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We set off for the big drive up the historical road, Highway 1 which follows the coast up the whole length of the western seaboard. We were going as far as San Francisco. Our Pontiac had lots of features we were not aware of and no manual so for the first day we had difficulties ie how to get out of the doors, how to start it, turning lights and radio off etc.We only discovered the very useful direction indicator on our last few days, it stopped us going the wrong direction on Freeways and was great in San Fransisco.
We drove around Los Angeles past Long Beach, Santa Monica, Beverley Hills up to Santa Barbara for lunch with a view over the ocean, very misty all the way. We stopped at a few of the long beaches with sand dunes - not very inviting; westayed at San Simeon close to the beach behind the cliffs. Travelling on up the coast it gets more rugged with cliffs and very high hills. At Hearst's Castle, Randolph Hearst was the press magnate who first saw the benefit of using movie photography for news ie the Newsreel, the Hindenberg disaster being one of the first recorded. He made a fortune and his beach residence is really something. Because of our time constraints we only got as far as the visitors' centre but have some great internal photos. There are colonies of Elephant Seals just north, huge animals the males stand much taller than a man and would be more than four times the weight; many were sleeping very close to the viewing areas just below the cliffs. Passed through Big Sur a very picturesque area of coastland rugged cliffs small beaches etc on to Half Moon Bay a fairly large holiday destination where we stayed in a good small older restored pub mid town.
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