We
had one last look at San Francisco this morning, because we hadn’t really
got any video of the cable cars. It was a mad dash to do all three cable
cars, plus two trams and two buses. Even though we were rushing around,
it was still a lovely, relaxed city. We’re definitely a bit sad to leave
it. We finally drove out of the city at 2:30 – the first time in the
car for 5 days, which has been a nice break for us all. However, we
are heading down the coast road to LA and Disneyland, so we’ve got 500
miles ahead of us in the next day.
The drive down the Big Sur was spectacular – lots
of wild coast lines, with beaches hidden in the bay, and waves hitting
the rocks below us. The road twisted along the coastline, occasionally
coming across huge drops on the outside curves. Although the Highway
1 coast road goes for hundreds of miles, the Big Sur section, which
is the most spectacular, is 90 miles long, and took us 3 hours to drive.
It was 5 o’clock by the time we started it, so we saw the sunset while
we were driving down. We stopped for dinner at a gruesome diner (but
when the next one is 50 miles, there’s no choice), and then settled
in for more driving. We’d decided we’d get as far as we could before
finding a motel, so that tomorrow’s drive isn’t too long. But as we
got further south (and a bit closer to LA) motels started getting more
expensive because of the weekend tourist traffic. By the time we eventually
stopped (just short of Santa Barbara) it was midnight, and we were paying
$80 for the room! In all, we’d driven 350 miles from San Francisco,
a large section along the twisty coastal road. We were all exhausted
– the girls had finally fallen asleep at 11pm, and I’d found the drive
a bit shattering
(In fact, so shattering that I didn't finish the
sentence on the website in the first version of this! And this section
was piled full of typos and spelling mistakes)