A long day yesterday, driving down Highway 1, the scenic route. Once we were on it really wasn't practical to try to get to 101 and so we had a very long drive! Steve is now my hero - he did all the driving and managed the winding roads excellently.

We stopped at Carmel By The Sea and went for a paddle in the Pacific. This is a beautiful little town with architecture ranging from Spanish to Olde English. It looked quite an expensive place - lots of little boutique type shops as we drove down.

We took photos of a very fat squirrel that seems to live in a dead tree by the seashore - I'll try and get some photos onto flickr when I can. Further down we stopped at an elephant seal rookery - those are amazing creatures! Sharon told Lewis that one of them looked like Daddy when he was asleep.

The scenery was amazing - such a wild looking coast line and with the hills stretching up on the other side. We saw a mailbox with the number 77000 - miles away, it seemed, from anywhere and wondered who delivered the mail and how often. The occasional house down toward the sea got us wondering about the logistics of living in such a place - having to travel for hours just to get the basic groceries necessary for daily living.

Lewis was amazed to see a helicopter hovering over the ocean, but lower in the sky than the road we were travelling. With stops we spent about seven hours in the car yesterday but he was brilliant, enjoying the passing scenery all the way down.

I must admit that we all breathed a bit of a sigh of relief to get to flat straight roads at last and to finally settle into a Travelodge in San Luis Obispo for the night.

Today we travel on to LA - we still have to book a hotel there, but are taking advice from Mary Katherine re suitable areas.