Day 21 - Road Trip (continued)

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A weird start to the day - Spanish radio as our clock alarm at 7am in the morning!! We drove straight to the Monterey Peninsula’s main attraction - the 17-mile scenic drive and home of Pebble Beach Golf Course. It was unbelievable standing on the 1st tee watching the golfers tee off. There was even an official starter for casual Saturday morning golf. That was only topped by the scenery on the 18th green. Amazing!! We also dropped into the numerous golf shops (they even have a shop entirely for merchandise for next year’s 2010 U.S Open to be played at Pebble Beach). We may have got carried away in the Pro Shop, but oh well!!
It was late morning, so we finished the rest of the 17-mile drive and hit the road for a while. Started the Big Sur and stopped for lunch at a diner along the way. We passed a town called Lucia - it was just one barn and that was it! Some amazing views along the way. We couldn’t believe how steep some of the mountains right next to the road were. And the road did get hairy in parts, but overall it was ok. It helps that only tourists drive down it!

Just before the end of the Big Sur was a beach with elephant seals. We almost missed it, but did a quick U-turn to check out the action. The beach was about 500 metres long, but covered in male and female seals. Turns out that we fluked the start of the mating season, so the males were very ‘active’. No, not like that. Just trying to show their dominance in front of the females. Really odd that just this stretch of beach had attracted all the seals!

Next was Hearst Castle, which a number of people had told us about. Laura was quite excited about this stop and I must admit that I was surprised just how big it was as we approached. Unfortunately, that’s about as much as we can tell you. Turns out that there was a private function on Saturday night, so they closed the Castle for tours from 1.20pm. We arrived at 1.45pm, so we were pretty annoyed. The tour guide then said “I haven’t seen them close the Castle before in all my time here”. Although Laura tried to jump the counter, I did manage to hold her back and drag her into the movie theatre for a 40-minute movie about the history of the place. Thought they would give it to us for free, but they didn’t! Wasn’t very good anyway.

We had a fair bit of driving to do and arrived in Santa Barbara after dark. It is extremely hard to figure out what is the best part of town when you can’t see anything! Drove around for about an hour then finally found a hotel. It had a bed and a shower, so we were happy. Grabbed some pizza, beer, bourbon and pepsi and we were set for the night! By the way, can’t believe how cheap grog is -we bought a bottle of Jim Beam (normal size) for $12.99 and a 12-pack of beer for $13.99!!

We'll put up photo's later when we have more time.

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