Spring 2015: West Coast USA

Tue 3^rd Feb: An Early Start

It’s 5.30 am, time to leave, and there’s 3 inches of frozen snow to scrape off the car without disturbing the neighbours.  But we got away with it: no sudden bedroom lights and irate faces at the window.

All airport journeys hold over you the threat of being late and missing your flight. This morning there’s the overnight snow in addition to the usual London area congestion. But all goes well and we arrive at Heathrow in time for some breakfast before boarding. Seated on board, there is a slight delay for de-icing the wings. The robot arm sets about its task with great thoroughness. I really should have booked one of these for our car earlier.

11½ hours later we’re in Los Angeles, 1.30pm local time and around 70ºF. An overnight hotel is obligatory before picking up the motorhome the following morning. The paperwork completed, we trundle warily out of the depot onto the busy highway…

LA is the second largest metropolis in the USA after New York, and is laid out in a grid system of wide roads with traffic lights at each intersection. These wide roads are crammed full of vehicles, so it can be slow going, but it’s easy enough to drive in except for changing lanes in a lumbering motorhome. The 45 mile journey to our Malibu campsite takes longer than planned and we arrive ok just after dark.

Next day is sunny and warm. It puts a good slant on everything. The site is about 200 feet up so a nice elevated position for overlooking the Ocean and this is Jane doing some overlooking from our pitch.

Taking it easy on our first day, we sat watching dolphins and looking for whales. They migrate en mass at this time of the year, travelling along the coast from Alaska to Mexico. Some pelicans were fishing and then flying past the campsite, but the real stars were the hummingbirds. It seems the red flowers that make our hedge are their favourites, so we were treated to an enchanting spectacle of them flitting back and fore.

Behind the campsite is the 250 square mile Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It contains some 500 miles of walking trails, a few directly from this campsite. We took one of these into nearby Coral Canyon and then on to a viewpoint, but walking rather carefully. See below: they are lurking!

We were invited by some French Canadian neighbours to join them on a tour of the Santa Monica Mountains. On leaving the main road we quickly ran into beautiful wild canyon country, dotted sparsely with farms and vineyards. There are even a few bears and mountain lion here but, like the whales, you are more likely to imagine seeing one than in reality .

This is an example of the views from the twisty but well surfaced roads. The road eventually dropped down into LA suburbs and then quickly back into urban congestion.

Our first impression of California is favourable: lovely scenery, great climate. The pace of life seems quicker than back east but maybe that’s due to big city LA that we’re so close to. The site itself is good, with lovely sunsets. We’ll be looking at LA itself in the next blog.