Heading North!

Back in familiar LA surroundings, although in a somewhat generously overwhelming 'upgraded room' (complete with jacuzzi!), we made an early start, ready to catch-up with utilities (the laundry!). Around elevenish we made our exit on the '405', linking-up with the '101' ..... the Northwest Pacific Highway! Defying the gravitational pull of the LA metropolis is always a challenge, having to deal with wall-to-wall traffic sprawled across too many lanes to count accurately. Nevertheless, somehow, we made good progress and before too long could consider making an R&R stop-off, to break-up our journey to Morrow Bay. In fact, we pulled-off the highway at Santa Barbara and headed for Downtown. We parked-up and hit the sidewalk. Santa Barber's fully refurbished old-town area is a real treasure ..... clean, pleasant, interesting ....... and boasting great shops and eating places.

After lunching at great little Italian where the food and service were superb we took a leisurely ramble and spotted 'Hampstead Village', a classy emporium specialising in all things quintessentially 'English'.

Browsing the shop we spotted some items familiar to our weekly shopping, back-home e.g. HP Sauce! and some that I'd long imagined had been lost for eternity e.g. 'The Coffee Crisp Bar'!!!! (Should the reader be unfamiliar with the latter, put it down to a generational thing or try Google!) Anyway, we quickly picked-up that the shop's charming owner, Angela, is not only a Brit, but also hails from Sale, Manchester! Within minutes, we were swapping life stories and recounting mutual experiences of places and people in back-in-the-day Manchester!

The hour glass ran-out too soon and we said our farewells and headed further north. Late afternoon, we took the turn-off for Morrow Bay and it has to be said that this little fishing port won us over ..... helped by the fact that, contrary to several adverse comments on Trip Advisor, our motel was perfectly nice! We wasted no time in unpacking (opening our cases!) and setting-off to photograph 'the rock', the sunset, and find a great seafood restaurant. We scored full-points on all three!!

In short, we had a great day and are once again beginning to feel that we've got a road-trip on our hands! As a final footnote to today's posting, it was good to discover that we have Sirus XM radio on the car radio and having listened to 60's music for the totality of today's adventure, my musical memory of today is one that I've used previously, but hey, its worth another listen!