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Published: June 16th 2014
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Just realized I never got round to publishing this blog - so 2 weeks overdue, here's the last one for a while.
Our next leg of the trip was to return to Santa Barbara via Highway One coastal road.
The highway is about 90 miles and twists and turns frequently with spectacular drops in places. The whole route took us 8 hours due to the many twists and the fact that we stopped frequently to take photos.
At Big Sur there's a Redwood National Park, it was approaching lunch time by the time we reached there so seemed a good place to explore, eat a picnic and take a walk to stretch our legs.
From here we took to the road again and an hour or so later got to Julia Phiffer National Park. It's basically a beach but in a spectacular setting with a waterfall dropping right onto the beach, unfortunately there's no way to get onto the beach itself so we had to be content with looking down from above.
The next major stop was where the elephant seals come up onto the beach, I expected to see one or two seals
but in fact the beach was full of them, mostly sunning themselves but the odd one was dragging itself up the beach and several were 'digging themselves in' with their flippers.
We had intended stopping the night in San Lois Obispo but it was only 6 pm when we arrived there so after finding somewhere to eat we decided to head back to Scott and Sharon's, just a 3 hour drive away.
Due to us arriving home a day early we still had one day left with the hire car so decided to explore the high mountains in the back country near Santa Barbara. There were some spectacular roads going up and over fairly high passes but the scariest of all was a road that was signposted to Pine Mountain recreation area. We decided to take a look and found ourselves on a narrow very steep windy road. There was no indication how far to the recreation area and no where to turn around so we just kept going taking in the views. All was fine until we met another car coming in the opposite direction, the road was too narrow to pass so we ended up reversing
back down several feet - we were on the drop side and a bend was right behind us! Stan kept a cool head and we lived to tell the tale! If I'd been driving we'd have been over the edge for sure!!
Eventually we arrived at the recreation area and were rewarded with wonderful views, as expected from the name, the mountain was covered in tall pine trees. It reminded me of a programme I used to watch when I was a child called 'Grizzly Adams'. It was set in wonderful mountain scenery but I never thought I would actually be somewhere like it.
Well that was the last day of our 6 day road trip, the car has to go back and we're back in the land of wet/dirty diapers, crying babies and a active toddler. We don't mind really!!
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Glorious Santa Barbara!
So wise to take the coastal road! I'm a Santa Barbara native who's lived on the coast, but prefer that glorious backcountry with mountains stretching in all directions. Stan was a gentleman to back down for the other car, but California rules say that the uphill car should have backed up for you--once backing downhill, there's that danger that you'll fall downhill. And those big daisies look like delicate Matilija poppies. How great you were there for our spring flowers!