Waco to San Luis Obispo.

The raod to El Paso was so like the Little Karroo. Simi;ar plants, same long road to nowhere!

Cutting through the hills in Western Texas down ontothe plains towards El Paso

El Paso overpass. It is a massive and massivley expanding city. I went to the Cracker Barrell to exchange my CD Book for the drive to San Diego. It was 12 miles from the motel! Crazy. Not a particularly pretty city at all. Pretty glad to leave.

Pecan orchard West of El Paso. Great to see some agriculture other than cattle feed lots in the middle of nowhere in Texas. Some feed lots were just massive, all under cover with sprinklers for the heat.

Just an interesting bit of 'art' on the walls of a bridge on the road at Tulsa.

Entering California with some water tanks on the hill with paintings of the surrounding hills on them. Great use of a 'blanck canvas' to liven up the city.

I passed miles and miles of flat land vegetable agriculture. Was so good to see so much green and so many varities of vegetables being culltivated. aparently they get up to 7 crops a year! Don't know if Monsanto have anything to do with this!

Great big sand dunes and a canal next to the road as I drove through towards San Diego. It is a 'recreational park' where people go with bikes, dune buggies and various other interesting vehicles to have 'fun'!

Reminded me a bit of the N1 to Paarl. Oleander bushes along the highway.

Reached Kevin and Audrey Barretts home. This is Zulu the crossbred puppy. Plenty of energy. Very friendly. Just about got licked to death when I got there and released him from captivity as I awaited for the folk to arrive.

View of the front of Kevin's home in Encinitas. So many familiar plants and trees. Like being in the Southern Suburbs. Made me happy and very homesick. Beautiful big home.

I went to San Diego Zoo and was impressed with the layout, but still not convinced that the animals are happy being stared at by millions of jabbering people and screaming kids. This is a replica of a Mammoth to give some idea of scale. If they are recreated and put back into 'natural citrculation in Europe and Russia', keeping them enclosed may be a problem! Man was partially responsible for their extinction, so bringing them back would be a natural thing to recreate the balance.

Familiar South African plant and flower! California is full of indigenous Southern African plants introduced for landscaping - fynbos, restios, Arums, etc. as well as bougainvillias and Blue Gums! Feels like home here.

Main road Encinitas. Just to prove I was there!

On La Hoya beachfront. So much like Camps Bay/Bantry Bay/Sea Point/Greenpoint.

Some of the really old shoreline trees at La Hoya. Really beautiful in their twisted and cranulated way.

Quiver Tree at La Hoya. Another import from Africa together with the thousands of South Africans who live here and I can see why. It is like living in Cape Town. Same feel, same foliage, same weather, great beaches, great recreation, great restaurants. Magic.

Tory Pine. Indigenous to this coastline. Even saw the famous Tory Pines Golf Course. It is spectacular with these gnarled trees on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific. It was very "pacive" on the day with waves gently rolling in and plenty of guys surfing. The beach is divided between swimmers where the waves are less and surfers where the beach breaks are. Cool idea by the city.

More indigenous from Cape Town. I saw one farm outside Camirillo where there where about 5 Hectares of these flowers on a farm. Totally spectacular.

I went to the National Museum for Making Music. Just so cool. There are many bands that you can listen to on clips which you choose for each era in the USA. There are also a lot of instruments that you are invited to play as well as being able to listen to recording of many of the instruments on display.

Set of drums used by the Beatles. There are video clips of many of the great bands of the 50's through to the 1990's to select from.

Just for Andrew Middelkoop. See if this fits in your mom's Jazz. a Sousaphone. It is pretty humungus!

What a wonderful family. Audrey and Kevin Barrett and the boys William and Nicholas. Took this on my last night with them at an Italian restaurant. It was tough and I really was sad to leave them as it was so great to be with Kevin who is an incredibly interesting person. He is developing sustainable energy from the movement of water in the ocean, estuaries and rivers. He is a great thinker with a huge intellect. I just loved listening to his amazing innovative ideas. I miss them a lot already.

Miniature working rotating barrell gun. It fires too. Made by an amazing craftsman that we met at this incredible Museum of Crafts. Behind it is a row of very small steam engines.

This is a fully working model of a V12 Ferrari engine. a number were manufactured. Incredible how painstaking it had to have been to manufacture every single part individually by hand to such a small scale and then to run it!

A small V8 engine of which a number were also made. Just mind -boggling that people can sit and create such meticulously detailed and fully working miniature engines.

1949 Mercury at the Corona High School Classic Car Show. I stopped in on my way to Camirillo from Irvine where I stayed with Stuart Solkow.

Beautiful 1956 Ford F150. Love it.

A 1958, closest, and a 1957 Ford Hardtop Covertibles. So awesome. Automatically opening and retracting hoods.

1957 Ford Ranchero. Not many of these left. Immaculate.

At the Petersen Automotive Museum in wiltshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Not a 1949, but a 1951 model Ford Woody. But oh so beautiful.

One of the very few road-going Ford GT 40's. Such an amazing car. Seats are more comfortable and the suspension slightly softer than the racing version with a slightly bigger boot/trunk and round road lights. Could do 165 mph! The '40' comes from the car being 40 inches from ground to roof!

One of the entrances to the Hotel California. I was mistkaen about where and what the Hotel California was. In SF there is a very old 'Hotel California' and we stayed there in 1995 on the SACS trip. However, I now know that the song "Hotel California' was about this mental asylum in Camirillo, California! It has been converted into a university now and expanded a lot keeping the same architecturalstyle, but no big bars and wire accross the windows! We learn something new each day!

Cousin Bruce's massive and beautiful Ford F-250 with a massive
diesel engine that he pulls his trailer for the bikes and their accommodation. It has awesome power and is really comfortable and does a fair distance on a gallon too. Very impressive. Love it.

Miles and miles of agricultural flatlands in the Camirillo region. It is the major economic output for this part of California. From strawberries to raspberrys, artichokes, cabbage, kale, cilantro, and orchards of citrus and more. Totally impressive. Just a concern that the Monsanto plant is just down the road!

On the pass to San Luis Obispo. Beautiful raod and so like driving along the Garden Route near Knysna. Beautiful natural scenery and vineyards, horse ranches and cattle famrs with miles and miles of green fields and beautiful forests. Lovely drive.

The main shopping street in San Luis Obispo. Happy, vibey (is there such a word?) and really interesting and eclectice range of shops and stores. Many, many eating places as is always the case in the USA, but these are trendy and of a huge variety of cuisine. I had breakfast at 'Lousie's', a small diner style restaurant.

A hill outside San Luis Obispo similar to the one that Paul and I climbed this morning at 06.30 with his dog. Unfortunately, the mist had rolled in so our view was blocked. Very good exercise though, very good. I was bushed. It was steep, very steep!

San Luis Obispo is so much like a typically South African town along the Garden Route. Very much like Kysna, but with the waterfront 12 miles from the centre of town. It has a laid back, comfortable and happy feel about it. Very unlike the typical Florida, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico towns that I went through. Paul Texiera and Lorna have made an amazing home here. I will get photo's for the enxt blog. Paul has set up an amazing Physical Therapy practice in a set of buildings he has now purchased. He and Lorna have created a wonderful atmosphere in the practice by using dismantled palettes as well as an old wooden paling fence. The floor is sealed concrete in front and wooden splitbaord floors through the studio. Paul has restored some very old metal window frames and bolted them to the wall with the big bolt heads showing. The celing is also wood board, varnished and the aircon piping is exposed and is polished steel. In the yard they have created two wood and corrugated steel studios to let. They are in the process of creating a magic aloe garden for social gatherings as well as an outdoor shower. The 4 apartments adjoining the studio and garden, are retro-modern and are really beautiful inside. They have kept the 1950's feel, but added a sort of Scandinavian flavour. I will have them in my next blog together with the unfinished garden and sheds.                                                                                                 The Camry is well again after a brief and expensive visit to the car hospitasl. The Journey continues.