If you've ever driven highway 1 you know what I'm talking about, if you haven't you really do need to. It's renowned as being one of the most scenic drives in the world and it's hard to argue. We make our way out of SF with the odd pang of loss, we'd love to stay, in fact I think we'd like to live here.  When we get to the highway and it hits the coast it's just wow, after wow.  It's really, really magnificent.  At one point we pass an "english pub" and after 5 miles of debate decide to turn back and try their London Pride out in the garden in front of the refurbished red london bus.  The bus is great, the pub looks great, the london pride is crap, what's worse is it's called Camerons. 

A spin around Santa Cruz where we stayed last time we passed through is great.  The beach front is packed with surfers and the rollers come steaming in, fret and spray arching off the crests as what I can only describe as loonies with some kind of death wish try to catch a wave, hang ten.......wipe out!!

Monterey is much as we recall it.  Full of character and more importantly sea otters.  If you wanted to define cute these guys would work for you, rolling themselves in kelp for an anchor, laying on their back cracking clams and crabs on rocks which they balance on their tums, we could watch the things all day if we didn't have a reservation for whale watching!

What an amazing day. We're unbelievably lucky with sightings of hump backed whales.  It's funny, I'm guessing the crew use all kinds of tech to try and ensure we see a whale but after 45 minutes we notice streams of sea lions approaching a spot, they come from all directions, gather until the sea seems to boil with them, a scatter of small silver fish are launching themselves from the sea, gulls and pelicans arrive and then, thar she blows!  Encountering these creatures is intensely moving as is unfortunately the deck of The Sea Wolf II which is causing a number of our fellow passengers to puke uncontrollably over the back of the boat.

We have encounter after encounter on a truly wonderful trip.  Our group of pukers however must have cursed their luck when on the way back and their ordeal seemed close to ending we spot a pair (mum and calve) of whales and the on board marine biologist notices the female appears to have snagged a bouy which she is dragging.  We stop (but the waves don't) so the crew can launch a drone to film the creatures.  Sure enough the bouy is roped around a fluke and it's decided the boat won't leave them until another boat or a coast guard cutter which they've now alerted can get here to help the situation. 

While we watch another pair of whales arrive and we can now see these wonderful animals in whichever direction we look.  We even get to see one of the adult whales launch itself out of the ocean and crash back to the water.  Once another boat arrives we can head back to the wharf.  I have to say we're pretty elated by what's been an amazing day and it doesn't get any worse while we sit in the sun outside an Italian and munch our way through some seafood listening to a live band which is playing outside the convention centre.

We stroll over to check out the band and it turns out they're  the entertainment for a classic car show.  I've never been much into cars.  My eye was taken early on by a vintage cream stratocaster or even better a tiger striped les paul special.  Dear god, if I'd seen these babies first! In particular my heart went out to a hot rodded Zephyr, had I seen her before I had the seismic experience of plugging a Les Paul into a Marshall 50 watt head and two 4x12 speaker cabs I may never have ended up marrying the backing singer in our band.

Well, the drive down the coast from Monterey to Morro bay is just magificent. Spectacular Big Sur, Ragged Point, place after place blessed with incredible sea and cliff views. Swarming with bird and sea life.  We've picked Morro bay pretty much off the map with a pin.  Rooms are significantly cheaper than Santa Barbera or Santa Monica, so a couple of dsays stopover seems the order of the day.

The fact that Morro bay proves to be absolutely beautiful is a complete bonus.  There's one of the last working fishing fleets here which has spawned a number of amazing seafood oulets where you pretty much pick what you want raw, they cook it how you like while you take a ereasonably priced bottle of  something to the your table.

The night we arrive the local wine bar has a heat of a local singer songwriter competition.  We have a lovely bottle of red wine while we watch 10 pretty good hopefuls go through their paces.  Next day we walk the length of the bay from the boatyard to Morro Rock. A stunning park with picnic tables complete with communal barbeques every 20 metres, all spotless and wonderfully maintained in that way that seems to ellude brits.  We spot 3 otters cavorting around the bay, a pair of Osprey perch on mastheads and screech at each other, sea lions paddle by and a large colony of sea otters wind themselves in kelp under which some large rays sail by.  The temperature is a balmy mid 70s the sky unbroken blue.  Around lunch time we get some white wine and wonderful shrimp while we listen to one of last nights songwriters play a set in an open air deck eeatery based around a seafood mnarket.

Later we top up with clamsand back in the wine bar it's ukelele night.  Maybe 3-40 players all learning the instrument accompanied by a bass player and guitarist, the chord changes and lyrics are posted on a huge screen.  Everyone has a beer or two and the whole place, learners, drinkers, casual visitors the lot sing along. What a great way to learn an instrument and what a fantastic little community.

On to Santa Barbera, through San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Lompoc, Solvang.  The superb Santa Barbera Pier is a great walk as is the trek alomng the waterfront to the marina, lined as it is with bars sporting fire pits against the early evening chill, we stop off at Brophey Bros for mussles, oysters, shrimp and chowder

The trip from Santa Barbera to Santa Monica should take an hour and a half plus any stops we make to admire the view. We check the news in the morning and brush fires which last night had covered a few acres are now covering 10s of thousands of acres of forestry made tinder dry by the Chinese inventing global warming in order into disadvantage america.. The travel news on tv suggests the Pacific 1 is the only route now open, this hugs the ocean so seems the safest option and we set out.

The smoke cloud is huge! at first we can't believe it's not a weather system but actually it's billow upon billow of clouds which tower upward and then get caught by the Santa Anna wind which is fanning the flames of the fire at a steady 40-50 mph.  By 11:30 am it's hard to believe it's not midnite.  The orange glow of the flames is visible lighting the underside of the inky smoke cloud, flecks of cinder  and ash start to fall around us as we race the flames toward the coast at Malibu. Finally however a line of police cars block the road, all blue flashing lights and officers in face masks weilding torches.  There's no way through as they anticipate the fires will reach the ocean in front of us within the hour, they would leave us trapped between the flames and the ocean with no way back.

We need to take a huge backtrack then looping re-route inland to Santa Clarita in order to get behind the blazes.  To be honest it's a releif after an hour or so going back over  our route as we start to emerge into daylight of sorts. It's a long detour, what should have been an hour left on our days drive turns into 5, and we need to negotiate an LA rush hour that has both main coast roads either cut ior being used for mandatory evacuation of a quarter of a million people.  A couple of days later and the deathtoll is up to 25 when the fire services reach the town ship of Paradise which has by and large been destroyed.

Santa Monica is untouched but the vast billow of smoke is rolling out to sea to the north of us.  The town itself is a pretty much idyllic, southern california town, packed full of beautiful people, bars, restaurants and pedestrian malls. As the evening wears on the wind shifts and at first we notice a stinging in the eyes, then in the throat as a pall of smoke starts to descend over town.

I like rock n roll trivia stories and Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople tells a great one.  After a pretty unsuccesful tour of europe where the band virtually starves to death they're considering packing it all in.  The bass player hears through the grapevine that a bloke called David Bowie is putting a band together and he decides to audition. When Bowie comes to hear that Mott The Hoople are considering giving it all up he's mortified ....."You're a great band!" he says, "Maybe but we have to eat!"

"Come to my offices tomnorrow and I'll see what we can do."

The way Ian Hunter tells it, he walks into Bowie's publishers' office.  David Bowie is sitting, cross legged on the floor with an acoustic guitar....

"I have this song you can have" he says, and plays Rebel Rebel.

Ian Listens to it all the way through, likes it but...

"It's not enough, nothing to get our teeth into" he says.

Bowie plays All The Young Dudes.

"There are times when, your life turns on a pin, you know nothing is ever going to be the same from that point on, when I heard All The Young Dudes, I knew my life had changed"

I mention this because we run into a guy of maybe 65, with a broad cockney accent in a bar, his name is Stubsy.

"How do you come to be here ?"

"It's the land of fackin' oppertooonity aint it?"

Stubsy came to Santa Monica 20 odd years ago after a mucky divorce and being thrown out of Thailand for outstaying his visa by a mere 18 months.  He stays with a mate for a month or so and is convinced to stay. 

"Get a car and start taxi-ing" his mate advised.

He gets a mercedes and does OK, one day Sharon and Ozzie Osbourne get in his car.  Stubsy takes the piss out of the fact it takes Ozzie 3 mintues to say anything.  Hearing the cockney accent Sharon asks what he's doing in California and what his trade was in the UK.

"Painter, decorator" says Stubsy.

"Well we need a bit of painting done, do you fancy doing it?"

Today Stubsy designs the window settings for Louis Vuitton, he shows us the Christmas designs on his smart phone, a pin indeed!!

Later in tokyo we see the self same designs in a Vuitton window near shinjuku and took a picture.

 Next morning and Santa Monica looks like a movie set for a war  or apocalypse movie.  The streets are full of smoke, the visibility is shocking as the wind has changed direction and the smoke is coming directly our way and settles slowly down over the town and outskirts of Los Angeles.  It's quite a way for the US to say goodby as tomorrow we need to drop off Diane, our lovely car and protector, from Hurricane, Blizzard, Fire and floods over the last 2 and a bit months.

2 and a bit months!!!?  It feels as if we've been here a lifetime so much have we seen and experienced.  It's been a pretty amazing time, just a little shy of 5000 miles, from sea to shining sea as the song goes.  

So we're now in an airport hotel in Hawthorn, a largly mexican (Judging by the resteraunts) community near LAX where we need to be at Sparrows fart for our flight to Japan tomorrow morning.  We get a whatsapp vid call from our pals Bob and Sharon, it's great to hear and see them and we commiserate over the England defeat to the all blacks, congratulate them on staying on the Mouvember wagon and take the piss out of Bobs' new moustache.

So America? The beer has got much better, they don't seem able to breed a cow that gives a steak that has any flavour or indeed, texture, their television is utter crap and if the health adverts are anything to go by, we need to get the conservatives out of power asap, because if this is a vision of how a marketised health system will work we're in deep doo-doo.

"Do you feel sleepy some mornings or suffer from lethargy?....... You might not just be tired, you could be suffering from narcolepsy, ask your health professional to prescribe Made-it-upa-lin........

Side effects can be stroke like symptoms, loss of speech, or poor balance.........

Suffering loss of speech?....You could be suffering advance symptoms of a stroke.....get your health adviser to prescribe Placebox.......

Side effects of Placebox can be loss of appetite, blood in your stools......

"Suffering from blood in your stool?".....You could have colon cancer, ask your doctor to prescribe, Uttershite......side effects of uttershite could be loss of balance, sudden seizures or lethargy......

Feeling lethargic? you could be suffering from narcolepsy......and so it goes, I'm exagerating a bit but this is a general flavour of the health based advertising and I won't even start on insurance, or law, (Are you, or someone you know suffering from cancer, have you used Roundup weed killer? contact attorney at law, C Thatcar Beyind yorambulance, Thatsuz, Thatiz.) really, something is a bit sick here.

On the other hand we've so enjoyed meeting our American cousins, almost always generous, willing to talk, enjoy life, play hard, touchingly nationalistic and patriotic, we've had the best time Y'all.

The shuttle bus is playing Christmas Carols and Xmas hits, Jingle Bell rock, and the Beach Boys. It's very hot, the sky an unbroken dome of blue as we jump down at terminal 4, go through all the usual security and make our way to a bar for a pre-flight beer.  In no time I'm hand in hand with Kim as we roar up the runway, as usual I'm as much petrified as excited but the Brandy helps, it's very early, we're flying directly into the rising sun.