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Published: August 9th 2011
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Pacific Coast
Highway 1, California I write this final blog, sitting in an Airport Hotel, a few hours out from catching the shuttle to the airport and sitting around for a few hours more before we catch the flight home. During the last few days, we have traveled from San Francisco, alternating between highway 1 and the 101, down to Los Angeles. We stayed at Santa Cruz, THE most expensive campground we stayed at during the whole time we have been away, and Pismo Beach, before making the run to Los Angeles and staying for 2 nights out at Pomona. The road down the coast is definitly worth the windy drive, with amazing switchbacks, coastal views, Seal colonies and vistas as you curve high around steep cliffs and wind down to small bays and longer beaches. Switching back to the 101 after Santa Barbara, gave Deans arms a rest and made for smother driving, until we hit Ventura. It was a Saturday, and we could not believe the traffic, luckily heading the other way, although it was pretty busy heading south as well! It was bumper to bumper cars heading north for about 60 kms! With 16 million people living in LA, we estimated that about
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Pacific coast highway, California 10 million of them were on the road and heading out of town!As always with the coast road at this time of year, there was fog hanging around. Luckily for us, it had cleared when we were in Big Sur and at other places along the road, but we never shook it completely until we were in LA itself. Pomona is about 40 miles east and the temperature was perfect for lounging beside the pool and relaxing, cleaning out the van, buying an extra bag to pack all of the shopping in ( mostly jeans from the Levi's Outlet Store and mostly for other people!), knowing we only had a short drive of about 50 miles to drop off the camper. In saying that, Los Angeles traffic is INSANE! This is one of the few places in the whole of the journey in the states where we have used the GPS. Even with that, we still made one wrong turn off the highway but were able to get back on again fairly easily. The area we drove through then did look a bit dodgy and stories of drive by shootings etc flashed through our minds but we made it out
with no drama! So now we are at the end. People that we have met on the road will invariably ask us what has been our highlight or what have we liked the best, but its hard to choose just one experience we have had or sight that we have seen as being the highlight. Every place we have visited has been special in its own unique way and although there have been parts and places on the trip that we have enjoyed more than others, or that remain more memorable for one reason or another, the whole trip has been one big adventure and the memories will last us a lifetime. When you are put on the spot, it is sometimes hard to think of a specific moment or a funny story, but these come to us as we talk about different things or our memory is jogged, usually by something random! At least we have lots of photos, videos and these blogs to look and read back on. So, to the followers of our journey, thanks for reading, thanks for your comments and messages and in some cases, hospitality and welcome. We are looking forward to coming home and getting settled again...for the time being anyway, and seeing family and friends. Signing off for the last time,
Shelley and Dean.xxx
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Gaylene
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Thanks for the ride!
Hey guys, Have loved following your amazing journey and look forward to hearing more as your memories allow (haha). Safe journey home and see ya's soon. xxoo