Andy & Gillie's Big Adventure!: I Must Go Down to the Seas Again

Las Vegas was outlandish, over-the-top, ostentatious and all sorts of grubby, plasticky words beginning with ‘O’, but quite magnetic too, especially as it was so hot. We had another night there following the last blog post and went to see Blue Man Group at the Monte Carlo. They’re a sort of theatrical drum n bass group with lots of colours and some interesting lines in comedy. Plus a great band.

The walk back to our Molly was very entertaining. The Strip is littered with people dressed up as Elvis, Spiderman, Showgirls, Star Wars etc. and we were able to watch the musical fountains at Bellagio and see the amazing glitzy, kitsch, tacky indoor garden ‘Under The Sea’ theme, there as well – brilliant!

Leaving Las Vegas, we headed west on a very long, challenging drive through the desert to end up in Bakersfield Walmart, not far from where we started, two weeks ago!

The next few days we headed north by north west through Sequoia National Park to see some amazing trees and go on some lovely walks. The NP campgrounds are really good, as every site comes with its own firepit, so foccary to the fore!

During our walks, we were fortunate enough to come across three wild bears! One cub with its mum keeping a watchful and another when there was no-one around but us and it – a bit scary, but we kept our distance!

The Sequoia trees are something other than else, as well! Standing at the bottom looking up it’s easy to get a sense of vertigo, believe it or not. The world’s largest tree in terms of volume is named the Sherman Tree. Still not sure why a tree is named after an act of onanism…

The next point in our whistle-stop tour of South-West USA’s National Parks was the oldest of the lot – Yosemite. We camped outside and had a great day walking around some lovely scenery, checking out climbers on El Capitan – the iconic image of Yosemite – and generally enjoying the beautiful weather.

Having spent the best part of six weeks away from the coast, we decided we needed to see the sea again, hence the title of this post. So, we set off west for San Francisco, camped in Napa, caught the ferry from Vallejo into San Francisco Pier ½, didn’t wear flowers in our hair, but generally had a great time walking up and down some famous streets. We got very excited when we found we were at the top of Lombard Street – made famous by Steve McQueen’s car chase in Bullitt. But we were at the other end. Hey ho. Had a lovely sandwich at the famous, we were advised by Lonely Planet, Molinari’s deli (est. 1896).

We decided to chill out a bit after Frisco and stayed a couple of nights just outside the little coastal ‘city’ of Mendocino (pop 1000), a lovely place with a great genteel/hippy/edgy vibe if you can picture that! Plus it’s mentioned in a Frank Zappa song…and it was the location for many famous films – notably Rebel Without a Cause East of Eden and The Majestic (?) us neither. While we were there, we met a couple on their way from Florida to Alaska for some fishing. He’s a retired naval pilot, Vietnam vet, still cycling all over and in his words, ‘doing, not waiting’. He’s 83 and looks 15 years younger.

More foccary that night and a chance to educate the campers with some proper English music – John Martyn, Nick Drake and Pink Floyd all got an airing that evening. We did hear Cream on the radio in the campground office, though.

The drive from Mendocino to Trinidad was a mixture of enjoyment and attrition. It took what appeared like 8 ½ weeks to get the short distance to Leggett – officially the end of Big Sur, then we had a great drive through the Giant Redwoods and the Avenue of the Giants. Have to name check a biker lady we met when we stopped for lunch. Hayley O’Ryan (hope I’ve spelt it right) – Ukulele Hayley -re-tuned the ukulele and gave us some excellent advice (‘my dog has fleas’). Don’t put it back in the case!

We are writing this sitting in a very pleasant car park at the Cher-Ae Casino in Trinidad - $20 for three nights. The weather is blissful and we are going to catch the shuttle bus into the small ‘city’ (pop 320) to check out the Trinidad Fish Festival (we hope) this afternoon. Fish festival not on till next weekend – but bought some ‘Steelhead’ fish for supper and drank champagne at $4.75/schooner in the Seascape restaurant…

More will be added before posting, as we don’t have wifi, so watch this space…

PS. Hi there from Gillie in Trinidad! We originally planned to spend this Christmas in Trinidad (Caribbean) but a while ago changed our minds and decided to maybe spend it in Florida instead. However here we are in Trinidad and it’s only June!! We came for one night, but have stayed for three, as it’s such a gorgeous little place, full of clapboard houses and quirky shops and cafes. We found it completely by accident, which is just what we hoped would happen when we began this trip. It’s perched on top of a cliff with amazing views over the Pacific Ocean. After an ‘American’ size Sunday brunch we completed a 2 mile walk over the headland…wonderful!

The wild flowers have been a wonderful feature for the last few days, once we’d left the desert and found our way to the coast. Even though it’s the middle of June it feels like Spring, as the roadside verges and fields are full of forget-me-nots, wild clematis, daisies, lupins… so many familiar plants, we feel at times as if we’re back in Dorset!! However we haven’t seen any stinging nettles in all our travels, does anyone know why??

We had no real ideas about this part of the west coast, but have found it to be just so lovely, hidden gems around every corner and an ‘out of the way’ feeling. We cross over to Oregon tomorrow and hope to take the ferry over to Vancouver Island on Friday…Canada here we come!!

Hope you are all enjoying the light evenings with the promise of lovely sunny days ahead. I can’t believe it’ll be Wimbledon in a couple of weeks…wow, we’ve been retired for nearly a year!! It doesn’t seem five minutes since we were sitting in our kitchen planning this trip, we must (and do) savour every second. Bye for now, love G xxx