On Tuesday we departed Los Angeles to kick off our road trip. We were pretty sad to leave, having had a wonderful 10 days with Andrew’s family. But we jumped onto the 101 and headed north, stopping in Santa Barbara for lunch.

I visited Santa Barbara back in 2010 with my friend Kate, so it was interesting to go back. Unfortunately we had better weather last time.

We grabbed lunch at Norton’s Pastrami & Deli, as suggested by Andrew’s uncle Eric. We were not disappointed. Andrew had the chilli dog with a side of onion rings that we shared:

I had half a pastrami sandwich and pickles:

Highlights of Santa Barbara include watching a young woman walk down the street with a large python sitting on her backpack (ew) and a visit to the 99 cent store for some shower gel.

We drove on to San Simeon to pitch our tent before grabbing dinner and taking in the sunset at Moonstone beach at the neighbouring town of Cambria.

It was pretty spectacular.

And quite cold, I might add. We seem to have brought the Melbourne weather with us.

There were still plenty of people out surfing, so we watched them riding waves for a while.

For dinner we ate at a place in Cambria that did pizzas, burgers and some Mexican food. So we branched out and got Mexican. I had tacos and we shared jalapeno poppers, only because they were creatively named ‘armadillo eggs’. How could we say no?

We had a pretty good night’s sleep. We met two grey nomads who leant us some of the power from their giant trailer to inflate our air mattress, which was much appreciated. Camping for the night was totally fine and also very cheap.

The campground offered no water because California is in the grip of a serious drought at the moment. So the campground, as well as other major tourist destinations in the area, has portaloos only. Despite the major droughts in Australia I don’t ever remember toilets being shut off, so things must be pretty dire.

I won’t be able to blog much along the road, but I figure while I have free wifi and a quiet night in I should make the most of it. How’s life treating you?