California
2003
June 2003 found us in California for a couple of weeks’ holiday. We started in San Francisco – a very nice, if somewhat hilly place, where the people are very friendly and helpful. Good places that we found for eating were Pompei’s Grotto and Pergaminos and the boat trips on Chucky’s Pride were great fun.
We
went up Coit Tower which gave us excellent views of the City and took
two one hour boat trips (one per day!) round Alcatraz and the Golden Gate
Bridge
From
San Francisco, we drove down, and enjoyed the beauty of, Highway 1, (Pacific
Coast) as we travelled to our next destination (Big
Sur).
We
found some beautiful beaches and spectacular scenery (inland very different
to the coast) and on one evening and the following morning, it was quite
misty.
Whilst
staying at Big Sur, we ventured back to Monterey for whale
watching where we were lucky enough to find a cow and calf hump backed
whale together with a couple of hundred Pacific white sided dolphins and
loads of California sea lions.
On
the way to Pasadena for the
AAW’s annual symposium, we stopped off at San Simeon to look
at the elephant seals then went on to Hearst
Castle for our “beginner’s” tour.
From Pasadena (where we met some great people and found a couple of excellent places to eat - Dino’s and Foxes (for breakfast)) we drove (and drove, and drove) to Yosemite (via Death Valley).
The
green of Yosemite
and the relatively normal temperatures (Death Valley reached 52C while
we were there) were very welcome and the scenery was spectacular ...
...
whether in the Valley, on the Tioga Road or the Tioga Pass or in one of
the Giant Sequoia groves
Although
we didn’t see a single bear (or mountain lion come to that) there
were very pretty butterflies, some mule deer ...
...
plenty of “ordinary” squirrels and Douglas squirrels not to
mention the odd lizard, coyote and marmoset (the latter two were too fast
for me to photograph)
We
were told that it is very difficult to get good pictures of sunsets in
Yosemite (not enough clouds) but, as we always enjoy a challenge, we gave
it a go and here are the results:
We really enjoyed our holiday and think it’s a great place to visit but early June would probably have been a better time to go as the waterfalls in Yosemite would have been even more spectacular, the temperature would have been better for us (ie. cooler) and there would have been fewer mosquitoes – we’ll know for next time
Brian from OutsideHow has provided this link for more up to date info about Big Sur.