We decided to visit the small Californian city of Soquel, near Santa Cruz, as part of our road trip as I’d lived there very briefly a long time ago and wanted to show Carol the delights of that area nestled on the Pacific coast between the ocean and the Santa Cruz Mountains. The drive there from San Francisco took us along the fabulous Route 1, which follows the Pacific Ocean all the way down the west coast, but when we reached Santa Cruz, it turned out to have been so long ago that I had lived there that I barely remembered anywhere we drove through, and even struggled to recall the name of the street that I’d lived on. I did, however, remember the name of one iconic café in Santa Cruz (and shall refrain from giving its name in order to preserve its iconic status), so we went there for breakfast the morning after we arrived – but ended up stomping out, with me clutching a takeaway box containing the burrito I’d ordered but that had failed to materialise when Carol’s meal arrived. It turned out that somehow my order had never been given to the cook, so by the time it finally did arrive, Carol had finished hers and I was so angry and stomach-churny that I demanded they take it off the bill, and had to be persuaded to even take the wretched boxed-up meal away with me. I would soon be glad I had done, though, as I was by then really hungry, and once we were safely away from the iconic place, I tucked into it rather ravenously.
Another institution I remembered from my few months there back in the late '80s was the Saturday flea market that runs from 6 a.m. to early afternoon. So, with me still munching the botched burrito, we headed over to the large car park on which it’s held, paid our dollar fifty each, and found ourselves sauntering around a car boot sale California-style. By the time we’d finished looking at guitars with strings missing (though not the one in the photo - that was a decent one, but it wasn't for sale!), grubby old clothes, boots that had seen better days, and other assorted potential gems, it was clear that tat is tat the world over, whether it’s sold out of an old estate car in a field in Essex or from the back of a battered pick-up truck in a parking lot on the Pacific coast.
The other thing I wanted to show Carol was the famous Santa Cruz boardwalk, allegedly the one referred to in the Drifters’ song ‘Under the Boardwalk’. But when we got there, I felt sad to see it had become so grossly over-commercialized and was now nothing more than mass of elaborate theme park rides – so we carried on down the coast and came to Seacliff State Beach, with its lovely old wooden pier replete with keen fishermen, and a wreck at the end that’s become a sanctuary for seabirds, including pelicans – as well as a lone sea lion we watched swim along the line of the shore, to the consternation (mixed with delight) of the children who happened to be swimming in the sea at the time it made its appearance. Other unusual (in the UK at least!) species we spotted in the area included a hummingbird (in the back garden of the house we stayed in) and, further inland, a vulture…
Our Las Vegas hotel reservation was for 3 p.m. the next day, so we’d originally planned to drive there overnight. But having done all we wanted to do in the Santa Cruz area by early afternoon, we decided to press on then and take our time ambling over to the Nevada gambling mecca. That decision led us to stop at Hollister, California, a small town lying an hour or two inland from Santa Cruz and at the heart of a major salad-crop-producing region of the USA. We were looking for a bar, any bar, as we were both thirsty by then and in need of liquid refreshment, but it was by pure chance that Carol decided to park where she did. It turned out to be virtually outside the Whiskey Creek Saloon – from its name alone you can tell that it was exactly what we were hoping to stumble upon – an all-American dive bar full of locals intrigued by two Englishwomen stepping in and ordering Blue Moons and telling the bartender about their west–east road trip. A lovely group conversation ensued, and we eventually left there with our heads reeling with all the different routes suggested to us as the best way to get to Vegas, and wondering (yet again) why Americans seem to be so very obsessed by the British royal family…
A very sensible and valuable suggestion, though, was that we refuel at Bakersfield, as after that we’d be hitting the Mojave Desert – at night – and we definitely didn’t want to run out of petrol (or rather, ‘gas’) there…
Another institution I remembered from my few months there back in the late '80s was the Saturday flea market that runs from 6 a.m. to early afternoon. So, with me still munching the botched burrito, we headed over to the large car park on which it’s held, paid our dollar fifty each, and found ourselves sauntering around a car boot sale California-style. By the time we’d finished looking at guitars with strings missing (though not the one in the photo - that was a decent one, but it wasn't for sale!), grubby old clothes, boots that had seen better days, and other assorted potential gems, it was clear that tat is tat the world over, whether it’s sold out of an old estate car in a field in Essex or from the back of a battered pick-up truck in a parking lot on the Pacific coast.
The other thing I wanted to show Carol was the famous Santa Cruz boardwalk, allegedly the one referred to in the Drifters’ song ‘Under the Boardwalk’. But when we got there, I felt sad to see it had become so grossly over-commercialized and was now nothing more than mass of elaborate theme park rides – so we carried on down the coast and came to Seacliff State Beach, with its lovely old wooden pier replete with keen fishermen, and a wreck at the end that’s become a sanctuary for seabirds, including pelicans – as well as a lone sea lion we watched swim along the line of the shore, to the consternation (mixed with delight) of the children who happened to be swimming in the sea at the time it made its appearance. Other unusual (in the UK at least!) species we spotted in the area included a hummingbird (in the back garden of the house we stayed in) and, further inland, a vulture…
Our Las Vegas hotel reservation was for 3 p.m. the next day, so we’d originally planned to drive there overnight. But having done all we wanted to do in the Santa Cruz area by early afternoon, we decided to press on then and take our time ambling over to the Nevada gambling mecca. That decision led us to stop at Hollister, California, a small town lying an hour or two inland from Santa Cruz and at the heart of a major salad-crop-producing region of the USA. We were looking for a bar, any bar, as we were both thirsty by then and in need of liquid refreshment, but it was by pure chance that Carol decided to park where she did. It turned out to be virtually outside the Whiskey Creek Saloon – from its name alone you can tell that it was exactly what we were hoping to stumble upon – an all-American dive bar full of locals intrigued by two Englishwomen stepping in and ordering Blue Moons and telling the bartender about their west–east road trip. A lovely group conversation ensued, and we eventually left there with our heads reeling with all the different routes suggested to us as the best way to get to Vegas, and wondering (yet again) why Americans seem to be so very obsessed by the British royal family…
A very sensible and valuable suggestion, though, was that we refuel at Bakersfield, as after that we’d be hitting the Mojave Desert – at night – and we definitely didn’t want to run out of petrol (or rather, ‘gas’) there…
  Photo by Carol Mac Photography |   Photo by Carol Mac Photography |
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