HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (29) - SANTA CRUZ TO SAN FRANCISCO

NOVEMBER 12 (Cont'd)

A few miles up the highway after leaving Santa Cruz, our mild melancholia at knowing that this was going to be our last time - at least for a while - driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in the sunshine, was lifted by noticing signs for the reputedly rather beautiful Ano Nuevo State Park and deciding, almost on a whim, to pull into it and go and have a look what it was like.

Well, we had all day, and Santa Cruz to San Francisco isn't that long a drive.

After a brief chat with yet another Park Ranger who wanted to tell us all about his adventures in England and who seemed genuinely pleased that he'd found someone who might actually know about some of the places that he was talking about, we drove down to the car park, and headed off along one of the trails towards the shore, marvelling, as ever, at the sheer beauty of the landscape, and being completely overwhelmed by the bird life that just seemed to be everywhere you looked.

Believe me, after months when the most exciting thing you can see is a Duck or a Jackdaw, seeing Raptors flying free is really quite an overwhelming experience to the amateur bird-spotter.

The thing that Ano Nuevo really prides itself upon, however, are the Walrus Seals which appear to have an almost permanent colony on the beaches there. You hear them before you see them, and, having already been warned not to get within twenty-five feet of them, and having seen the display of comparative replica moulds of Seal skulls being shown in one of the huts, the deep growl can send a bit of a shudder through your soul as your toes prepare themselves for a little bit of "flight not fight..."

The walk was longer and hotter than expected and, after having a bit of a chat with another Park Ranger about lighthouses and what was afoot wildlife-wise on the (now abandoned) island just off the headland, we chickened out of going any further along the trail where a young male Walrus Seal was apparently a bit of a danger, and decided instead to walk back towards the car park because, surprisingly, our time there had passed very swiftly, and the day was moving headlong towards its end.

We also knew that, another thirty miles or so further up the road, we wanted to revisit Pescadero, after having spotted their new (?) Natural Reserve as we'd been travelling towards Monterey.

And so, forty-five minutes or so later, we pulled into yet another car park, this time with one of those "envelope honesty box" systems in place for the parking fees and, like good little tourists, we popped the envelope containing our cash into the little post provided, even though we suspected that everyone else probably didn't.

Pescadero Beach was yet another beautiful spot, and we paused there a while as we tried to work out quite how to actually get to the Pescadero Marsh Natural Reserve itself. There seemed to be some sort of a footbridge crossing the marsh about half a mile up the Highway, but no obvious way of walking to it, and the young man collecting driftwood who I mentioned this to, turned out to be a Welshman who had lived in the US for more than twenty years, which I tended to believe given his complete lack of a Welsh accent.

In the end we just decided to cross the Highway, given that the entrance to the trail around the marsh was right next to it, and this involved a certain amount of worry, given that the traffic does tend to belt along and, despite there being a clear, mile-long view in one direction, the other seemed to lead quite swiftly to a rather blind looking hill and curve which, we suddenly imagined, the trucks must tend to hurtle along.

However, we made it, and, later on, we made it back, too, and the Marsh was indeed a rather beautiful place and I, for one, am very glad that they seem to have chosen to develop it. Of course, it is entirely possible that it's been there for decades and we were just oblivious to it in our former "pre-nature-watching" lives, but I like to think that we would have noticed this.

Apart from the Ducks and the Coots, the most memorable thing about our brief walk along that trail in the blazing low sun was the amount of waders that we saw, although our strongest memory seems to be of the face-off between a Heron and a Great Egret which seemed to preoccupy them at various points as they chased each other around the edge of the wetlands, and, whilst I tried to cover up my ears to protect them from the sun in a manner that made me resemble either an idiot or an activist, I saw some Raptors flying high that were almost certainly not Turkey Vultures.

In dire need of refreshment, we finally made our way across to Duarte's and both partook of their almost legendary Olallaberry Pie whilst listening to the conversation that a couple and their friend were having about her very messy-sounding divorce, and watching the frail elderly couple as they finished up what we suspected might be their daily pie-eating ritual and headed carefully and lovingly back out to their car, looking for all the world as if they'd done the same thing every day for more than sixty years.

The pie was excellent, by the way... Like I always knew that it would be... although ten years between portions does seem like it's far, far too long.

And so, finally, we got back into the car and set the Sat-Nav for the final hotel accommodation destination of our holiday, in dear old San Francisco, one of my favourite cities in the world I must confess, and we headed on up Highway One, trying our very, very best not to feel sad about it being our last long road journey of the trip, and also trying our level best to suck it all into our minds and remember just what it felt like to be doing this, and to be lucky enough to be able to be doing this, before arriving at the city just before sunset, and battling our way through the evening traffic to spend a couple of days getting used to city living.