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Published: February 13th 2007
Mr D'z Diner
With officially the world's best milkshakes- no arguements!Leaving the Grand Canyon we thought we'd slip in to watch the famous IMAX movie by National Geographic, but true to form missed the last showing by 10 minutes!
We drove on to Williams, apparently famous, on Route 66. After a nights rest and a disgusing number of donuts for breakfast, we hit the road. Hard. We covered well over 500 miles, and after what seemed like an eternity through the Mojave Desert we embarked upon the Cali Coast.Thank God.
California has for me much felt like home for me by comparison to other states, and coming out of the desert to beaches was refreshing, well it would have been if it weren't dark!
After struggling through our new but completely obselete PCH (Highway 1) book, we found a campsite, pitched, cooked and scrubbed up for bed in the dark, including a stroll pas the beach under a railway!
Rested, we struck off again up the coast through legendary OC (orange county). From Dana Point through Doheny, Laguna and on up to Newport beach. We managed to walk the boardwalk and explore the pier at a leisurly pace having found some free parking!Free parking is on every beach if you park more than 100 meters from the state owned car parks.
Noone walks, so being 100 meters from the sand, a minor inconvenience, will stop your car being towed after 2hours if you don't have $1,000,000 in 25c pieces!
Struggling again to find a TENT camping site, despite having multiple books telling us locations for them, we did manage to get a sweet nights sleep- after a small 5hour detour!
Having found that camping means park your 50ft RV, we gave in and tried a hostel in Huntington. The proprietor was comatose in the front room and not waking to the loud knocks at the window- we pressed on. Every motel within an ear-shot of the waves charged $99+ for a stinking room. Eventually we read up on a hostel further north in Long Beach. Which turned out not to be Long Beach but San Pedro, and on a peninsular way off PCH and in the dark through seedy districts, a long way away!
Upon finally finding the place, we found it is only open June-Sept, apart from this day when 25 Girl Scouts are having a Cuban Cultural Kitchen Weekend away. We totally gatecrashed and the kindest hostel keeper ever not only put us up in a private room, but fed us left over (fantastic) Cuban food and Muffin Breakfast. All in return for the small fee of a quick presentation to the troops on travelling, hostelling and encouraging the girls to get out and explore the world.
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xandz
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ode to the weary ones
I wish I could write an ode to you, but as i'm not entirely sure what one is i figure it could be quite tricky to write... your stories of days such as these fills me with memories of the days everything goes wrong, yet are somehow the most enjoyable...