Los Angeles Airport – Sunday

Good thing that we allowed plenty of time to drop the car and get to the airport. Guess who still had one of the Mustang keys in his pocket. Tried ringing the depot and kept being put through to the national reservation office who kept telling me to ring the local number. Eventually I was told that the Los Angeles depot must be busy and the ‘phones are put through to the central office. Why not tell me originally. They couldn’t (wouldn’t) help, so Rick managed to go out of the airport, found an Alamo shuttle bus and the driver was happy to drop the key into the office. Better than a $225 charge for a new key.

We spent a lot of the day driving. We did a big clockwise loop from Pasedena to Newport Beach to Manhatten Beach to the car drop off. We missed a turn and ended up driving from freeway to freeway to get to Newport Beach, instead of what should have been a reasonably direct, but still busy route. We’ve never seen so many freeways, loops, interchanges etc. It seemed that all of Los Angeles was out driving. Parking was very hard to find at Newport Beach, so we supported Subway and used their car park. for the 90 minute limit. Dipped the toes in the water at Newport Beach, felt great in the 36 degrees or so. The sand is so fine and the beach was very crowded.

Had a good coffee at Bogarts at Seal Beach.

 

 

We followed the coast (mostly) north to Manhattan Beach, where we started our touring 3 days ago, and had a really good ice cream each. We then headed for the car drop off, filling up the tank on the way. It was a pity to have to hand the Mustang back, it was great fun. Oh well, back to the Stag, at least it is a classic, not a modern car. So here we are at the airport, now with one and a half hours before the flight leaves.

See you all too soon.

Pasedena – Saturday

Well suddenly it is our last night before flying home. Time has gone so quickly. We’ve downed a glass of Californian “sparkling Champagne”, is there any other type of champagne? We’ll demolish the rest after writing the blog. Today we headed in a round about way to Pasedena, stopping in Santa Paula for a top coffee on the streetside verandah of a very comfortable coffee shop. Then there was a detour to Lake Piru, a very popular destination for boating and fishing. Had to take some photos of the car to remember the fun Mustang.

Skirted Los Angeles on a series of very busy freeways, all roads are busy with some up to 5 lanes wide each direction. The greater Los Angeles drivers are not too dissimilar to Melbourne drivers, no consideration with merging, pushing their way in etc. We eventually found Pasedena. It was much bigger than we’d thought from the pre trip research we did. Pasedena doesn’t seem to cater for tourists, the tourist info centre was closed today, even though there was a street art festival. We wanted to see the Colorado Bridge, supposedly part of the original route 66 and we had to ask where it was. Turn down the access road to the freeway and turn off that. No wonder we couldn’t find it, we didn’t want to end up on the freeway. Got there eventually and found a reasonably attractive, “rejuvinated” bridge but nothing to rave about.

By now it was coffee time and time to look for wifi to find a hotel here in Pasedena. On the way to the hotel we saw the signs.

We’re now settled in and spreading the contents of our bags out so we can pack for the flight home tomorrow night. We hope to get to the coast south of LA tomorrow and slowly work our way back to the car drop off and airport in time to leave around 10:30 pm. The may be time to post another page when we get to the airport.

Los Angeles and around – Friday

A good night’s sleep. Sunny day of 28 degrees. Down with the soft top. What a car. Didn’t it feel good driving it and with the roof down. We settled in to the driving quickly, with lane position, car extremeties etc sorted out comfortably. The car has so many switches etc that we won’t have time to work them all out. If we want to be really sporty, the gear selector can be set to S and gears changed manually with flappy paddles on the steering wheel. Haven’t graduated to that yet. First stop was at Venice Beach and a Lavazza coffee siting beside the beach in the sun. Then on to Santa Monica to see the Boulevard and the pier, the end of route 66. After being told that we would have to pay $30 to park the car for a couple of hours, we found a car park a couple of streets away from the pier. Cost $1, a little better.

The Mustang has a light that shines on the road when you open the door, knocked us over.

The Santa Monica Pier is a bit tacky with the carnival rides and all the stalls selling (mostly) tourist kitch, but it was good fun. The pier has been rebuilt after a few bad storms and, according to the history sign, has a concrete underside with the heavy timber deck on top. Looks good.

We wandered back to and along the pedestrian mall and had a bite to eat and watch the world go by.

We headed north along the coast and started looking for accommodation. The good thing about the lack of development is just that. The bad thing is that it took us a while to find a motel. We eventually found one around 5 pm. Has a bottle shop right next door (bottle of Lambrusco didn’t last long) and a small convenience store with fresh fruit behind. Had to guess at many lables ‘cos they were in Spanish and we didn’t bother asking. Meal tonight and breakfast sorted. Lucky the Lambrusco was finished. We’ll look at the map tonight and work out where we go tomorrow.

Calgary – Thursday

We had to pack ready for the evening flight to Los Angeles, which left at about 7:30 pm, so after breakfast it was back to the room for a lot of rearranging of stuff. Stuff is a very technical term and I won’t bore you with the definition. The hotel stored our luggage for us while we went out for the day.

First stop was the Calgary lookout, a similar looking structure to both the Seattle Space Needle, the Vancouver lookout and the Centrepoint tower in Sydney.  When the tower was built, it was the tallest building in Calgary, but has since been topped by a few new towers.Calgary has many oil company head offices there, drawn by very attractive rents a number of years ago. Calgary’s main industry is oil. Canada is the buggest (oops, I think we’ve been talking to too many New Zealanders) oil exporter to the US. As you’d expect, the views from the tower were great. We walked down a level and had reasonable coffee in the revolving restaurant.

 

Calgary has free tram travel in the centre so we, just for a change, caught a tram to the end of the free section, missed the stop and ended up a good couple of kilometres further down the track. Easily fixed, caught the next tram back. We went to the Devonian Gardens, a beautiful covered oasis of gardens and pools on the top of one of the city buildings. The roof was clear and the blue sky stood out on one side and the dark grey on the other. It would be a very cozy place in winter with rain and snow outside. A grand piano was there for anyone to play.

 

From there we wove our way back to the hotel to wait for the shuttle to the airport. The Calgary airport, although an international airport, was efficient and easy to pass through. We went through US customs at the same time, this allowed our plane to land at the (one of) domestic terminals in Los Angeles. We had to wait for a late inbound flight to unload and move out of the way before our plane could come in. When we arrived in LA, we had to wait again for a parking spot. Rather big difference in weather between Calgary and LA. The traffic at LA airport was crazy. Given that it was just before 10pm and school holidays hadn’t started, it was bedlam. It took about half an hour, in the hire car shuttle bus, to get through the traffic to the hire car office. By now it was just before 11 pm. We’d let the hotel know that we’d be there between 10 and 11. The queue for the car check in was long, but we eventually got through and were told to go out the door, where someone would sort out the car. There was a Chev Comaro ready, but when we asked, they were able to arrange the Mustang if we waited another 15 mins. Had to have the Mustang. Then there were questions like: how does the roof come down, where is the headlight switch and how to stop and start the car. Obvious you with ordinary cars might say, use the key. This thing had a proximity key and a button to press to start the engine and the same button to stop. We were away to the hotel about 15 mins away. Very direct route, but a very careful drive in a car we’d never driven before and on the other side of the road. It was night and there was not a lot of traffic. All good. Checked in to the motel and dropped into bed.

Banff to Calgary–Wednesday

No rush to get up this morning. We were picked up at 10:30, so had time for a leisurely breakfast and walk through town. Banff is a small town, population just over 8,000 and is very clean and almost picturebook. It looked pretty good with some blue sky, some dark grey and light snow on the mountain tops. Would look very impressive on a sunny winter’s day with snow all around.

Our first stop was the Banff gondola. It took 8 minutes to get to the top of the mountain and we were rewarded with spectacular views and falling snow, in summer! A great boardwalk to a meteorology station higher up with 360 degree views. Saw a couple of chipmunks that were obviously used to people and were looking for food. Great views of Banff.

After leaving the gondola, we stopped in Banff for lunch and then headed towards Calgary, stopping to look at the Hoodoos, eroded stacks left behind as the surrounding stuff was eroded. Next stop was at Kananaskis where we had a helicopter flight over the edge of the Rockies. It was stunning, nice blue sky, minimal wind and Rick had the front seat. Not at all scary.

On to Calgary, population about 1.3 million. From the little we’ve seen so far, it seems to be another vey clean city. From our hotel suite (note suite – including lounge area, kitchenette) is in the town, about 15 minutes walk from the look out tower (yes, another one) that we’ll visit tomorrow. Found a great bar this evening and had a light meal and a drink.

Banff–Tuesday

We’re sitting in our hotel room looking out at misty mountains. Still light at 8 pm. Having eaten well on the Rocky Mountaineer, we have bought biscuits, cheese and wine for tonight. feeling pretty weary after the 2 early mornings. There is a spa bath in the bathroom, so we might even try that before bed.

Again today we had spectacular scenery. We didn’t realise that we only got into the Rockies around lunchtime today. Train climbed from about 1200 feet this morning to about 5400 feet at the highest point. According to the train guide, snow on the mountain tops is unusual at this time of year, (it is midsummer next week!) but there was some for us. We saw a number of elk and a marmut during the day.

Coffee wasn’t offered for morning or afternoon tea (that doesn’t make sense), so we had to settle for wine and nibbles instead. Lunch included wine also, so we were well looked after.

The forecast for tomorrow is good – hope so, as we have a gondola ride and a helicopter flight.