky was over cast that morning, the first time it had been so cloudy since we arrived in America, and we thought we would not get to see the amazing views along the coast. There was nothing we could do about any of this so we dragged our shopping laden suitcases to the car and carried on northwards along the 101.  Although the 101 would have carried us to San Francisco a lot quicker, we were in no hurry so at the appropriate junction we turned onto the coast road. The sky was beginning to clear and we were driving along listening to Orson Welles in the famous radio adaptation of War of the Worlds. The driving experience was further enhanced by my discovery of the cruise control button, a brilliant device that keeps your speed constant without you having to rest your foot on the accelerator pedal. This was ideal for the long, straight American roads, but it did feel very strange for the first few miles. Lunch was had in a small sandwich bar in a retail park just off of the highway. By now, War of the Worlds had been replaced by Christopher Barrie reading the first Red Dwarf book, and we finally reached the ocean. The sun had come out and it was lovely driving with the water on one side and hills on the other. Ironically, considering we had been listening to Orson Welles earlier, we drove past Hearst Castle which was the enormous mansion seen in his film Citizen Kane. We would have loved to have looked around the castle, but the tours lasted several hours and we just didn't have the time. Instead, we stopped at the beach below the castle to stretch our legs for a while. I was certainly not prepared for what happened next. The lovely straight, fast road became narrower and more windy as it began going into the mountains. Suddenly I was having to maneuver around hairpin bends at 15 m.p.h. with a sheer drop on one side and no barrier. We drove for miles like this, getting higher and higher. Heather assured me that the view was spectacular, but I was concentrating on preventing us from plunging to a fiery death to pay much attention. There are plenty of lay-bys, and we stopped frequently to take photos and admire the scenery.  It really was a gruelling drive and I was quite glad when the road leveled out again past Big Sur and we drove through Monterey. Our destination for the night was a town called Salinas, birthplace of the author John Steinbeck, which was a bit off our route but it looked like an interesting place. We opted for a room at Motel 6 again, just off the 101, where Heather managed to get us a single room rate because we were on honeymoon (I think me waving at the girls in reception helped). For dinner we went to Margie's Diner across the road. I have to admit I was beginning to get a bit sick of fried food so I opted for the salad thinking that would be a light meal and not lay too heavily on my stomach. Not so! No exaggeration, this salad was 8 inches high, there must have been three large lettuces in it, and slices of watermelon. It seemed that whatever meal you bought you had watermelon with it, and I don't like watermelon. Bizarrely enough I only had the half-size salad, obviously I couldn't eat the whole thing. When we came to pay the bill we found out that only one person had ever managed to finish an entire salad, which seemed to be a great joke amongst the staff, but I just thought it was a terrible waste of food. Then it was back to the motel, watched some television and then went to sleep. |
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