Cute as anything – blog 24

I was still glowing with delight at seeing killer whale and blue whale yesterday when I woke today.  It was quite a misty morning as I headed along California Highway 1 to Moss Landing and Elkhorn Slough.  Here, I’d been told, I would see the cute sea otter.  And I did! I had a few…

Monterey Bay – blog 23

And now I am in Monterey, just up the road from Carmel where Clint Eastwood was mayor, and the setting for a couple of Steinbeck novels.  Hello Pacific Ocean. Fisherman’s Wharf is a bunch of restaurants and gift shops that are keen to sell you fish food or hats and tea-shirts.  But there are also…

Not everyone’s cup of tea – blog 22

The Holiday Motel, Los Banos, CA is not everyone’s cup of tea.  It is the cheapest place I’ve stayed and for $35 a night you don’t expect much. But I don’t want much – wifi, a shower and a bed will do it. The wifi works, the shower works (I’ve washed myself and some clothes…

Sequoia and bears – blog 21

There are a lot more bears in Yosemite than there are giant sequoias – so they should be easier to find.  Of course the bears can hide behind the giant sequoias in a way that the sequoias can’t hide behind the bears. I asked a very nice lady on the entrance to Yosemite where to…

Yosemite – blog 20

I take back all I thought about Nevada – I like it!  Even quieter roads than Utah, looks like the Flow Country, has clownish motels and has a few birds too.  As I left Nevada, with a touch of sadness, but quite quickly as it was on a long downhill straight off the White Mountain…

Nevada – Blog 19

I didn’t want to come to Nevada but I’m staying two nights in the Clown Motel in Tonopah.  There are clowns everywhere – in the motel office, on the doors, on the walls and, yes probably, as guests. All I knew about Nevada was that Las Vegas was in Nevada – a rather popular but…

Utah in three parts – Blog 18

Part 1: Arches National Park is a landscape feast.  It has the red cliffs of Marble Canyon, the weathered sandstone of Badlands NP and the majesty of Sion NP all rolled into one.  If you think I liked it, you’re wrong – I loved it. I visited it first late yesterday afternoon and stayed until…

Boundaries – blog 17

Hi! I’ve stopped calling these blogs ‘Day something’ because they are already getting out of synch! I’ve already told you twice, so this is time number three, that I crossed the Mississippi River two days ago.  That marked a sort of boundary between east and west. Yesterday I passed another boundary, and another today. Today’s…

Loveliness on the Tall Grass Prairie – Day 16

I think yesterday was so lovely I didn’t have room to tell you all about it. Let’s backtrack just a bit.  I crossed the Mississippi River, heading west. The river forms a notional boundary between the forest area (to the east) and the Great Plains (to the west). Obviously it’s not a hard and fast…

Kansas – Day 15

It’s been a long day – starting in Indiana a bit west of Indianapolis and ending in Kansas a bit west of Topeka.  You can tell it was a long day when I say that the first words I heard were from the satnav saying ‘stay on the I70 for 200 miles’ which only got…