Highway 1, Verbal Abuse and Nakedness

We had been up for 26 hours when we crashed into bed at 11pm (7am UK time) in a San Francisco airport hotel. We had chosen a cheap and cheerful hotel for a single night’s stay to set us up for the first leg of our road trip; a trip that will take us up the north west coast of California, through Oregon’s wine country, into Washington State and on into Canada over a 3 week period. Unfortunately, the hotel was neither cheap nor anything approaching cheerful, but, as Rachel put it, was very much like sleeping on the hard shoulder of the M6 motorway back in the UK during rush hour – extremely noisy – the sounds of the interstate ever present for the 3 hours of sleep we managed to get. By 3.30am this morning (Friday 19th August 2016) we were lying awake like a couple of expectant kids at Christmas. So we decided to get up and head to Sausalito for breakfast and maybe see the sun rise too. But outside, the San Francisco mist was shrouding the upper portions of the Golden Gate Bridge and as we crossed over the bay we knew there would be no sun to be seen.

By now it was almost 7am so we found the only cafe that was open in an otherwise deserted town and ordered coffee and pastries. As we did so we heard a strange altercation behind us: the only other person in the cafe – a small, elderly and very feisty woman, dressed in white T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms and training shoes, was ‘having words’ with an elderly man who had poked his head through the open cafe window and asked her to give him some food. He looked like he had been sleeping rough and resembled the biblical Noah! She must have refused him, in her own sweet way, which immediately provoked the man into shouts of “You’re vile you are, VILE” as he shuffled off down the street. The woman was completely unperturbed at this and turned, chin protruding, head held high, and found herself a table inside the cafe. An uneasy silence fell all around as we found our own table some distance away from Mrs Feisty. This was not a good start: after minimal sleep and only 30 minutes from our San Francisco hotel, we had already witnessed abuse at the hands of the elderly of Sausalito! We decided to saddle up and leave town and caught one last glimpse of a very grumpy looking Noah sat on a bench drinking what may have been a hot coffee.
Route 1 from Sausalito winds its way north-west towards the Pacific coast of northern California and then turns north, hugging the coastal beaches as best it can for hundreds of miles.

Despite all the camp grounds along the way displaying “FULL” there was surprisingly little traffic as we wound our way in and out of coves where the road clung to overhanging cliffs reminiscent of the Amalfi coast in Italy, only less dramatic. We stopped for a couple of hours at Stinson Beach, where I walked the beach while Rachel caught up on some welcome sleep in the car before having a second, abuse-free, breakfast of corned beef hash with eggs, sunny side up and strong coffee sat in front of, would you believe, an open fire in the height of summer. The Americans in the cafe wore long trousers and fleeces while us Brits sweated it out in shorts and T-shirts. Outside it was foggy.

This is not unusual on the north Californian coast as we had witnessed on previous trips. It’s a bit of a lottery as to whether the sun will come out, especially this early in the morning. The cold Pacific encourages fog throughout the year which, today, hung heavily along the beaches and, later in the morning, retreated into the sea and stood like a wall of grey a few hundred yards out to sea before rolling back in only minutes later. But when the sun does come out the coast is revealed in all its glory: the California you dream of.
The wildlife is interesting for visiting Brits. We saw young deer a number of times along the side of the highway, turkey vultures soar overhead and, on the beaches, pick at the carcasses of unfortunate pelicans lying in the dark, wet terracotta-coloured sand (Stinson Beach).

The sand turned grey as we drove north through numerous little towns like Elk, most of which boasted nothing but a single deli, church and elementary school. Some towns have fewer than 200 residents and feel very remote indeed.

And now, as I write this, we are in Mendocino, a quaint town on the edge of the sea and a little larger than most of the towns we had witnessed throughout the day and filled with timber buildings painted, it seems, in varying shades of white and grey. There’s an unnerving quietness here and the feeling that people are looking at you and know you are not from “these here parts”.

But it’s friendly and the only pub in town served great food with a warm smile and an instant familiarity only Americans can produce – a skill some British, Yorkshire landlords would do well to emulate.

We are staying in a hotel here for one night. It’s more like a small B&B really and feels like it’s family run.The first thing you notice is a sign asking you not to flush the toilet unnecessarily, not to run the water excessively and not to shower for too long as water is scarce this time of year. We had to wonder what ‘unnecessarily’ really meant. Was it dependent upon quantity, size, shape or some other criteria? The other slightly worrying notice stated that the hot tub and sauna only requires the wearing of clothes Friday through Monday! I must admit to thinking that, if I couldn’t sleep, I might pop my head in to see what was going on as long as I could escape our room unnoticed in the dead of night! Luckily, we both slept much better. I couldn’t help thinking how awkward the conversation would be over breakfast with people we had spent the evening with, naked in the hot tub! Let’s hope that clothes are not optional at breakfast! Tomorrow we head for Eureka.