Clam Chowder and Cable Cars

Yes I was a tourist in San Francisco today.

I got the sat-nav lady to bring me in over the Bay Bridge – I’m glad that the ‘What if another quake hits San Francisco’ documentary was not on the TV until tonight.  I would have gone nowhere near the Bay Bridge complex.

Not so much driving today, lots more walking and taking in the atmosphere of China Town and Fisherman’s Wharf.

I passed up on the $10 boat trip around Alcatraz Island and under the Golden Gate Bridge, but did take the $18 hour long ‘Trolley Hop’ sightseeing trip around the city.   It was clear from this trip that my morning walk around China Town, was mostly in the non-touristy part – I thought it was atmospheric!

I did want a go on the real cable cars, being hauled up the steep streets by the cables running under the road, but I left it a bit late and there was a large queue of others with the same idea.

I took lunch in a pavement cafe where of course I ‘had’ to have Clam Chowder, the local over promoted delicacy.   The effects of the Chowder stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon and my drive back down to Monterey ready for Internet Librarian 2007, tomorrow.  Although I enjoyed it, I don’t think I will be that eager to partake in the future.

Well, back down to reality and the conference tomorrow, but I think the memory of the 600 odd miles of me-time over the last few days will stick with me for a long time.

A man in a fish tank and the Golden Gate Bridge

Tonight finds me in a motel in Rohnert Park, north of San Francisco, at the end of another great day driving through California.

After the first full day California Drivin’, a night in and breakfast in Carmel preceded a short drive in to Monterey, where the Internet Librarian 2007 Conference I am heading for starts on Monday.  That is two days away yet, so I’ve got sights to see.  Whilst in town I visit the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium.  “Visit the aquarium” was by far the most popular suggestion – and they were right.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is housed in old canning factory buildings on the waterfront. This is an impressive set-up, well worth the $24 entrance fee.  From the waves breaking over a glass walkway to the domed roof with a shoal  of fish swimming endlessly around it, this is a fascinating visit.  The areas where tanks of jelly fish line the walls are a great attraction .  Not so much of an attraction as feeding time in the two floor high tank which is carried out by a diver.  The have to use a diver as some fish which stay near the bottom would never get any food.  The diver has a microphone and joins his colleague on the outside of the tank in a running commentary with the public.  It is hard to tell which animal is the most popular wit the public – the ones with the fins, or the one with the aqualung!

After a couple of hours I’m on the road again, heading up Highway 1 towards San Francisco. The wild drive up the coast yesterday had spoilt me.  Although through nice scenery, the road is nothing compared with the day before.  A stop for coffee & donuts, from a donut shop run by a guy from Laos who wants to retire in Canada, in a place called Pacifica punctuates  the journey.  It is not long before the highway enters San Francisco and becomes 19th Avenue heading towards Golden Gate Park.

As I reach the park I get a feeling of déjà vu, suddenly remembering the last time I drove this road back in 1976.  Through the park and up to the Golden Gate Bridge itself.  I get out to stretch my legs and take a few photos, even for some Belgian tourists.

Over the famous bridge in to Marin County and, despite the protestations of the sat-nav lady, up on to the cliffs above the ocean again.  Highway 1 has its old fire back, this switchback ride up and down the cliffs and in and out of the valleys is so exhilarating.  I am so glad I chose a small VW from the car rental site in LA – all that is missing is a gear stick and a clutch, it is so hard to throw a car in to a corner in a controlled way when it is changing gear all by its self.

Wanting to be in striking distance of San Francisco, where I want to spend a few hours tomorrow, I head inland to hit the main 101 freeway to find a suitable hotel or motel with broadband access.  Apart from posting this, I really must get my presentation done for next week or I will be showing my snaps of this trip to the folks at the California Digital Library on Tuesday.

California Drivin’

A joyous trip on the freeway from LAX last night brought me through the mountains to Lebec about an hour and a half north.

After a good night’s sleep I could start exploring the California countryside.  Running due west along the northern edge of and then through the San  Madre Mountains.

The geological layout of this part of California is very strange.  It is either mountains or very flat plains, almost like a child has used clay to create the mountains on a flat board.

2-3 hours driving brought me to the coastal highway at Guadalupe, just north of which I take a diversion to the  Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Preserve where a 20 minute walk across a lake (via a boardwalk - I may be an Evangelist but I’m not able to walk on water) and through the dunes brought me to a very long deserted beach. – Just what you need after three hours behind the wheel, no matter how great the scenery you are driving through. 

Afterwards a short trip up the coast brought me to an excellent meal in a fish restaurant on the sea front at Pismo Beach.

The next few miles up highway 1, although through nice scenery, was a little disappointing –  after all this was supposed to be one of the most spectacular roads in the country.

The disappointment soon faded away after I reached a place called Rugged Point.  The next 50 or so miles were some of the most spectacular I’ve driven through.  The road clinging to the cliffs, would not have been out of place in Switzerland, with the Pacific Ocean washing against their base often hundreds of feet below.  As the afternoon wore on the sun dipped into the ocean and dusk arrived just as I pulled in to Carmel  to find a hotel for tonight.

Having talked about Google Maps mashups, I thought I should create a map of this trip and here it is.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

October Odyssey – off again

38,266ft above the USA, the edge of the Rockies approaching at 500mph, Los Angeles 2 hours away.  My October travels start again.

After a hectic few days in the office preparing and rehearsing presenters for the Talis Insight Conference, I’m back over the Atlantic heading for Internet Librarian in Monterey.  Unlike my last trip to British Columbia, where I tacked on a couple of days me-time  at the end, I am reversing the process and tacking the me-time on the front.

Hiring a car at LAX, the plan was to drive south for an hour to a place called San Clemente, check in to a hotel for the night and then spend the next three days driving the 400 or so miles past LA up the coast to Monterey.

As I say, that was the plan, until California started to have problems with out of control fires.  Yesterday I checked the fire map Google Maps mashup hosted by the LA Times.  Its amazing how prevalent and natural these mashups are, it only seems like yesterday when I won some Google and Ordinance Survey goodies for producing a mashup of UK libraries.

Anyway I digress; I checked the map to discover the hotel I had booked  was located right next to one of the angry looking flames on the map.  I powered up Skype and rang the hotel.  “Is my reservation still OK to check in tomorrow night” I inquired.  “At the moment, yes” came the response “The fire is about five miles away, we should be OK, the freeway is between us and it.”

“Are you coming for business or pleasure” the hotelier then asked - “pleasure” I responded.  He then suggested, as this part of my trip is for pleasure, it might be worth reconsidering as “its raining ash here at the moment and it isn’t very pleasurable at all”.  His offer to allow me to cancel without penalty, coupled with his explanation that they could use the room for evacuees from the fire, convinced me to make alternative arrangements, which I have.

The wisdom of this decision was confirmed, during a call back to them to confirm I was not coming, when I overheard someone who I presume to be a local explaining how the National Guard were parked on her driveway.

A close examination of the fire map made it clear that it would be unwise to go anywhere near the Pacific coast north or south of LA.  I am therefore going to take my rental car  due north for about an hour and a half from LAX to a place called Lebec to rest for the night.  My first full day should take me, and the lady in the sat-nav due west to hit the coast about halfway between LA and Monterey. From then on we will see where the whim and the sat-nav lady takes me.

Unfortunately it won’t be all pleasure, I’ve got a presentation to prepare by Tuesday so I must make sure all my hotels have broadband!

Last day on the road in BC

It was a good move to drive down to Squamish on yesterday’s trip, instead of staying up in Whistler.   Although the weather was better, to start off, there was a great deal of low cloud hanging around the mountaintops, so I suspect it would have been a bit foggy higher up.

On the way out of town, the cloud cleared enough for me to glimpse the local mountain which I missed yesterday, then it was right on to highway 99 back down from the sky to the sea.

Not quite as hairy as on the way up, the journey was still ‘fun’ with the odd rain shower greasing up the road a bit. – fast greasy corners always seem so much worse when you are sat on what still feels like the wrong side of the car.

Before I knew it I was driving over the Lions Gate Bridge in to downtown Vancouver, continuing to upset the lady in the sat-nav by ignoring her as the way I wanted to go looked nicer. I didn’t stop in Vancouver itself as I wanted to get to the airport and check-in, so my only picture of the city was from behind the wheel.  Eventually I gave in to the lady’s insistent tones, and let her lead me in the direction she wanted to go.

680 Kilometers after leaving Victoria finds me pulling in to the car rental drop off at the airport.  An excellent, at times awe inspiring, always interesting, two and a half days in a part of the world I did not know until now.  A great bit of me-time, now its back to reality and the UK for a conference in Stratford-upon-avon - another nice place, I used to live there – no mountains though.

On the road in B.C. – Day 2 – From Island to Sea to Sky

Did I mention how good the weather has been in British Columbia for my visit to Victoria for the Access 2007 Conference, and the first day of my me-time road trip.  Well it was glorious, as you can see from the early photos it was mostly cloudless blue sky and bright sunshine.

Getting up at 5:30 it was very dark, but from the wet stuff pouring out of the sky, I could tell that the glorious weather had gone for a while.  The ferry trip from Little River on Vancouver Island across the Strait of Georgia to Powell River on the mainland took well over an hour – plenty of time for an excellent ferry breakfast.

 Daylight greeted me in Powell River, but the rain still continued as I drove down the spectacular coast highway, glimpsing fantastic views through the trees out in to the Strait.  The rain had eased off as I reached the next ferry from Earls Cove to Saltery Bay – as you can see from this map, it would be a short trip except for the big island in the way.  This trip was stunning, and I spent most of the trip on deck being mesmerized by the massive spectacular scenery passing me by.  Take a look at the satellite version of the map and you will get a tiny hint of what I mean – you can even see the ferry in it.

On down the coast to ferry number three, from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale, a 40 minute hop to get me to the same side of the water as Vancouver.  Still only lunchtime, I headed north up highway 99 towards Whistler where the 2010 Winter Olympics is to be held. 

Highway 99 is also named the Sea to the Sky, and its name does not disappoint.  A couple of hours switch back ride, firstly on what seems like a shelf carved in to the mountainside alongside the island dotted fjord which runs up to Squamish.  From there it follows the valley all the way up to Whistler at over 2,000ft.   What made this even more spectacular is that they are widening the road ready for the Olympics.  Widening such a road involves much rock blasting and using impressive construction equipment in precarious places.

Through the falling rain which made taking pictures pointless, Whistler is a nice typical modern alpine resort with pedestrian areas bordered with small boutiques, selling alpine clothing, jewelry, and the like, peppered with bars and restaurants with heated outside tables.   I was going to stay in Whistler for the night, but a combination of that ‘not quite in season’ empty but expensive feel of the town, plus the possibility of having to negotiate highway 99 in low cloud, through the construction sites back down the valley with a plane to catch, has convinced me to drive half way to Vancouver and stop over in Squamish for the night.

After a night in a motel, with a walk to the local Chinese or Wendy’s in prospect, I’ll post this now and get some rest before setting off down the rest of the Sea to Sky highway in the morning.

British Columbia Road Trip – Day 1

Those of you reading my work blog Panlibus, will know that I’ve been in Canada for a few days at the Access 2007 Conference.  As I said in my retrospective posting about it:

The team from the University of Victoria Libraries who organized this year’s Access Conference need to be praised for bringing together an excellent conference, in an excellent location in a beautiful city.

It seemed silly to come all this way to just see a conference hotel, two taxis, and an airport lounge, so I have delayed my departure back to the UK for a couple of days for a little me-time to see the country.

Victoria, where I have spent the last few days is the capital of British Columbia, and is located at the southern tip of Vancouver Island.  I’ve rented a small car and am heading north on a Sunday morning.

The first problem is that Vancouver Island is far bigger in reality than it appears on the tourist maps.  Seven hours drive from Victoria in the south to Port Hardy in the north, where all you can do is catch a ferry to somewhere off the map or turn around and head back south.  Several people at the conference suggested a visit to Cathedral Grove, in MacMillan Provincial Park, “… one of the last accessible forests of giant trees remaining in B.C. To walk along Cathedral Grove’s trails is to walk backward in time and to wonder at Nature’s marvels.”, so why not.

I was a little disappointed that the trails between the trees did not take you further away from the road but the trees, many of which were Western Red Cedar, were indeed very impressive.  As well as big trees the park is subject to big winds.  The way some of the enormous tree trunks had just been cast around the forest floor, is the kind of thing that makes you feel small.

On the way up to Cathedral Grove, I stopped in for half an hour at the port town of Nanaimo.  Maybe it was because it was Sunday, but this place seemed a sleepy welcoming place with harbor side artists and stalls.  With the sounds of a bagpipe drifting across the sunlit scene, I can feel myself coming overall poetical in describing it.

The road to MacMillan Provincial Park is a western detour off the main north south highway that runs up the east side of the island, I continued on from the park a few miles to Port Alberni, which nestles between the tree covered mountains at the top end of a 30 mile long fjord to the western coast.

Port Alberni is yet another sleepy place, even more sleepy at the moment as the forestry workers are on strike, and the lumber mills are not in action.   The beautiful views from the harbor make you want to hop on a boat and cruse down the steep sided fjord to the sea, but unfortunately there were no trips in operation.  Also not operating was the old steam train trips up to the steam operated lumber mill, so there was nothing else for it than to partake of coffee and a maple donut from the shop that sells ‘The best donuts in the world‘ – well the one I had was excellent. 

Heading back east, having convinced the lady in the sat-nav that I wanted to go on the old coast road instead of the new highway no matter how much she insisted I turn around, I was heading north up the side of the Srait of Georgia, either alongside the beach or taking in views of the many islands large and small off the coast.

Early evening brought me to Little River, and the excellent Singing Sands B&B, appropriately located on the corner of Wally Road, run by an ex Yorkshire Cheese sales executive and her husband.  Her recommendation took me to the local Griffin Pub, where a couple of beers and a barbeque steak got me settled down for the night ready for a very early start in the morning – the 6:30am ferry to Powell River on the mainland.

More pictures from the trip are now starting to appear in my Flickr account here.