We met everyone up at the main lodge for breakfast; it was a big wooden cabin with quaint decorations. This place really cemented for me that I was in America, compared to anywhere else we had been. It resembled the small town places I’ve seen on the tv – the two bowser petrol station, the wooden cabins, the patriotic flag flying out the front. After breakfast everyone came down to look at our cabin and enjoy a cup of tea before we packed up and continued on our way. Unfortunately it was still quite foggy, so rather than redo everything we missed the previous day due to the fog, we continued towards Pismo Beach. The fog made for some beautiful moments though, where you could see the coast line and the fog over the Pacific Ocean.

Once again I don’t remember much from the car trip as I kept dozing off. In hindsight, it was perfect timing that the two days I’d be at the worst with my flu would also be the two days spent mainly sitting down. The copious amounts of napping in the car probably helped me to get over the flu a lot faster than I normally would have.

At one of the numerous stops for photos of the coastline we heard some seals down in the water below the cliffs. I tried to  video tape it (you couldn’t see anything in the video, just hear the sounds) then we continued on our way. Once we reached Piedras Blancas we found a beach with an entire colony of Elephant Seals, so merely hearing the seals before that seemed so insignificant. The smell was a little bit on the nose, but you could get so close to the seals it was incredible. The only time I’ve seen anything like it was when we visited Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Impressively, they had staff wandering around answering questions – quite the educational place!

I also managed to spend a fair bit of time in the car park, namely due to a beautiful old car with a matching caravan and bicycle. Unfortunately I don’t know what make and model it was, but it reminded me of the old Chevy Bel-airs (this car had Holiday written on the side). I circled the car a few times in awe, then circled some more video taping it. I briefly chatted with the owner and commended him on his “vee-hick-call” before continuing on to see the seals. The car definitely got a lot of looks, and more than a few photographs.You’ll have to look at my video to see it; I’m afraid to say I didn’t take a decent photo.

After the seals we continued on to Hearst Castle. Before planning the trip to the US I had actually never heard of this place, but once I had seen the website I knew it was one of the places I was most excited to see. It looked simply amazing, and once we reached there it exceeded all my expectations. The pools were my favourite areas by far, and I could tell as I made my way through the house that he had had exquisite taste. Amy and Pauline had gone on a different tour since they had done the first one last time they visited the castle, and I was a little disappointed I couldn’t have seen both. I just couldn’t get enough of looking around! I think I could have spent an hour in each room and still not see everything. So much detail!

After Hearst Castle we made our way to our accommodation in Pismo Beach. The lady checking us in was a little rude, but in all fairness she had 8 of us arrive at once and people waiting behind us to get checked in. I think that would make anyone flustered. I apologised to the people behind us (although the fact it was taking a long time *wasn’t* our fault), and they didn’t seem upset, so that was good. Finally we got our rooms and made our way there.

I was excited the room we were given was massive. Huge king size bed, a bath, and lots of living room area. We had received vouchers for a free drink in the bar each, so we returned upstairs to meet up with everyone. Mat and Pauline tried some random beer while I went with the standard vodka and lemonade, and donated my voucher to Mat. Everyone decided to go out for dinner, but as I was feeling extremely tired again and just wanting to kick the illness I opted to stay in. Mum and Amy also ended up staying behind, and we took the opportunity to use the laundry facilities.

After the washing was done, I made my way back to our room. I had planned on having a bath followed by sleep but the laundry had taken so long that in the end I decided to have another lemsip and tgo straight to bed. I had enough time to boil the jug when Mat wandered in, extremely intoxicated. He told me about some gay waiter at the Japanese Restaurant they’d gone to for dinner, and that the guy had apparently had the hots for him (according to Madonna). He then passed out on top of the bed sheets. It seemed like they’d had quite the dinner! I had my drink, turned the lights off, and fell into another deep sleep. We had reached the halfway point in our holiday.

For Amy’s version of events you can see her blog post here.

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After I eventually got up, showered and packed, I looked for the room keys so I could hand them in upon checkout. I had one, but couldn’t find the other, even though I’d seen it only minutes before. Knowing then it could only be amongst my stuff (Mat’s bag had been packed since the previous night) I ripped open my bag and immediately unpacked everything. I went through item by item, until the entire bag had been packed again. I started stressing out that I couldn’t find the room key, and searched the entire unit again. I searched my bag, our video camera bag, our day pack, everything. But nothing. Until…

I picked up my handbag, and found the missing card underneath it!

Argh!! So greatly annoyed, yet so greatly relieved, I then grabbed all my stuff ready to head down to Mum’s room. As I walked out the door, Amy rung to say they had the cars and would only be a few minutes away (well, that’s what I heard anyway, turned out she’d said something like fifteen minutes). I rung Mum as well as Aunty Sue to let them know, and we all met outside a few minutes later. We stood just out the front door, in the freezing wind, with our bags. By the time Amy and Pauline arrived, we’d been there for about twenty minutes. At one point though I’d gotten the others to look after my stuff, and raced across to the Walgreens Chemist across the road, and picked up some throat lollies. My head was starting to feel clogged, I was incredibly fatigued, and my throat was on fire. It appeared I’d lost my battle against catching a cold.

The cars they’d hired was a Dodge and a Toyota Rav 4. Amy and Pauline was in the dodge with Fiona and Aunty Sue in the back, with Madonna driving the Rav 4 with Mum, Mat and I as passengers. I was quite disappointed with the cars, since Mat and I had been pining for a “yank tank”, but it was not to be be. There was no point saying anything though, since it was obviously too late to decide on a different car so I packed my luggage into the car and jumped in. Amy programmed our GPS and we were off.

Once we were on the highway I found I still got a kick out of being on the right side of the road. we’d had 4 full days of trying to get used to the traffic not being on the left, but this was the first time we’d physically been in a car driving around. I happily looked at the country side and buildings on the highway, until eventually I fell asleep. I was becoming quite fatigued from my cold.

I awoke a short while later as we were pulling into what’s known as the Apple “motherland” aka the Apple Campus at Cupertino. We all walked into the store to have a look around, where I pointed out the iphones to Mat (he wasn’t impressed) and the ipod speakers (I got a mild “mmm” from him). I continued wandering around until I looked up and realised the rest of the family had gone back to the car. Refusing to go with out buying something I bought a new iphone case and left. Back in the car, we headed off down the highway once more.

I found I could barely stay awake in the car for longer than fifteen/twenty minutes at a time, and again quickly dropped off to sleep. Thinking back, it’s quite lucky the worst two days of my illness were the days we spent a lot of time driving. The extended sleeps in the car no doubt helped my body to rest while my immune system waged the good war. My head hurt, my throat was on fire and I was like a walking zombie, but thankfully my nose was dry.

Our next stop was a massive factory outlet centre. Anything and everything was there, from watches and jewellery, manchester and silverwear, to sporting stores and designer clothing. We agreed to meet back at the cars at a particular time, then all split up. Mat and I immediately headed for the sporting stores, namely Adidas, Nike and Converse. I scored a $5 converse hat, Mat went crazy in the Adidas store and bought about $150 worth of clothing (that would have easily been over $300 in Australia), but nothing in the Nike store impressed us.

We had caught up with Amy and Pauline by this time and we were all starving for lunch. Mat and I hadn’t eaten breakfast, so with Amy and Pauline we all headed over to the In ‘n’ Out burger we’d seen nearby (upon my return to Australia I discovered they apparently have secret menu items that you can order – I wish I had known that beforehand). We got the food to take away, and headed back to the meeting spot for the others. Initally they sooked a little that we had bought food and they didn’t, but they soon got over it once we agreed to share our chips. Then it was back on the highway.

We arrived at Monterey a little after midday. It was a beautiful little seaside town, and we spent about half an hour to an hour just wandering around looking at everything. One of the most amusing places for me was “Candyland” – a great big candy store. Mat and I had fun looking at the labels on the chocolate (he found one called Sugar Daddy, and they also stocked “Sexy Water” – just plain bottled water), then marvelled at the sizes of the chocolate blocks for sale in the counter at the front. Other than the chocolate store we also had a look at some of the small little antique doll stores, but nothing else in the town really caught my eye. The main section with its landscaped gardens was quite beautiful though.

Back on the road, we drove down 17 mile drive, a scenic drive that passes through Pebble Beach. We had been given a brochure with points of interest along the drive along with a little bit of background about each. The points of interest ranged from rock formations and trees, to golf courses (of Pebble Beach Golf Links fame) and equestrian centres.  We stopped off at quite a few for photo opportunites, and were blasted by the freezing winds off the pacific. The colour of the water looked stunning, but it was just too damn cold! I was rather impressed by the family that still attempted to have a picnic regardless, even though they were rugged up with blankets. I half expected Pauline to go and sit down with them, because we all know Pauline likes picnics!

Our next stop was the gorgeous town of Carmel (or Carmel-by-the-sea), though unfortunately we didn’t get to spend a lot of time here; It was getting late in the day and we wanted to reach our accommodation before it got too dark.  We walked around the town doing a bit of window shopping, and I bought dad a t-shirt from one store which funnily enough was the same place Amy had bought Dad’s present the first time she’d visited Carmel (although I didn’t know that until later). We also stopped in at the small bakery for some dinner and a coffee (I got a yummy hot chocolate). If I could pick one of the places in America that I could easily go back to and spent a week it would be Carmel. It was so beautiful, and I can imagine a week or two there would be extremely relaxing. Given the temperature, I’d also be requesting a fireplace too!

From Carmel we made a bee line to Big Sur (although we did stop off at a monastry for my Mum to take photos). It was amazing to see the fog getting thicker and thicker the later in the day got. It meant that we missed a lot of the stunning views of the coast line, but we had another day of driving to do yet so hoped the fog would be gone by the time we left the following day. We were staying at Ripplewood in Big Sur, small wooden cabins spread out amongst the redwoods. Mat and I were in one cabin, with everyone else sharing two cabins. I cheated a little bit in that I’d done my research and knew which cabins were down by the creek. When we had originally booked the cabins while in San Francisco I had immediately grabbed the cabin by the creek, but the others had the benefits of fireplaces.

When we arrived there was a little bit of confusion with the managers there with regards to keys; they didn’t want to give us the keys for the other rooms, but handed them over once they realised we were all in one big group together. With that sorted, we began driving to our cabin so Mum and Madonna could drop Mat and I off before driving back to theirs for the night. It took us a little bit to work out where our cabin was though, as we didn’t see there was another pathway across the road which went to the creek cabins. We finally figured it out, and quickly found the cabin that Mat and I were occuping. It was so small yet so cute, and was cheap too (the cheapest in our entire holiday I believe). The main room was the bedroom/dining room/lounge room, then a small kitchen and separate bathroom. We also had a small balcony out the back where you could sit outside and listen to the creek running just below. After a long day of driving, it was such a welcome sound; complete relaxation.

We bid goodnight to Mum and Madonna, then headed inside. I immediately started boiling a cup of tea, while Mat busied himself videotaping the cabin. He then built a fire in the fireplace out the front, and we sat out there listening to the crackling of the wood and drinking our teas. I was extremely tired by this point, and didn’t want to spend too much time in the cold lest it make my sickness worse, so finished my tea then jumped straight into bed. Mat opened the window a crack so we could hear the stream, then we both passed out for one of the best night’s sleeps I’ve ever had.

For Amy’s version of events you can see her blog post here.

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