3 - A Bit Blair Witch and Too Many Hicks
The first leg of our road trip was spent driving north from San Francisco
towards, and through, the Redwoods. We spent two days travelling up the
west coast, first on Route 1, which runs right beside the Pacific Ocean, and
then on roads slightly further inland. The scenery was simply breathtaking as
we were often afforded panoramic views of the sea on our left hand side
whilst on the right cliff walls towered above us.
The highway was fairly narrow, and included so many slopes and
sharp bends that we made very slow progress. What made these obstacles
more challenging was the fact that Emma was getting used to driving a
vehicle much larger than that to which she was accustomed, and driving it on
what felt like the wrong side of the road. The incredible views, occasional
wildlife - including birds of prey and a herd of elk - and the open roads
stretching ahead of us went a long way towards making up for the lack of
miles covered. However, by the end of the first day we had only driven about
143 miles, less than half of the distance that we had intended to cover. We
began to be concerned that we would have to make drastic alterations to our
schedule in order to reach Miami in time for our flight back to England. Now,
this probably seems like a bit of a melodramatic reaction because we still had
nearly three months left of our vacation, but when we looked at the maps at
the end of that first day on the road we were a little freaked out.
As it turned out, we only needed to make some minor changes to our
itinerary because after that initial drive we discovered the miracle of the
modern transportation network - the Interstate. Obviously this could not help