Following on from my previous post, where I left off in the Mojave Desert, we continued our epic drive in to California. This was the longest drive we did, if I recall correctly, with a total of around 11 hours in the car…did we tire of it? Not really, the scenery when you drive through America is incredible vs. what you see in the UK and because everything was new to us it was all incredibly exciting. The worst part of the drive was through LA and Hollywood- somewhere we elected not to stop in favour of other places within the time constrains of our trip. The traffic was INSANE, as were the other drivers- we were both relieved when that leg of the journey was over.

It was late by the time we made it to our Hotel in Ventura (we stayed at The Amanzi Hotel) so we didn’t get a chance to explore the town much. We did head down to the beach after breakfast though, but it was super overcast so we just had a meander down the pier before driving on to Santa Barbara.

By the time we got to Santa Barbara and parked up the sun had started to come through, showing us what California beach life was like. Santa Barbara is such a pretty place and although we didn’t have much time to explore we walked the pier, grabbed a coffee and spent some time watching surfers head out in to the ocean.

The next part of our journey was probably our favourite drive of the holiday, with some of the most incredible scenery along the way. We drove through Vineyards and past mansions on the way to one of most anticipated pit-stops and somewhere we wished we had stayed much closer to, and for much longer.

Big Sur and the Californian costal route in general is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places I have ever seen. Throughout this trip I found myself constantly in awe of nature and it’s ability to create such stunning scenes.

As one might expect, staying in Big Sur was expensive and therefore we elected not to, with great regret. Our next overnight stop was pretty beautiful to though, we drove a further hour to a place called Carmel-By-The-Sea. This was a town like no other I have seen, really pretty and quaint with enviable houses and a real air of affluence (the local shops included Kate Spade and Tiffany!)
We found the local dining options out of our price range- a common story for many parts of this holiday so we headed to the Del Monte Shopping Centre in search of food. We settled on California Pizza Kitchen which proved a worthy choice in terms of value and deliciousness- I’d never considered brie, chicken and grapes a pizza topping up until now but it needs to be a thing!

We bedded down in a more authentic American Motel that night ready for our most hotly anticipated destinations of the trip- Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes.

Looking back I realise we didn’t take nearly enough photos on this part of the trip. We only took our phones with us and we spent so much time drinking in what we were seeing that taking photos didn’t really occur to us until after the event. Thankfully the memories we made are ones we’ll never forget, but it would have been nice to have more visual memoirs of our dream holiday.