Drizzle may have hidden some views on the coastal highway, but it was still an awesome drive from San Francisco north to the Redwood forests, here's the journal entry I wrote that evening:

This morning we woke up in Berkley – a town near to San Francisco, it was a little overcast, but clearer than yesterday., so we got to see more of the bridge and bay on our drive. Leaving our lovely layby early we soon joined the early morning commuter traffic on Interstate 80. Avoiding the traffic we took an alternate route, which took us past loads of fast food restaurants – all advertising breakfast specials – these eventually got the better of us and we stopped at a Jack in The Box in San Rafael for a sausage biscuit. Biscuits over here aren't digestives (they call those cookies), it's halfway between an English muffin and a scone – which is confusing when places advertise buscuits and gravy, because gravy is't gravy either.

With breakfast sorted we continued along Sir Frances Drake Blvd joining highway one (the continuation of the pacific coastal highway we travelled along from San Diego) and stopped off at the Bear Visitor Centre where they've got an earthquake trail. We were right on the San Andreas fault zone and it was kindof scary to be stood there watching the seismograph readings: the needle was wobbling while we were there, indicating some sort of activity deep within the earth. Apparently that's normal and wasn't large enough for us to feel anything, we'd have been completely unaware of it had we not been watching the meter, which is I guess what makes them useful.

Making good use of their taps we filled up our water bottles (we've got 8 or so 1 gallon bottles we keep in Macy since lots of campsites don't have runing water), and headed onwards leaving the otherwise quiet fault zone to coach load of noisy school children.

I forget the name of the next small village we passed through, but it had a library and therefore we were able to grab a brief bit of time online and update our friends and family. We've been writing journals and articles while we've been on the road but in the allotted time we don't often have chance to type them up and even if we did have sufficient time, the computers are so restrictive in what they let you do that we wouldn't have chance to upload photos and video – it's getting a little be frustrating not being able to document our trip as we would like.

Anyway, after our 30 minutes elapsed we headed onwards, north on highway one through lots of little fishing villages all selling barbecued oysters and on to the surf beaches. It could have been a bad day on the Cornish coast looking out over the windswept beaches, with drizzel in the air. The trees and locals both painted the picture that this was perfectly normal weather – even when the wind died down the trees still help their wind swept appearence, just like the poor trees planted at Beachy Head. The locals were milling around in swimsuits on the beach or bobbing around like neoporene seals just behind the break. Sharon and I didn't fancy venturing outside of Macy's warm embrace.

We continued northwards, hugging the coast and occasionally geting a glimpse of the rugged rocky shore line and the vast ocean beyone, but mainly we were peering at the inside of a cloud. By early evening the coast had grown so rugged that the coastal highway gave up and headed in land, carrying us towards the huge Redwood forests. Stopping for gas we discovered we were 1/4 mile from the a tree you could drive through. So we followed the signs to the shrine of the drive-thru tree, it was down drive-thru tree road and in drive-thru tree park (note their imaginative naming scheme), We paid our admission and drove along the road to the tree, only to find that we couldn't drive through it. It was a small gap, which would have been large enough for most English cars, but not for Macy (who's small by US standards). A little bit digruntled, we managed to get a refund and then headed onwards to find a place to sleep and eat. Luckily the rain abaited while we cooked our maccaroni/couliflour/broccili cheese and then a nice large and quiet layby presented itself.

David

(written 4th June, typed up 9th June)

It's June; we've been away for a whole month now. As I write we're driving up the west side of lake Tahoe, with the Carson mountains rising out of the far side of the crystal clear lake & the sun is shining on another lovely day.

We've seen some awesome scenery, done some great things and driven Macy almost 4,000 miles. We've been to the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, driven through many small mountain villages, found Coloma (the place that started the gold rush) and explored Bodie, a desterted ghost town (preserved in a state of arrested decay).

The wildlifr has been hard to miss; from inquisitive squirrels at the Elephant Seal beach, cheeky chipmunks and singing blue birds at a riverside take out to bears & snakes Yosemite, Raccoons at Lake Tahoe and deer everywhere.

The rapidly melting or melted snow pack hasn't stopped us paddling, we've found big water on the Merced, an ample trickle on the South Silver and damn releases on the American and the Touolomne.

So far so good, looking forward to the next eleven.

Note: The entry was hand written on the 1st June but typed up and posted 4th June, as internet connectivity allowed. Other blog entries have been written and likewise, will be typed up as time allows.

We're leaving LA today, assuming Macy passes her smog test and we don't spend too long in the queue at the DMV getting her registered. The plan is to head south to San Deigo for a few days, maybe pop over the border to Mexico and then return up this way and go to Six Flags.

We spent most of yesterday chilling. We took a trip into Santa Monica, swam in the sea at Venice beach and walked along the board walk. The size of things over here is still surprising us – last night we ordered a small bag of popcorn (aka kettle corn) and got what could have been a pillow case full of it, then I ordered a small pizza and managed to eat half of it. So we've got pizza and popcorn for breakfast…

We've not yet found anywhere that will allow us to upload photos (i.e. the hostel internet machines haven't), but rest assured that we've taken some cool ones & will post them soon: we need to find a net cafe with a printer so that we can get our cheap Six Flags tickets, so maybe that'll be our chance to upload them.