Traffic

'Frisco to Monterey to Santa Barbara

"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey" the Mama's and Papa's once sang, a pretty accurate description of my 2days getting from Frisco to Santa Barbara.

However, in true spirit, I made the most of the situation mainly by enjoying the drive. Now, I may be wrong, but the road sign depicting a zig zag arrow "warning" is probably the greatest road sign you can come across... unless you have a caravan in tow of course. With that, Highway1 between Monterey and the fork to Highway 101 is one of my favourites stretches of road anywhere in the world.

I once again got back to straighter streets, so hit cruise control and took in the brak water as I passed through San Mateo and then Santa Cruz. The Thrills once sang that Santa Cruz Wasn't that far, I was glad to be there after the length of drive I'd made. I through out the anchor in Monterey as the sun set, grabbed a quick haircut and got some sleep.

With more winding roads the next day, the Mustang was good for booting past the slow RVs. San Simeon is home to the Elephant Seals, huge and lazy they were in photogenic mood as I snapped away. Next up, I grabbed an amazingly good Mexican meal before making my way to the freeway and getting to Santa Barbara just before the shops shut for the night. I managed to pick up some bargains around the very classy shopping boulevards and malls. It was then time to check in for my final night in hotel/motel/hostel accomodation of my entire trip - that was a good feeling!

Judgement Day of my penultimate stop of the year, I opted to head away from the quiet coast roads due to the weather of the past few days. That was, after I had walked the main streets of Santa Barbara and checked the last few shops I hadn't made the previous day! I arrived in LA for lunchtime and found my way to the world famous Hollywood Hills.

I parked on Hollywood Boulevard and hit the sidewalk in search of those infamous stars. The area is really quite run down and as such, I was happy to see some big names, visit the Chinese theatre; home to the big world movie premieres then get the heck outta there! I didn't fancy losing myself in LA, so headed to the prefab sanctuary of Hollywood Universal Studios. I figured I'd go see a movie in the land of movies - so I saw the new Jackass flic before heading back to return my car. I managed to drive between the skyscrapers and the back toward Century Boulevard. I took almost an unintentional de-tour through the rap famed area of Inglewood - the part I saw wasn't all that bad.

Then a sad moment in my travels. I had to hand back the keys to the Mustang. All was left of California was to go sit in the airport and wait for my connection to New York.