zjbm1

Friday

Left very early for us when on holiday and had breakfast at Denny's again to set us up for the day.  This is one disadvantage of a long trip, moving from place to place - you are eating out and in hotels all the time and although that doesn't sound too bad, after a while, the novelty really wears off.  That's why we've said that we prefer the idea of two centre holidays - having a base for a week at a time or something like that, especially if you decide to go self-catering so you can please yourself and cook what you want when you want it.  Maybe next time...

We drove up to Hearst Castle, which was a very pretty drive.  The mist was coming in over the coast as we drove and this gave a very odd impression of the land just falling away from you, like the edge of the world.  We stopped to take some pictures and at some point I'll either put a couple on here for the trip or at least link to our webshots albums.

Arrived at Hearst Castle quite early, way ahead of the time that we had booked the tour so went to find out whether we could change our time and go a bit earlier.  Great, we could get on the tour about to go, which was an hour earlier so we'd have more day to do what we wanted to.

What to say about Hearst Castle - it's completely over the top and that's an understatement!  The amount of money spent, the ostentatious decorations, the amount of time it took to build and complete, the stories of the history and all that, does not detract from what it is and the fact that it is worth seeing.  It reminded us a lot of the placed we saw in Rhode Island when we were there years ago and the stories about Americans having a lot of money but no class - according to the Europeans - as it's something you can't buy.  That and real history! LOL  It certainly was an amazing building with a colourful history and a breath-taking view.

Started the drive down to LA and stopped for lunch at Red Lobster, nice little seafood chain and the lunch menu has the size portion that we are more used to!  However, the bits and pieces you get for free make it more than you can handle really!   At the moment, we feel that we prefer the East Coast of the country to the West Coast.  This is for various reasons but perhaps for the feel of the place and the history - there's more of it on the East Coast really.  Perhaps also the fact that it's closer to home!

Headed into LA and even though we spent a great deal of our lives driving in London, busy, manic city that it can be, driving in LA is mad!  Even the Garmin got really confused at times!  Don't know who designed the road layouts or what they were thinking (or perhaps what they were on) but there is much confusion and very little logic!  Anyway, we found the hotel okay, very nice, especially after the last place.  Settled in and relaxed before heading out to get some bits to eat - not that we wanted much.  Tomorrow we will sort out a tour of the city.

Distance: 279 miles

Thursday

We knew that today was going to be a long drive but until you get to Sequoia, you don't realise how tiring the drive can be on the road filled with twists and turns but more about that later.

We left for Sequoia very early (for us) to see the giant trees.  We stopped to have breakfast in Denny's as the so called 'continental breakfast' at the hotel was laughable.  Not knowing when we were going to stop for lunch, having a decent breakfast was a good idea but once again, we had not thought about the size of the portions.  Now, I don't mean to be rude, but with the amount of food served to you, the amount of food you are expected to eat and noticing that most of the population seem to do this without a problem, it's no wonder that so many Americans are either obese or obsessed fitness freaks!  You either have to grow in size or work it off!

The weather was lovely, warm and sunny, pretty much like the weather we'd left in SA.  We made sure we had enough water (I do drink a lot of water every day), the iPod set on shuffle and we took our time travelling up to the park.

You have to drive quite a way into the park before you see the biggest living thing in the world - the General Sherman - though we stopped on the way to take pics and movie footage of the first really HUGE trees we saw.  WOW! One of the really amazing things in the park was the amount of snow that was still around - masses of it but it was warm and sunny with us in short sleeves, very strange!  We took lots of footage of the snow piled up around the sides of the road as we had people back in SA who just wouldn't believe it until they saw it.

Heading further in and finally reaching the General Sherman, you really understand the enormity of these trees, how long they have been there but, in a way, how little has changed around them and that is a credit to the US parks.  The General Sherman is thought to be the largest living thing on the planet and believed to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old - that's a long time to be standing up!  LOL

R took pics and I used the movie camera which really gives an idea of how large the tree is when you pan from someone standing at the base, slowly all the way to the top - it took about 30 seconds to do.  It really was amazing to see and we know that there are other amazing sights to behold on this holiday.

Unfortunately, because it is only mid-April and because of the snow, some of the roads were still closed.  That included the one that lead to Auto Log, where the road has been cut through a fallen sequoia to really give you an idea of the size of these magnificent trees.  R was very disappointed at that, bad timing and weather worked against us - a bit like the bad timing we had many years ago when we spent part of our honeymoon at Disneyworld in Florida.  There were no fireworks displays in the evenings as it was the wrong time of year!  Anyway, that gives us a reason to come back here again and next time, we won't do a whole flydrive trip, we'll pick a couple of places to stay and work out from there so we can spend more time in the places we've liked.

Driving back out of the park was probably worse than driving in even though we stopped to take more pictures of the forests and the mountains in the distance.  The twisting and turning of the road ended up making me feel rather sick and gave me a headache and I don't normally get travel sick. Once we headed out, we found somewhere to stop and have something to eat, after driving it was good to sit still for a while.  I was rather worried for a while that I was getting another attack of Labyrinthitis (horrid inner ear infection a bit like vertigo) as that really would have put a damper on things, especially so early in the trip but in the end it passed.

We got back to the hotel in the late evening and were rather disappointed to find that our room had not been made up properly.  It was partly done - towels taken but not replaced, bed not made, bin not emptied, no coffee... seems whoever had been doing it got distracted with something else and then forgot to go back.  We complained but as we were leaving in the morning, there wasn't much point in it all.  We would never stay there again and would never recommend it.  A shame really because it looks quite nice from the outside but appearances can be deceptive!

Distance: 317 miles