Day 2: Friday 31st Aug 2012 - San Diego to Santa Barbara

End of a very long day, most of which was truly amazing, some just frustrating. We picked up the Mustang with no problems. Zoo trip went fine. It was a very hot day so the animals were mostly escaping from the heat and we didn't feel like wandering around much. The highlight was the Grizzly Bears - one of whom was cooling off in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall and generally playing in the water. We watched him for ages. The other bear would occasionally wonder round too so I got some great photos.

Coming out of San Diego we had some confusion with the roads. I had originally planned on going down route 5 to LA, not thinking there was any coast road alternative at that point. We discovered that route 101 did run all the way along the coast and route 1 ran along all the beaches into LA. After managing to use the navigate to point on map feature on TomTom to get too the beach we discovered Solana Beach and stopped for a paddle in the Pacific! The beach was relatively quiet and as we wondered further down there was no one else in sight. Beautiful day, wonderful company, just wading around through the surf. Awesome and definitely highlight number 2.

We followed highway 101 some more but found that although the beaches were lovely, the traffic lights ever few meters were not. After about an hour of slow progress we hopped back to route 5. At this point we were a little behind schedule and decided we would keep our experience of LA to driving only. Plan was rejoin what became Route 1 along the coast at Newport Beach and drive to Santa Monica along the Pacific Coast Highway. Hmm... well it's a lot further than it looks. OK change of plan again. Lets go drive Mulholland Drive. The Lonely Planet guide book says its well worth a visit and there is a good view point but only if we get there before Sunset.

At this point I was driving and made the fatal error of saying "I'm not even tired, driving along these big roads with very little traffic if great". Boom, the curse struck and Mulholland Drive went from being 10mins away to 30mins plus in stop start traffic. Add in a few wrong turns when TomTom told us it had found a route 6 mins faster and some bad decision making due to tiredness and huger and it all went a bit wrong. With then Sun setting and having to manage to grab some random snacks from a gas station, we abandoned LA to head to Santa Barbara.

Having made that difficult decision and committed to it we chilled out for the remainder of the 1h 30min drive to the "soothing" tones of Deadmau5 on the mp3 player, enjoying the wind in our hair and the Santa Monica mountains silhouetted against the setting sun.  With the full moon appearing large on the horizon behind us it was a magical drive. There is a point where the view opens up in front of you as you look town on a small town, mountains to the right and the Pacific ocean to the left where the it is breathtaking. As we closed in on Santa Barbara the stars came out overhead. The unrestricted view from the convertible was worth the crazy hair by the time we reached our destination.

Tomorrow we will follow the Pacific Coast highway through Big Sur and Monterey Bay, winding up in San Francisco.

As promised, here are a selection of photos from today.