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Sunday 17 June 2001 - Tuesday 19 June 2001We'd both wanted to see giant redwoods, but hadn't planned to get into California this time round. However, we noticed by accident that the redwood forests extend right up into northern California, so being in southern Oregon we made an exception and went to Salmon Harbour RV Park, just four miles into CA. Quiet, on the ocean, modem connection and just $12 a night - terrific. Giant redwoods are extremely big (over 300', some of them) ...
... but have no taproots and so fall over a lot ...
Incidentally, redwoods are the very tall ones; sequoias are related but are slightly shorter and much fatter. Northern California is really nice; lots more flowers than we've seen anywhere else, green fields, wooded hillsides, rocky coastlines with empty beaches...
... and lots of other stuff. The only downside is petrol at around $2 per gallon, but even at this outrageous price we can't really bring ourselves to complain. One place not to be missed is the Trees of Mystery tour, shop and museum on US 101. The tour is mainly an overpriced gondola ride through the treetops, so we gave that a miss having ridden more gondolas than most people in the past few months, but the free museum is excellent and, most important, in the car park they have the world's largest animated Paul Bunyan with his pet cow (or possibly ox; we didn't get that close to the relevant parts) ...
Paul waves, winks, turns his head and talks to you; it's worth the trip just for this. That's it for California for now, although we may well return in the winter as it seems to be a nice place and it stays reasonably warm even this far north. Back to Oregon.
Thursday 28 February 2002Aiming for San Diego, although it's more than a single day's journey from Tucson. We considered stopping overnight at Yuma where a lot of people stay for the winter, but to be honest it wasn't a very appealing place consisting largely of bleak desert; its climate and proximity to Mexico (for cheap prescription medicines) are the main attractions. At the state line we passed through checkpoints for both border and agricultural police, but didn't look Hispanic enough to be stopped. Shortly afterwards we stopped at a rest area on the I8, hoping now that we were in sunny California to pick up some maps, tourist info, drinks etc., only to find that the entire facilities comprised four portaloos in a row in front of the sand dunes ...
Not a good start. Lots of people around here with dune buggies on trailers, which must be the only diversion in these parts. Stopped overnight in the impressive sounding Desert Trails RV Park and Golf Course in El Centro, an incongruous region of green, flat, irrigated land covered in crops in the middle of the desert.
Friday 1 March 2002 - Thursday 7 March 2002West of El Centro the desert resumed with a vengeance: bleak rocky hills with no trees or vegetation at all. Then suddenly we reached the suburbs of San Diego and everything changed: greenery, hillsides covered in houses, shopping malls, all within the space of a mile or two. We stopped at Santee Lakes Regional Park and Campground on the outskirts of the city, which turned out to be a great choice: a string of seven lakes with loads of wildlife, and very quiet. The cold and cough I'd developed in Tucson was worse and I felt dreadful, and Christine's shoulder was painful, so after setting up and shopping we slumped for the rest of that day and all the next, feeling sorry for ourselves. On Sunday we went into town to see Balboa Park. This was originally built in 1915 for a Panamanian exposition and was supposed to be temporary, but people liked the park and the architecture ...
... so much that it was retained and expanded. It has the world-famous zoo, museums, gardens, an international village, a cactus park and numerous art galleries, one of which by good fortune was displaying on loan one of Bosch's finest triptychs: The Temptation of Saint Anthony. One of the nicest features of the park is an outdoor auditorium for organ recitals ...
... one of which we were lucky enough to catch. The city organist is Carol Williams, a lady from Wales: not a bad gig. In the evening we got a special offer pizza from a newly opened place near the campground, but it turned out to be a cook-it-yourself variety. Unfortunately the oven in the trailer is not ideal for cooking pizza: it has a single burner along the middle, so the pizza base immediately above it ended up pretty well cooked (oh, all right, burnt). Looking on the bright side, it was a good test for the smoke alarm. Another day of inactivity and feeling poorly, then back to Balboa Park to see the Mingei International Museum. This contains some great stuff: African carvings, Mexican folk art, Japanese/American furniture, pre-Columbian pots and textiles, but the descriptions are very poor with few dates and little information about the uses of objects. Also did the Natural History Museum, which is not brilliant - mainly dinosaur oriented plus some stuffed birds. On Wednesday we visited the Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first of a string of 21 Californian missions. It was founded in 1769 ...
... and rebuilt in 1931 after having fallen into disrepair. One of the five bells was recast from fragments of broken bells retrieved from some of the other missions. The church is long and thin, its width being determined by the maximum length of timber obtainable at the time. It's pretty and peaceful, with nice gardens and a little museum. Thursday was rainy and foggy, so we stayed in the truck most of the day driving round the city. Visited the Cabrillo National Monument, the spot where the first European landed on the west coast of what is now the USA in 1542 ...
Joćo Rodrigues Cabrilho was a Portuguese navigator based in Mexico, about whom almost nothing is known other than his historic landing.
Friday 8 March 2002 - Sunday 10 March 2002Up the coast a bit to San Mateo Campground in San Onofre. We stopped on the way at the information centre in Oceanside, which was fine if the information you needed was about hotels and restaurants in Oceanside, but pretty thin otherwise. The campground is lovely, on a hillside a mile out of town, with plenty of trees and grass for each site. We spent our time here just walking, through the countryside and along the beaches. Nice soft sand with beach buggy tyre tracks, clifftop houses, date palms, beach volleyball courts, surfers - this is what we expected from South California ...
Plenty of surfing going on, some pretty impressive to our untrained eyes, but everyone was wearing wet suits at this time of year.
Monday 11 March 2002 - Thursday 14 March 2002To Long Beach, losing our way as the directions to the campground were inadequate and, in places, completely wrong. It did mean that we had a delightful unplanned tour of the Los Angeles dockland area before we realised what was happening ten miles later and found a place to turn around. Stayed at Golden Shores RV Park, nicely situated near the sea and with the finest restrooms we've found so far. On Wednesday we walked around Shoreline Park next to the harbour, which is the final resting place of the Queen Mary ...
If you look behind it, you will see what looks like yet another redundant piece of British hardware: the Millennium Dome. We wondered what had happened to it. Afterwards we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific which is well worth a visit. Some of our favourite creatures: sea otters, all of which look like cuddly toys escaped from a shop - this one is lying on a bed of ice cubes as they prefer it cold ...
... weedy sea dragons which have been bred in the aquarium, apparently a rare occurrence ...
... starfish and garden eels ...
... and giant spider crabs ...
Lots of obscure and bizarre jellyfish too, but they don't photograph all that well. A brief aside: If, like me, you were brought up on the Beach Boys music of the 60s, then South California suddenly brings all the names to life. From the surfing songs (Surfing Safari, Surfing USA etc.) we've seen Malibu, Rincon, Ventura County line, and San Onofre and Trestles beaches. In Los Angeles itself (Little Old Lady from Pasadena, Dead Man's Curve) we've actually driven along Santa Ana Boulevard, La Brea and Crescent Heights. Wonderful. I feel an urge to buy a T-Bird, get my hair bleached, and drive along Pacific Coast Highway with a surfboard in the back; it's only the realisation that I'd look like a complete prat that stops me. On Thursday we visited the La Brea Tar Pits and museum. These used to be part of the Hancock Ranch until Mr. Hancock the oilman gave them to the city, having made more money than he could conceivably spend in a lifetime after extracting a zillion gallons of oil. The tar pits were formed when oil deposits were forced to the surface through cracks; the lighter fractions evaporated off leaving large sticky pools into which animals would blunder from time to time. So far they've recovered over 1,000,000 bones from the pits, dating from between 40,000BC and 10,000BC - lots of sabre tooth tigers, ground sloths, dire wolves and mammoths - and plenty still to go ...
The whole area not surprisingly has a vaguely oily smell. However, the museum has some excellent skeletons, such as this mammoth ...
... whose face looks like a Terry Gilliam animation from an episode of Monty Python. They also have some dramatic reconstructions (which move and make noises), including a sabre tooth tiger savaging a resigned looking ground sloth ...
Oh, and no city visit would be complete without a picture of Christine and a large animal statue, in this case a paternal ground sloth ...
Friday 15 March 2002 - Thursday 21 March 2002
Plenty of lovely scenic walks too; we did one, and discovered a small cafe where they sold Snickers cones which we highly recommend. Top tip #19: One evening we missed the entrance to our campground by about 100 yards and went into the next one along which was a dreadful place - broken down mobile homes, wall-to-wall screaming children (and adults), and old cars and pickups parked or dumped everywhere. The only language we heard being spoken was Spanish. It took us about ten minutes just to find our way out. Next day someone told us that it's known locally as Little Tijuana, and best avoided. Is this racist - sorry, it wasn't meant to be. Anyway avoid places like this. Next day we did the Getty Museum, after taking a wrong turning and driving ten miles through suburbia passing more yard sales than I've ever seen before in my life (it was a Saturday) and negotiating massive traffic jams on the freeway. Because of the large number of visitors you have to park in a huge underground parking lot, and take a tram the last few miles to the museum itself. The architecture is very modern and surprisingly pleasing to look at ...
... but a real pain to navigate your way around, as you have to be in exactly the right spot to move from one modular concrete block to another, and there are precious few signs. Perhaps that's meant to be part of the experience. The gardens are beautiful too ...
The museum comprises four separate pavilions: one up to 1600, two covering 1600 - 1800 and the last from 1800 on. The quality of items on display is very high but the quantity is quite small, although this isn't necessarily a bad thing as you don't suffer museum fatigue before you've seen everything. There's an awful lot more stuff still in the old Getty Villa which is currently closed for modernisation. In the evening we had a Thai takeaway, which was notable for the fact that the red curry had largely dissolved the polystyrene container by the time we got it home. Tasted all right though, and we didn't suffer any ill effects. On Sunday the weather was awful so we slobbed about and ate pizza in true American fashion. Monday wasn't much better, but we wanted to get out and so drove to Santa Monica, favourite place of our friends Kate and Ian who yearn to live there. There is a leafy dinosaur theme in the central shopping area ...
It seemed notable mainly for the number of homeless people - more than we've seen in the rest of the USA put together - wandering around, many with a dog on a piece of hairy string, dossing down in any area of grass or trees they could find. I suppose the temperate climate is ideal for this lifestyle. Wednesday we drove to downtown Hollywood intending to take a bus tour to see the houses of the rich and famous. Unfortunately a large section of Hollywood Boulevard was closed off as they were setting up marquees, red carpets etc. for the Oscar ceremonies which were due to take place in a couple of days. We wandered around a bit: saw the Capitol Records Building, and Graumann's Chinese Theater ...
... surrounded by all the hand and footprints of the stars ...
As not much was open, we drove 150 mile round trip along Route 2 Scenic Byway, which takes you up into the hills to about 8,000' where there's still lots of snow even at this time of year ...
... and plenty of large rocks which have rolled down the hillsides into the road. Normally you just ignore 'Falling Rocks' road signs, but around here they know what they're talking about. On Thursday we did the Huntington Library, Museum and Botanic Gardens in San Marino, a posh suburb of Pasadena. Lots of British stuff by Reynolds, Romney and Gainsborough, including G's 'Blue Boy' and 'Pinkie'. We weren't familiar with the latter but apparently it was very influential at the time ...
... although we thought she should have been called 'Stumpie' due to the apparent amputation of her right arm just below the elbow. Sorry. Fine old books, gardens, and just about everything else - we can unreservedly recommend this place, although the opening hours are only 12.00 - 16.30 so you need to be there on the dot to get your money's worth. Oh, and we saw and heard a red-whiskered bulbul, an alien bird from south-east Asia with a song like a nightingale ...
Friday 22 March 2002 - Saturday 23 March 2002A 300 mile drive up Route 101, largely in the rain, to Uvas Pines RV Park in Morgan Hill, east of San Francisco. It took us ages to manoeuvre into an awkwardly-shaped site in the pouring rain, only to find that there was just a 50A power socket for which we didn't have a 30A adapter. Squelched off to try and find the campground host, but Christine got jumped on from behind and bitten in the leg by a nasty dog belonging to a neighbour. Eventually we got sorted out, and phoned Harry Hendon (Christine's eleventh cousin twice removed, introduced to us by another cousin we met by accident in Texas on the Long Trek) in Saratoga who invited us over for a meal and overnight stay with him and his wife Pat. Found them eventually after a frustrating search - their road has two separate unconnected sections and naturally we hit on the wrong one - and had a pleasant evening. Next day we shopped at the farmer's market in the rain, then went for lunch at a sushi bar - another first. For those of you who haven't experienced this, a selection of dishes is towed around a long bar by a model train, and you pick out what you want as it goes past, eat it, and try another. Prices are indicated by the pattern on the plate, and they tot up your empties at the end of the meal. Sushi is largely fish with a bit of veg and egg thrown in, and is mostly very raw indeed. Some textures are more pleasant than others; the raw body of a shrimp accompanied by the whiskery bits of the tail deep fried is a bit of a challenge. An interesting experience. I don't think I'd go out of my way to find another sushi bar, but Christine liked it more than me. Fixed a couple of Harry's computer problems in the afternoon. Roast chicken for dinner, but we were all still pretty full of raw fish. Pat and Harry kindly but firmly insisted that we stay for another night; nice to have a proper bed, a bath and an inside toilet for a change.
Sunday 24 March 2002 - Tuesday 26 March 2002After Sunday brunch we drove round to see the local Saratoga Springs campground for future reference (not mentioned in any of the directories for some reason), followed by a Japanese supermarket and a huge Fry's computer superstore, about the size of a large Tesco's. Family history research in the afternoon, fried sole for dinner, and we finally staggered back to the campground at around midnight stuffed with nice food and loaded down with home-grown citrus fruit, guide books of places to see in California, and pills and exercises for Christine's shoulder. Monday was housekeeping, emails, postcards, a truck service and general sitting around. On Tuesday we went into San Jose, heart of Silicon Valley, where we had the most difficulty and expense in parking of anywhere in the US so far. It's a very pleasant town, which is not surprising considering the money in these parts; house prices are astronomical, but may come down a little with the decline of the tech stocks. Visited the Tech Museum of Innovation, which is ok - at least most of the exhibits work unlike the science museum in St. Petersburg - but a bit fragmented and superficial. Nice ballet dancing shark in the town centre ...
Wednesday 27 March 2002 - Sunday 7 April 2002A long drive after lunch to the 49er RV Ranch in Columbia, central California. We thought it would be a couple of hours, but actually arrived at about 6.00pm as all the roads are single carriageway, hilly and wiggly once you get away from the coast - not used to that any more. Made welcome by the campground hosts. Walked into town next day for a stroll around. The countryside round here is very green and hilly, and the whole small town of Columbia is a state park themed around the 1849 gold rush, with some interesting mining machinery, old buildings and a fine display of silly Masonic hats ...
You can get a town 'passport' and go round and have it stamped at all the different places. Oh, and for some reason there are quite a few fans of British cars of the 50s and 60s living in the town; we saw a Morris 1000 Traveller, an Austin Metropolitan and a Riley 1.5. Don't know how they get the parts. Friday was my birthday - card, book and choccies from Christine. We drove via a beautiful hillside of poppies ...
... to Daffodil Hill which was mentioned in all the guide books as a 'must see'. We were expecting vast acres of wild daffodils, fluttering and dancing in the breeze, but it turned out to be a large private garden somewhat sparsely planted with an assortment of daffs and narcissi ...
... very commendable, but not really worth a 120 mile drive. I suppose they're a bit more of a novelty out here than they are in England. Excellent birthday dinner in the Lickskillet Cafe in Columbia. Next day to Ironstone Vineyard in Murphys, home of one of my favourite wines - Obsession, made with the Symphony grape variety - and makers of a 14.5 per cent Viognier which has to be the most alcoholic non-dessert wine available. This is a typical Californian modern winery, all stainless steel vats and spotlessly clean ...
... with some beautiful gardens and a gourmet cafe. We did the guided tour which turned out to be a bit of a mistake, as the guide was a pleasant young chap who was unfortunately almost entirely ignorant of any useful information, either about the winery, its products or winemaking in general. Every question produced the response 'I'm sorry, I'll have to find that out for you' which of course never happened. There's also a museum, which contains no exhibits whatsoever relating to wine; it's all about mining, and has a 44lb gold nugget on display as well as several small jewelry shops. In the afternoon we went to Calaveras Big Tree State Park, which is a state park containing big trees - two groves of giant sequoias to be precise. It's well up in the hills, and there was still plenty of snow around although the temperature was in the 70s. Nice carved bears at the visitor centre ...
The Queen Mother died today. On Sunday we drove inland from the campground looking for more poppies. After about three miles the road became unsurfaced and a little rough, but we pressed on assuming that we'd reach a normal road shortly; it actually took 35 miles of very careful driving in 1st gear before we emerged. The road took us along a valley and riverbed, including one stretch known as 'Old Dutchman's Camp' occupied by numerous beat-up trailers and covered in 'Keep Out' signs; there's still enough gold around here to make a living, and people are highly protective of their claims. Mind you, a lot of them looked as if they had a very small circle of relatives; a definite 'Deliverance' feel about the place. Up early on Monday for the 80 mile drive to Yosemite National Park. Most of it was still inaccessible due to the snow, but it was a perfect time of year for the waterfalls as they were all in full flow with the snow melt ...
Ghastly inedible lunch - char-grilled vegetables which tasted as though they'd been marinated in vinegar for three days before being perfunctorily grilled for a couple of minutes. In the afternoon we did a six mile walk around Mirror Lake and beyond; the lake is well named as it has some beautiful reflections ...
... and the sunset on the mountains is pure gold for the final five minutes ...
On the way home the truck started making some nasty clonking noises. We couldn't stop as we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so pressed on regardless and fortunately made it ok. Next day we noticed that two of the wheel nuts had sheared off one of the front wheels, hence the nasty noises. Drove gingerly to the local garage accompanied by Jim, one of the camp hosts, during which time another wheel nut disappeared. Jim gave me a lift back, and we had a restful day of laundry, emails and strolling around. Garage called in the morning and said they couldn't find any obvious cause for the problem; suspected that someone might have tried to steal the wheels and gave up after loosening some of the nuts. However, the affected wheel had been effectively destroyed and they couldn't find a match as they were non-standard custom jobs, so they had to order us a new set of four. In the evening one of the park residents, Les Cubitt, had us round for a slide show of local bird life and to see his vast collection of minerals. On Friday we got the truck back - just under $500 all in which wasn't at all bad. Tried to book tickets home from Boston on the Internet from CheapTickets.com, but they can't cope with non-US credit cards (!) so had to do it by phone which took about an hour and a half, including a 25 minute wait just for a human to answer the phone. However, they were $213 as opposed to the next cheapest we could find of over $600. Had to go into town and send a confirmation fax as well. Bought what turned out that evening to be the best piece of Black Angus roast beef we've ever eaten. Drove out to Chinese Camp and Red Hills on Saturday in the new improved truck, as the wild flowers were meant to be good. Turned out to be exactly right - very red soil and huge carpets of flowers ...
At Chinese Camp we saw a good example of the American equivalent of the garden gnome ...
On our last day here we visited Railtown Historic State Park at Jamestown - a bit disappointing - then drove around seeing various Mark Twain related stuff ...
He spent a lot of time round here, and wrote the story which started him on the road to fame: The Celebrated Jumping Fog of Calaveras County.
Monday 8 April 2002 - Thursday 11 April 2002Drove to Saratoga Springs Campground in record time, so we had to hang around until 3.00pm when the office opened. Got a nice site, next to a babbling brook but very bumpy and awkward to reverse into; fortunately no-one was watching. Did shopping for Pat and Harry on our way to visit them for dinner. Next morning we tried the campground showers, both of which had a water saving feature: a button which you pressed to switch it on and which gave you precisely 3.5 seconds of water. Fortunately in the men's someone had installed the advanced feature - a piece of string which you could hook over the button to keep it in. Christine wasn't blessed with this luxury, so was very cross after her shower. Had a quiet few days visiting Pat and Harry again; fixed the remainder of his computer problems, shopped, played Atlantic City Monopoly (the original), and met Cham, Harry's artist brother.
Friday 12 April 2002 - Tuesday 16 April 2002To Carmel by the River RV Park in Carmel, of which Clint Eastwood was formerly the mayor. Chatted to various friendly people in the campground, went out for a drive and saw huge fields of wild lupins ...
... which will apparently all be brown in about three weeks time so we timed our visit well; also crossed paths with a huge car rally, mainly British from the 50s to the 70s. On Saturday we did the 17 mile scenic drive round South Monterey peninsula, which consists largely of golf courses including Pebble Beach and is one of the most expensive places to live in the US - well over $1,000,000 for a very ordinary 3-bedroom house. It all feels very artificial: lots of overpriced galleries and shops full of designer logos; what's more, you pay $8 for the privilege. Sunday the computer's hard disk, which had been making worrying clonking noises for a while, threw a final wobbly and irretrievably (as it took me three hours to determine) corrupted a number of essential Windows system files, so no more web updates or emails for us until it's fixed. Our friends Jamie, Doris and Stewart Gordon whom we'd met last autumn in Canada arrived in the area; Jamie found our campground and we arranged to meet in Monterey on Tuesday. Next day we drove along Highway 1 to Hearst Castle; the highway is spectacularly beautiful, with scenery very much like Cornwall only better, and no development is allowed along the most scenic part. (Unfortunately this includes petrol stations, as we discovered in the evening when we needed some and had to pay $2.65 per gallon at a little country store, an all-time record). On the way we stopped at a ranger station for a walk up the hillside, and at an elephant seal colony which spontaneously started in 1990 and now has over 10,000 inhabitants in the season ...
Hearst Castle is a huge monument to ostentatious consumption ...
... designed over many years by architect Julia Morgan, and home to publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and his mistress. Tried again to fix the computer on Tuesday, with zero success. Unfortunately I'd taken the necessary CDs home on our last visit so we'll have to wait until England. Walked around Monterey, and actually saw two free-range sea otters (with the aid of a telescope). They're down to about 2,000 now, having been virtually hunted to extinction for having the effrontery to compete with fishermen for abalone, as well as having nice fur. Monterey used to be pretty fishing-oriented ...
... but now tourism is bigger. Met our friends on Fisherman's Wharf in the evening, drank beer and ate lots of seafood.
Wednesday 17 April 2002 - Sunday 21 April 2002Found puncture on the trailer just before we set out, so had to get that fixed first. On the way to San Francisco we stopped at Pat and Harry's for lunch, and went to the Fry's superstore to get a new hard disk and some other stuff. Huge choice, but not actually that much cheaper than England. Through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge to Larkspur, a suburb to the north of the city. Not a wonderful campground, but very convenient for access - ten minutes walk to the ferry which takes you into SF harbour. Into the city next day with the Gordons to play at tourists. For some reason there is a large statue of Ghandi on the docks where we arrived ...
... not sure of his historic connection with San Francisco. Did the mandatory tour of Alcatraz ...
The Indian graffiti refer to an occupation of the island in the 1970s by militant tribes who were trying to make a point about establishing their own territory, but it eventually fizzled out without any great concessions being made. Saw the sea lion colony on Pier 39 ...
... they arrived with a big storm in 1989 and decided to take up residence, and the local authorities very wisely let them stay as they're good for the tourist trade. Very noisy and smelly though. Shrimp at Bubba Gump's for lunch, then we walked around the city in the afternoon. Decided against taking one of the famous cable cars as the queue was over an hour long, so we trudged up the hillside on foot then walked down the Zigzag Road back to the harbour ...
On Friday we all went out to Muir Woods, a fine redwood forest in a a National Park to the north of San Francisco. Fish and chip lunch in the Pelican, the most Olde Englishe style pub I've seen anywhere including England, then spent the afternoon driving around the beautiful Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area ...
Botanic Gardens on Saturday. Quite pleasant, but a cold wind was blowing so we huddled in sheltered spots most of the time. Waited for the best part of an hour for a bus before finally giving up and getting a taxi; we later discovered that there was a demonstration against something or other which had messed up the bus services. Had more good seafood by the harbour and so missed the ferry, so we caught two buses back to Larkspur in the dark. Next day decided to do the publicised 49 miles drive round the city, for which we had a map. Unfortunately there's a right way and a wrong way to go round, as many of the streets are one way; we of course chose the wrong way. Anyway, we saw plenty, including Chinatown and Japantown. Had lunch with Cham, Harry's brother, who showed us his studio and explained his technique which involves pouring acrylics - producing recognisable pictures though, not that Jackson Pollock nonsense. Spent the evening with Jamie, Doris and Stewart; S cooked us an excellent meal, then we played a truly dreadful Buffy the Vampire Slayer board game which we all thoroughly enjoyed. That's it for California. We now know why it's so popular: the climate, countryside, coastline are all in its favour. Tomorrow we head back east again (to Cincinnati, Ohio) for the last time, a trip of about 2,500 miles in five days.
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Packed up and did
last-minute shopping during which I had a stupid minor accident in a car park
(my fault) breaking someone's headlight. Paperwork looms. Moved on to Birmingham
Trailer Village in Van Nuys, a slightly down-market suburb of LA, as the
campground in Long Beach was fully booked for the weekend. Not a bad place, and
we got Good Sam discount on a week's stay for the first and only time on our
trip. In the afternoon we drove to Griffith Park, a huge wooded are overlooking the
city and the famous Hollywood sign, and the site of the old observatory
(currently undergoing restoration) ...
