A Zebra Farm, a Castle, a Blimp, and Six Birds Perched on One Cow

Short Version:
We drive north, to San Francisco

Long Version:
Heavy dew overnight slowed the tent-stowing process, but the hummingbirds had decided that today was a day for singing, rather than chirping, and the result left us feeling suitably entertained and not lamenting the delayed start to the day. Which wasn't all that delayed, given that we were lost in Santa Monica (thanks a bunch, GoogleMaps Directions feature!) by 0945. Luckily, the nice chap in the gas station helped us become unlost, and we were back on the road with new fancypants camera charging on the central console, by 1030, heading north on the 101 and then the smaller, coast-hugging Highway 1.

In the space of five minutes either side of San Simeon we saw:
- a zebra farm
- a castle
- a blimp
- six birds perched on one cow

Then we found an elephant seal colony, and stopped for a peek. They were enormous, flabby, ugly, and noisy. They didn't reek, though, which surprised me after having experienced the pungency of the seal colony at the creatively-named Seal Island in NZ's Abel Tasman National Park a few years back. Despite the molting and the laziness, the sea elephants were pretty cool, and some of the females even managed to be cute, although not as cute as the sea-lion intruder we spied, and nowhere near the coolness of the critter we saw being busy in the waves; a sea otter! The awesomeness knows no bounds.

All that seeing things had left us hungering, so we stopped at a clifftop roadside spot for sandwiches and a wee with a view. Then, compressing many hours into a single sentence, we drove, had a near-miss with a car from Nevada, drove, and made it to San Francisco just in time for rush hour...

...which wasn't actually that bad. Or possibly was, but we were distracted by all the things there were to look at. Before we knew it we were past the really cool houses on 19th Ave, past the Presidio, and heading up and over the Golden Gate Bridge. I've never seen the Golden Gate without some crazy driving going on, or some supervillain or giant creature or natural disaster making it writhe like a Portugese winger who`s had an opponent venture within 10 feet, so it was kind of weird for it to stay stable as we drove across it. No complaints here, though.

Found our off-ramp, then our narrow, winding roads, then our campground. Which was lovely, apart from the incredibly strong wind whipping through it. Setting up camp in the gale was interesting, but it dried the remaining Goleta dew off our gear quickly, and we were able to get around the repeatedly-blown-out camp stove by cooking inside the tent (in direct contradiction of the cautionary labelling on the gas canister). We'd found a vacant spot next to a nice family (Hi Maxine and Mark and Sophie!), and both they and us were in bed and asleep early. Unlike the two young blokes who woke us all up at half past ten, saying we were in their reserved campsite. We said they could have a disused piece of ground for the night, which they declined. To their credit, they said they weren`t going to ask us to pull down our tent, which was just as well because we wouldn`t have complied. Maxine piped up from inside her tent to state uncategorically that there were no reservations at this campsite, and that they were probably supposed to be elsewhere. I suggested their reservation for site number EN6 at an unspecified campground within the Tamalpais National Park might have been referring to the reservation-enabled eco-campground at Steep Ravine, and they disappeared off into the night*.

Janine went straight back to sleep. And snored.











* = Their return the next day, coupled with the statement from the Ranger that they`d removed a probable placeholder attempt involving a blanket from our site earlier in the day, imply that they may well have been where they were planning to be, but that they`d been thwarted in their attempt to turn up late and still have a spot