Tour Diary - Day Twenty Three
Feb. 15th, 2017 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanDown the California coast...
Wednesday 26th October - Marina to Los Angeles
Full circle...
Another grey, overcast morning... hopefully the weather will clear up for the coast drive. Breakfast at the Dennys at the bottom of our Motel driveway, then leaving Marina mid-morning & a short hop down the highway to Monterey, where we arrived nearly 50 years too late for the Pop Festival, but in time to visit the Museum of Monterey (MoM), which hosts a permanent 'exposition' of Salvador Dali works - a must-see for a Surrealist tragic like myself. Unfortunately, it was as I feared... the works on display were mostly secondary, interesting if you're a Dali completist, or an Art School student looking to brush up on history, influence & multiple techniques - Dali certainly knew his way around a lot of methods & was a dab hand at imitating the classics too, but a lot of what's in Monterey felt like stuff he did when art was more of a day-job than creative freedom. A 'Genius' has to eat, I suppose...
Back onto the highway & the weather was indeed clearing up & becoming sunny. Almost too sunny actually, making photos facing south a bit difficult - bloody photographers, are they never happy??!! The coastline itself was, by turns, imposing, dramatic, rocky, cliffy, twisting & downright beautiful. We made plenty of stops along the way to take in the sea views, compare it to coast drives in Australia & to avoid getting stuck behind the many grey nomads on the road in a variety of vehicles... though to be fair, it wasn't only them that caused grief along the way... the 2-horse trailer sticks in the memory
We glimpsed Hearst Castle up on the hillside, towards the end of Big Sur, but decided to give it a miss this time - opulence, American-style will have to wait for another visit
Something we didn't bypass was Elephant Seal Vista Point. I saw a roadsign indicating this place was 5 miles away, but didn't pay much attention, thinking something like "Yeah yeah... someone probably saw one elephant seal there back in the 1800s & the name stuck because it sounds better than 'Another Rocky Point'". So a few minutes later, I looked over at the beach on the side of the road & saw... seals. Dozens of seals. Possibly hundreds of seals!! There was a large carpark at the aforementioned Vista Point & quite a few people already there, but with my longer lens on the DSLR, I not only got quite a few good shots, but was able to watch them so closely, it was like being in a David Attenborough documentary
As the sun headed for the horizon, we were still about 150 miles out of L.A. so, after a brief stop to photograph the fading daylight, distant oil rigs & sandpipers doing their dance with the evening tide, we found an Outback Steakhouse in Oxnard & decided to lend a little authenticity to the place. A couple of good steaks later, back on the highway for the last leg. With most of the traffic now gone to wherever it goes, we made good time into town & back to the Rodeway Inn on Vine St, where we started this whole thing. Didn't get the same room, but the one right next door is good enough. Got the same parking spot though...
Now - packing, organising, re-packing, realising we may have to buy another bag tomorrow... bed
Wednesday 26th October - Marina to Los Angeles
Full circle...
Another grey, overcast morning... hopefully the weather will clear up for the coast drive. Breakfast at the Dennys at the bottom of our Motel driveway, then leaving Marina mid-morning & a short hop down the highway to Monterey, where we arrived nearly 50 years too late for the Pop Festival, but in time to visit the Museum of Monterey (MoM), which hosts a permanent 'exposition' of Salvador Dali works - a must-see for a Surrealist tragic like myself. Unfortunately, it was as I feared... the works on display were mostly secondary, interesting if you're a Dali completist, or an Art School student looking to brush up on history, influence & multiple techniques - Dali certainly knew his way around a lot of methods & was a dab hand at imitating the classics too, but a lot of what's in Monterey felt like stuff he did when art was more of a day-job than creative freedom. A 'Genius' has to eat, I suppose...
Back onto the highway & the weather was indeed clearing up & becoming sunny. Almost too sunny actually, making photos facing south a bit difficult - bloody photographers, are they never happy??!! The coastline itself was, by turns, imposing, dramatic, rocky, cliffy, twisting & downright beautiful. We made plenty of stops along the way to take in the sea views, compare it to coast drives in Australia & to avoid getting stuck behind the many grey nomads on the road in a variety of vehicles... though to be fair, it wasn't only them that caused grief along the way... the 2-horse trailer sticks in the memory
We glimpsed Hearst Castle up on the hillside, towards the end of Big Sur, but decided to give it a miss this time - opulence, American-style will have to wait for another visit
Something we didn't bypass was Elephant Seal Vista Point. I saw a roadsign indicating this place was 5 miles away, but didn't pay much attention, thinking something like "Yeah yeah... someone probably saw one elephant seal there back in the 1800s & the name stuck because it sounds better than 'Another Rocky Point'". So a few minutes later, I looked over at the beach on the side of the road & saw... seals. Dozens of seals. Possibly hundreds of seals!! There was a large carpark at the aforementioned Vista Point & quite a few people already there, but with my longer lens on the DSLR, I not only got quite a few good shots, but was able to watch them so closely, it was like being in a David Attenborough documentary
As the sun headed for the horizon, we were still about 150 miles out of L.A. so, after a brief stop to photograph the fading daylight, distant oil rigs & sandpipers doing their dance with the evening tide, we found an Outback Steakhouse in Oxnard & decided to lend a little authenticity to the place. A couple of good steaks later, back on the highway for the last leg. With most of the traffic now gone to wherever it goes, we made good time into town & back to the Rodeway Inn on Vine St, where we started this whole thing. Didn't get the same room, but the one right next door is good enough. Got the same parking spot though...
Now - packing, organising, re-packing, realising we may have to buy another bag tomorrow... bed
