We’ve had a lovely, leisurely final day in Anaheim.  Roger & I walked to Downtown Disney where I reminisced about my trip here with Chris 6yrs ago and hung longingly through the gates to Disneyland.  We browsed the shops & I ooohed and aaahed some more at all the cute merchandise.  Roger was very patient.

Back to the pool where H&J found us.  Swim, lunch, swim, more sun then off to the airport.

On reflection, we’ve all had the most fantastic time touring California & it’s neighbouring states meeting lots of friendly folk along the way.

We’ve travelled from bustling cities to tiny ghost towns, through pretty seaside villages, parched & flooded deserts, ranches, fruit groves, vineyards, rugged seacoast, market gardens and sequoia forests, over high mountain passes and dry desert pans.  We’ve stayed in luxury suites and hillbilly motels, experienced searing heat during the heatwave going to Palm Springs and the chilly weather that San Francisco calls summer.

And the sights we’ve seen! Utterly jawdropping natural features like the Grand Canyon, Death Valley vistas, towering sequoia forests, majestic Yosemite National park, volcanic lava flows at Sunset crater and the stunning west coast along Big Sur.  And the amazing manmade features ranging from the ancient Indian ruins at Wakapti, ghost towns like Rhyolite & Oatman, Hoover Dam, aircraft carriers & submarines, beautiful Balboa Park in San Diego, crazy crazy Las Vegas, exhilirating MotoGP races, stunning Hearst Castle, cutesy towns like Carmel & Solvang, delightful Disney and the ever impressive Getty Centre.

One thing we’re all agreed on, our impromptu swim in a refreshing mountain stream when we were all a tad hot & cranky was definitely one of the top moments and it’s been the ride of a lifetime!

Thanks for your interest & encouragement, see you all soon,

much love from Robyn & Roger

We were on a mission today.  We had to visit Bartells to collect the title documents for both bikes before delivering them to the Titan depot for shipping.  Quiet anxiety being experienced by all as so far, Bartells had been decidedly unhelpful.

Roger & I gave breakfast a miss as the queue went way out the door today, besides, I was a tad over the less than satisfying breakfast foods on offer. Our accommodation is great & I love the poolside with its cute garden of topiary animals & the various heated & unheated pools & 2 spas.  However, the breakfast buffet consists of allbran, fruit loops, oatmeal & frosties; toast, danish pastries, donuts covered in a variety of sugary coatings (truly disgusting) and yucky sticky sweet muffins.  The only fruit available are oranges & apples that are like eating sweetened styrofoam – phfft!  I do have a sweet tooth but american breakfast food is incredibly sugar-laden, even the peanut butter.  Roger tried a flavourlesss peeled boiled egg yesterday but not impressed.

Anyway, we set off across town to Bartells in convoy.  Roger & I (with my page of notes in case Sally did a BOING on the freeway), Howard on his bike & Jayne following in the rental car with their GPS.  We made it together & settled in for the usual wait at Bartells.  The guys had the most frustrating time with them when they originally arrived & things were not ready as requested months ago – hopeless.  Avoid Bartells – there are lots of other happy & obliging dealers.  After coercing a salesman to make yet another call to the (mis)manager Jorge, who still hadn’t showed up, the title to Roger’s Harley was found sitting on his desk (relief), but nothing for Howard yet (anguish).  We left instructions for Howard’s title to be sent to the shipping crowd ASAP (fingers crossed) and set out for Titan.

All the guys at Titan were greaat – super helpful & friendly & processed the paperwork in no time.  Quick photos of the bikes, quick change into cooler clothes and we were out of there.  We were all a bit sad at leaving the Harleys behind, we’d had a great time touring on them & hope they make it safely home in a few weeks time.

We drove into downtown LA to grab some lunch and wander about, spotting our favourite celebrities’ stars on the Hollywood walk of fame and hand/footprints outside Graumann’s Chinese theater.  Did a spot of quick shopping on the way home to Anaheim then back to the pool – aaaah.  Made a good effort to empty the fridge of liquid refreshments that had accumulated, then dinner during which Roger & Howard told me that there were NO fireworks tonight – how cruel was that?!!  Imagine my delight when I heard the first boom, boom so I left them to their desserts & went outside to enjoy the fabulous display courtesy of Disneyland, WOW!  A perfect ending to our day.

Tomorrow we pack up & have the day to wait for our transfer to the airport at 4:30pm.  We plan to hve a wander around the Disney area, then wait poolside until we sadly have to leave.

At last, a quieter day.  H&J headed off early to sort out bike stuff & we made our way leisurely over to the HD shop in Anaheim, via 2 freeways to collect spare keys, then back to meet H&J for the ball game.  They had rented a car so Jayne drove us to the nearby Angels Stadium.  Naturally, huge carpark & lots of people.  Talk about merchandising!  We bought our red Angels caps, wandered in amazement through the fans’ shop (honestly, how many different red t-shirt designs can there be??) & grabbed a tasty burger to eat outside in the shade. Time to find our seats on the upper level – wooeee.  As it was mid-week, there were large groups of kids in matching t-shirts for their different summer camps & they were noisy.  We had to giggle at their various chants – my favourite, We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher!

The game started with the national anthem & fireworks.  There was a huge screen opposite displaying replays, player photos & stats, score, history, shots of the crowd & adverts so plenty to take in.  More digital displays surrounded the stands with instructions to make noise or whatever – all great fun. We could see the team dugouts & to our left were small practice terraces, behind which was a rocky waterfall with shooting geysers & fireworks when necessary, eg when a home run was struck.  Have you ever seen anything like it?  The game moved pretty quickly & good crowd entertainment in the short lulls.  Food, icecreams, drinks etc constantly being hawked – must feed the crowd.  We really enjoyed the experience, although H&J both nodded off whilst fulfilling a lifetime ambition to attend a real live baseball game (hehe).

Back for a lovely long swim & rest by our pool while H&J did more Harley shopping, then I blogged while they all lovingly cleaned & caressed & polished the bikes, ready for shipping tomorrow.

Returned to our favourite Italian restaurant just along the road & paused to watch the 10min display of fireworks by Disneyland on our way home – I love’em!  What a great day.

Elise sent us to the best Danish bakery for pastries for breakfast.  The display cabinets were already stocked full of gorgeous goodies & petit fours – OMG! We set off for Santa Barbara & Jedlicka’s world-famous western store where, bugger me! amongst all their crazy stock, I found some great cowboy boots that I’ve always needed just my size – yeehaa! I wore those babies outta there.  As always, the guys were funny & super friendly & rushed outside to check out the Harley.  Sally, our GPS, had made the dreaded “BOI-ING” sound which meant she was sulking so we prudently decided to head straight back to the freeway while we could remember where it was.

The temperature had steadily risen as we rode south & by the time we stopped at Thousand Oaks (which really does have at least 1,000 oak trees giving lots of shade) for lunch, we discarded a few layers of clothing, phew!  That’s more comfortable.  Sally was back up & running so we wrote down the directions & I clutched my piece of paper all the way into LA & the La Brea Tar Pits in downtown.  Thank goodness coz Sally went Boi-ing, Boi-ing a couple more times & we’d have been totally lost, a scary thought on the freeway!!!

We could smell the tar pits as we arrived in Museum Row, lots of interesting high-rise buildings surround this pretty park and there beside a slowly bubbling pool of tar, in downtown Los Angeles, was a woolly mammoth! Wow!  We wandered over to Pit 91 to view the excavations.  This is divided into 3ft square grids & each summer, 2-4 of these are carefully worked down about 6 inches so you can seewhat anincredibly slow process this is.  Everything is cleaned, sifted, sorted & catalogued, right down to seeds & pollen – amazing huh?!  We could see the skull of a dire wolf, the scapula of a sabre-toothed tiger & lots of other bones & stuff, just like CSI.  The George Page museum itself was fascinating & extremely well presented, we loved it.

Again, we wrote down our directions to negotiate our way through several freeways back to our motel in Anaheim.  This was challenging & Roger was a champion.  We met up with H&J, had a refreshing swim then out for dinner.  Yet another interesting & satisfying, perfect day for the Harveys.

Just made it to the visitors centre for Hearst Castle with 4mins to park the bikes & run to catch our 12:10pm bus ride up the hill.  Again, I have to say WOW!  I know many of you have already been there, so you will know how incredible this place is.  Land holdings for this ‘little ranch’as far as the eye could see & beautiful beaches.  The castle itself was gorgeous, I loved how WR Hearst was the master of recycling – medieval carved ceilings & doors, tapestries, ancient Egyptian statues and fabulous marble statuary.  The fabulous long Gothic dining room with colourful Italian racing banners was the inspiration for Hogwarts of Harry Potter fame.  We were all dying to jump into the Roman-style outdoor pool until we spied the stunning blue & gold heated indoor pool with dive platform.  Boy, they must’ve had some great parties here!

By now we were famished & enjoyed a bite outside in the shade, watched by too many large black crows… more visions of Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds.  (Last night Howard had climbed onto the 2nd floor roof at the Otter Inn to rescue a seagull chick that had fallen out of it’s chimney nest.  Immediately, its mother spat & shat at him & 500 reinforcements blackened the sky to join the attack – that was scary!)   Four miles away, we stopped to watch a colony of sea elephants basking in the sun, one making lots of noise in the waves & several squirrels bouncing about. Back on the road heading to Solvang.  Stopped at the Java Hut for a coffee for Howard, but it had just closed so across the road to an Italian deli that had me sorely tempted with all sorts of goodies but (being on the bike) had to settle for raspberry & orange gelato – mmmmmm bliss.

Solvang is a Danish/Scandinavian settlement that captured my mum’s fancy on a trip 26 yrs ago and we could easily see why.  It’s the dearest wee Hansel & Gretel hamlet you ever did see. All the Danish names, windmills & storks on rooves, all the building & shop facades giving the delightful illusion of being in a fairy tale, although Roger thought that if he had to actually live here, it might be more like a nightmare.  No witches, but we did pass an ostrich farm – what the??  By the way, we’ve also seen llamas on a trailer, a fox in the woods & a dead skunk on the road.  Stayed at the Royal Copenhagen motel, our best & roomiest accommodation, built to look like a village with the green & swimming pool surrounded by hundreds of roses. Elise at reception recommended the Angel Cafe along the road so that’s where we went.

We all enjoyed a wonderful Italian dinner, great ambiance, tiramisu & putti (angels) galore and a few bottles of wine rounded off our last night on the road together – another perfect evening.

We made a slight detour through Carmel (Clint Eastwood’s county).  The beach looked inviting & the wee village was so very pretty with lots of spruce trees, the homes too.  It’s hard to believe that people really live in such cute Disney-villes.  This far north, not many have lawns at all – either sand or rocks or both.

Had to pick up the pace as we followed the stunning coastline south, along Big Sur.  What a fantastic road for bikers.  Plenty of Jap racing bikes zoomed past as the heavy Harleys ground their way around the many tight bends.  The scenery was stunning with many opportunities to view the vistas up & down the coast, still a bit chilly though & gladly wearig my SF sweatshirt.  Miles & miles of charred state forest were sombre evidence of the dreadful fires recently.  We saw lots of handmade signs thanking God & the fire service.

H&J were super keen to beat the rush so we headed out to the track at 8am.  Laguna Seca is only about 15 miles from Monterey, but it felt like we rode for miles & miles around most of Fort Ord just to reach the entrance, then another long ride through Fort Ord to the free motorcycle parking – that too stretched endlessly.  I reckon the whole of NZ’s defence force holdings would have easily fitted into one corner of Fort Ord.  On the way, we passed hundreds of abandoned barracks that made the closure of the camp at Papakura rather insignificant.

The Americans are great at organising, shepherding large numbers of people & crowd control.
We grabbed a bite of brekkie then wandered the merchandising tents, wondering how many Moto GP t-shirts one person needs.  I found some great biker sunglasses with foam padding that are excellent eye protection (wish I had those in the desert!) & we bought a dust cover for the bike too.  Queued for quick lunch then joined a much longer queue to shuffle towards the track bridge, then shuffle over & make our way to our seats in the grandstand.  What incredibly perfect seats we had!  A stroke of luck from ordering over the internet.  We were in the main stand, opposite the expensive hospitality suites, looking down onto the starting grid & finish line with big screen & pits in cear view.  Even Tom & Katie came onto the track to give us a wave & nod of appreciation at our awesome spot.

The crowd was friendly & enthusiastic and the main race was superb as the top two contenders vied fiercely for the lead.  We had the best view of the winners podium & other track entertainment – flybys, parachutists, biker stunts & of course, lots of scantily clad, leggy beauties!  We couldn’t resist viewing the “corkscrew” up close so trekked across the crowded field & up the hill (ears popping again) to get a better perspective of this piece of track.  Wow!  The competitors have a steep climb then pop over the top “blind” before a rapid twisting descent that must be quite challenging.  We had a wonderful view of the whole track from there.

Finally (& sadly) the day was over so we joined the orderly crowd back to our bikes.  Again, the bikers rode in an orderly fashion off the camp & back to Monterey – we don’t see that behaviour at home.  Late dinner & bed.

A beautiful sunny morning ride inland, up the hills through pretty forest for brekkie at Alice’s Restaurant, a famous biker stop.  It was glorious to soak up the sun’s warmth after a fabulous omelette.  On to tour the Winchester House but this was a tad disappointing as the house was vacant, no furnishings or family treasures to view & not much known history.  BBQ smells were wafting over the freeway so we pulled up for great lunch outside Monterey then on to our cute motel, the Otter Inn.  Wandered about to get our bearings, all wanted steak for dinner.  Cannery Row, the main street, was closed off for Fri & Sat nights for bikes to park.  This made a great show & party atmosphere – bikes blinged out as far as you could see.  Stereos blaring, neon lights flashing, tiny dogs tucked up & the people!!

Our second day in Monterey was surprisingly cool & overcast, we were expecting warm sunshine. Hopped on the bike to visit nearby Carmel & Pebble beach, but too cold so visited the wonderful aquarium instead & watched the show-off otters feeding.  Found a great seafood spot for cheaper dinner & beer, then back to view the bike show & party again.

Farewell to Oakdale & heading back to a city, San Francisco.  Again we ejoyed the countryside & guessing what was growing – the smells were tantalising.  Sooo many strawberries!  Green peas, lettuce, bell peppers, artichokes, more oranges & grapes.  We were soon back onto a freeway that popped us over the hills & down to SF.  My goodness, the temperature plummeted, we had to make a quick exit to don more clothes, brrr.  We had been warned but it was a very chilly welcome.

Sally, (our GPS  Gal Pal Sally, get it?) took us into a rather unsavoury neighbourhood.  We pulled up for hot drinks at a McDonalds with a large security guard at the door, big clue, but he was friendly & took special interest in our bikes as he been given a new Harley for his birthday. Back on track we rode over the Bay Bridge, an awesome double-decker bridge that was damaged previously in an earthquake, round the east side of the Bay & up Mt Tamalpia (highest point) for stunning views of the cloud & a wee thaw in the sun.  Rode over the Golden Gate; the top was hidden in cloud & it was so blinkin cold, we stoppedto view part of the massive cables, get another shot glass for Howard’s collection & of course, a hot drink.  We spent an awful lot of time trying to find accommodation here as a convention was in town.  We were admiring the gorgeous victorian homes & buildings, but getting weary, we rode 30mins south to Half Moon Bay for tasty Mexican dinner & bed.

Next morning, we rode back to San Francisco & spent time wandering the city.  First up,buy a warm hoody & jacket – very tourist wore one! Had fun In Ripley’s museum, found the Harley shop, cable car & Pier 39 where I just HAD to have a ride on the prettiest 2-storey Victorian carousel!  Met up with H&J for an afternoon cruise around the harbour, under the Golden Gate & around Alcatraz island.  Had seafood dinner by the crab stands on the wharf then back to our motel via the chilly coast road.

Our route from Lake Isabella immediately took us high up into the beautiful wooded mountains, winding steadily through the Disneyland of fragrant trees to 7,000 ft then down the other side to the fabulous orange orchards surrounding Fresno.  The mountain homes were incredibly picturesque built in an alpine stye with stone & spruce & shingles – all of which were plentiful, lots of ooohing & aaahing again.  The lowlands were a giant fruit bowl.  Orange groves as far as you could see in every direction (no wonder they export to us), then cherries, peach & almond.  Yes, aunty, of course I tried the cherries & nectarines – the sweetest I’ve ever had!  Saw large almond shelling station & enjoyed the best glass of juice at breakfast, mmm.

Paid our fees & entered the majestic Sequoia park.  Again, we rode higher & higher, back up to 7,000ft, winding through these stately trees.  Loved the smell, had a few photo stops, loved the trees.  Stayed near Yosemite Forks at a great hotel, great meaning fantastic, unheated, refreshing pool, then tasty Mexican dinner with enormous strawberry margaritas for a great sleep.

Next day, we arrived at Yosemite National Park for a full day of incredible sightseeing.  Spent the whole day looking for bears, but alas, they were hiding from us.  In this park, the road mostly follows the canyon floor, but not before we’d taken in some more wonderful vistas.  We are all contantly amazed at the rock formations, how trees appear to grow out of rock, the HUGE size of everything, always!  This was such a pretty place, widing along beside a pretty river.  Entertained by the ever present squirrels & blue woodpeckers.  Lots of families emptying their SUVs to ride bikes, kayak or float on colourful inflatable toys down the river.  Spectacular waterfalls,Bridalveil falls turned to mist before reaching the bottom, wow.  We found a secluded spot & joined a family heading to NZ next week for a refreshing dip in one of the many mountain streams, even had our own waterfall but was too chilly for Jayne.

Back on the road, lost count of how many times we climbed to 7,000 ft & back, eventually raced down to the valley plains & my, how the heat hit us again!  Emptied my camelback cooling my neck& legs, a handy trick.  Scooted along through dry farmland & ranches (poor beasties) & stopped in Oakdale for the night.  Our waitress had an endless supply of jokes for us.