CALIFORNIA CA

CALIFORNIA
We usually leave L.A. as fast as possible so we went for Santa Barbra to spend the first night, this is a great place for hanging around a couple of extra days, but since this was our first stop we wanted be on our way and only stayed one night. Going up the always bending highway one goes slow, next night was at Ragged Point, a very nice place to stay even in misty and cold weather. Next stop: Monterey bay aquarium, a very impressive place but quite expensive. We stayed one last night on highway one in Half Moon Bay, a very nice little town just south of San Fransisco.
San Fransisco has strange weather, summer can be very hot and very cold, this time it was cold and foggy, weather can change over night. Going inland the weather changed dramatically just after 15 minutes to very hot and dry summer weather driving for Lake Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe is located a few hours from San Fransisco on the border between California and Nevada up in the mountains. Weather here is a little colder because of the altitude and that is nice in summertime. The lake is beautiful with clear water, nice beaches and some beautiful campsites around it, camping up here is a nice. Up here you can go hiking, kayaking or just hang at the beach, the water is not warm but OK for a short dip. South of the lake is a city, half in California half in Nevada, the Nevada side have a lot of casinos. Driving south from Tahoe offers some really nice landscapes and open road feeling, we went past Mono lake and drove down to Lone Pine and had a look at Mount Whitney. From Lone Pine we made an early start to get through Death Valley before it got too hot, but Death Valley is not one valleys but three valleys and some really nice viewpoints. So it got pretty hot for us before leaving the valley. A little warning: be sure that your car is in good condition before entering Death Valley, you will be driving up and down a lot and this will be hard for engine and breaks, this is not a good place for a breakdown, bring plenty of water and a full tank of gas.
After death valley we drove out of California to Nevada-Utah-Arizona to enter California again in the south. Souther California is very different from the north with a very dry and hot desert landscape, we did not expect that. We went to see Slab City and Salvation mountain, well worth a visit even if very hot in the summer, from here we drove through Joshua tree national park ending up in Palm Spring, temperature 49 degrees Celsius.
Driving out to the coast heading for San Diego was nice, temperature dropped and there where a lot of small beach towns along this road, we would like to explore this area more next time. We only had one night in San Diego so we went for a walk along the harbor and went for food in the famous Gas light district realizing we had to go back to San Diego again.
We spent the last days relaxing in Venice beach L.A. a nice place for a swim, a walk or a bike ride but the place goes dead after darkness falls.

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