I drove all night

Driving on your own can be bloody boring at times, and not even the scenery is enough to keep you awake. You need music, conversation. With no CDs or Aux port, I am at the mercy of Kiwi radio stations. When there's a signal they actually play decent tracks, but the problem is the talking. Lots of talking.

It took me a while to tune into the accent. Clessic Huts on Radio Inzid. And then you have to guess what they're selling in the endlessly shit commercials that clog the airwaves. Massive bid sale, they say. Bids for what? Something for the kuds presumably. Unless they're too busy eating fush 'n' chups or you can't drag them away from the ixbox in the bidroom.

One easy distraction is to pick up hitchhikers, and there are plenty of them to choose from. I seem to stop mainly for Germans, though I managed to bag a rare Chilean on one trip, and yesterday a Kiwi who had clearly been on the piss all day and spoke with an indecipherable accent anyway. I reckon I'm the kind of guy you want to pick you up when you're hitching - the Chilean and his German mate got dropped at their hostel in Kaikoura and I even picked them up again the next morning to take them on to Blenheim.

Covering the whole of New Zealand in three weeks entails a lot of driving. 3,045 miles of it in my case, and still nothing like enough to get me even close to everywhere I would have liked to have gone. Northland and the Bay of Islands? Nope. Milford Sound? Nope (though I did fly over it, hardly the same as sailing up the middle). Christchurch? Dunedin? Tour a few wineries? Whale watching? Swimming with dolphins? No, no, no, no, no.

Yesterday I woke up in Wanganui in the west coast of the North Island and drove across to Hugh and Indri's place in Waihi Beach. For the six hours it took me to cover just under 300 miles, it rained incessantly. I'm sure I passed through wonderful countryside (the roads were winding enough to suggest I had) but I just couldn't see it.

With the radio in a silent spell, and no hitchhikers in the mist, I got thinking again. Thinking about all the things that we come so close to but never see. Driving in these conditions is like walking by torchlight - you see where the beam shines, but nowhere else. It's not just the obvious things we miss, but people and places elude us by the tiniest margins, floating within our grasp but obscured on the edge of darkness. We don't even know they are there.

It probably doesn't bear dwelling on too much. We tread such a narrow path through life, that the multitude of alternatives will always be consigned to oblivion. Better make sure it's the right one then. Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.

God Bless America

I wanted to begin this by saying that I know I'm beginning to sound like a bit of a..... but apparently there isn't actually a word for someone who loves America. Anglophile, Francophile, Sinophile, yes. Americaphile? No.

Lets be frank here; America and Americans are universally stereotyped, derided, patronised and loathed, so there really is little need for one. I myself have harboured all these views at one time another. Paul Theroux remarked that the English "...hold very strong opinions about places to which they have never been". I've been guilty of that in the past, but now I'm in a position to be a little more objective, I can safely and proudly say that I absolutely love the United States of America.

Americans have their moments too. I have generally found them extremely warm and hospitable. But then I think people the world over are friendly and welcoming to strangers (except Parisians). Unless you're hovering by the rim of the Grand Canyon, an accent immediately identifies you as a curiosity. (If you have an English accent, it also marks you out as Australian. Every single day. I will never understand). People want to know where you're from, why you're here, where you've been, where you're going, and most of all, they want to know that you're enjoying their country.

But there's always a but. America is all about Freedom and Rights. Because it has a written constitution, these rights are specifically articulated. This discourages people from viewing them in the context of the rights of others, and can make them demanding, impatient and lacking empathy. Not all of them of course, but enough of them, mistake their rights for entitlements. I think that's what pisses people off about them.

I didn't really know what to expect when I arrived just over three months ago. Two days in Miami were as inappropriate a prologue as ever was penned. Texas was a relaxing, if hot, experience where true American hospitality, and the charms of its small towns began to work its magic. By the time I was back from Canada, armed with a Mustang, and embarking on the long trek down the Pacific coast, I was sold.

After that meandering journey through the transient landscape, came the inland excursion. The wonders of the west didn't disappoint - in fact they hid a few very special moments amidst the dusty red sand. Things changed again with Colorado, New Mexico. Red sand became white. The freeway miles disappeared, the speeding fines mounted, and I found myself, for the first time in a long time, back somewhere I had been before.

That Los Angeles should remind me so much of London, and be the last stride of this walk is no less absurd than Miami being the first. In time, these book ends will topple from the shelf and the stories clasped between them will stand alone; simple stories of the great outdoors and the wonders of nature. The tale they tell is a truthful one; it revealed itself to me chapter by chapter, day by day. Although it ends now, for the time being, I know that really it has barely begun.

The Highway Code

Camping has been such an integral part of the journey these last few months that, with the days running out, I decided I would really like one more night under the stars before I leave America in my wake. It's a long old slog from Scottsdale back to LA, so I take a look at the map and decide I can split the journey and camp out in the Joshua Tree National Park, California.

The inside of my tent on a sunny morning

Nice idea, piss poor planning. As I approach the turn off for the park, just after 3pm, the outside temperature is showing 112ºF (44.5ºC). This is definitely not hiking weather. I open the car window and feel like I'm inside a tumble dryer. It's not camping weather either - it probably won't drop below 35ºC even in the middle of the night. So I decide to keep driving until the mercury drops to a more forgiving level.

To my surprise, it keeps rising. I stop for gas in Indio, and it's at 117. Shortly after, it peaks at a whopping 121ºF (49.5ºC). How can anyone even exist in these conditions? It's pretty obvious by now that I'm going to have to go all the way to the coast, and tomorrow's destination, Huntington Beach. An hour or so later and I am fully engulfed in Greater Los Angeles traffic at 5pm on a Friday. I'm not sure that LA doesn't actually stand for Los Autos.

I'm probably going to tar a few innocent people with my whopping great brush here, but there is one fact that has become increasingly obvious to me along the 9,000 or so miles I have driven in the US. Americans can't drive. Maybe you're American and are insulted by this? I apologise. Please feel free to refute any of the following assertions:

1. Americans do not indicate when they are about to manoeuvre or change lanes. Ever. Different cars don't even have the same colour indicators like in other countries, it's that irrelevant.

2. Americans do not observe any form of lane discipline. On a completely empty highway, a car hogging the outside lane once pulled over (without indicating) to allow me to pass, then pulled back out to re-occupy the passing lane. Undertaking, overtaking, it's all the same to them.

3. Americans cannot drive unless they are using a cellphone. They find it very hard to operate a ve-hicle with two hands. Using a cellphone removes the temptation to indicate, and the drop in concentration makes changing lanes easier.

4. Drink driving is absolutely rife in America. It is an integral part of life, everywhere you go; an acceptable risk. I have seen people barely able to stand getting behind the wheel. The individual's right to get hammered and drive themselves home is considered greater than the right of everyone else not to be endangered by them.

5. American drivers don't let each other out or thank one another. If you do stop or slow down to let someone out, they will probably hate you for it as much as the drunk guy in the car behind you who is on the phone to his wife and about to undertake you (without indicating).

All this makes driving for long periods especially taxing. You are in a heightened state of alert, constantly trying to second guess everyone around you. But most of all, I am having to remain permanently vigilant, in case I start driving like them. I have the occasional lapse, not indicating or undertaking, but manage to remain off the phone and keep the lid on the whiskey.

I use my cellphone whilst driving, but only to take this photo

By the time I finally arrive in Huntington I have covered almost 400 miles and been in the car for nearly seven hours. My friend Blom is on the piss somewhere, so I have to climb through the dog door to get in his flat. When it becomes apparent that I don't fit, I relax into a cold beer on the porch. And as the last sip passes my lips, an irresistible urge to fall asleep grips my body, I check myself into the nearest motel and promptly pass out.

Romance in Durango

I've rolled in and out of enough small towns by now, but still never quite know what to expect. The speed limit shifts down, and you either find yourself trundling along a dusty main street or squeezed between a sudden epidemic of chain motels, fast food joints and gas stations, praying for a sign to Downtown.

Restored by the wonderful drive from Silverton, I wind my way into Durango, Colorado. Sure enough the speed limit falls, but by the time the Travelodge, KFC and Taco Bell are behind me, I've already raised a smile to the "Serious Texas Bar-B-Q" and the motel whose sign reads "Free Rooms. Only Kidding." This place was always going to be different.

The best things about Durango aren't exactly unrelated. It sits at around 7,000 feet in the Animas River valley on the edge of the San Juan mountains. Right now it is lush and green. In winter, it is white, buried deep in snow. In contrast to the dusty red of Utah, this feels like a place where people were meant to live; the heavens irrigate the land that provides for them. And provide it does.

With all that rain and arable land, comes good food. The town's 20,000 or so inhabitants are either extremely demanding or incredibly lucky. Bakeries, like Bread. Coffee shops, like Steaming Bean or Durango Coffee Co. Restaurants like Cosmo. A Farmers' Market Saturdays and Wednesdays. Incredible vegetables, biodynamic farming, organic ranches. It's as though the Earth pours forth the very best of everything into one tiny town. And with this, of course, come the comfort and contentedness that accompany all my favourite places.

Most people visit Durango for its abundant outdoor pursuits. Skiing and snowboarding in the winter, mountain biking, climbing and hiking the rest of the time. I sharpen my poles and take off round Animas mountain. There's nothing worse than trekking uphill for an hour and a half only to be confronted by a rubbish view.

Further north I take another hike, this time much higher up, around Andrews Lake, through a meadow littered with ponds and back into the trees. I don't have time to get beyond the tree line, but in the two and a half hours I'm up there, I don't see another living soul. (Thankfully that includes Mountain Lions and Black Bears). Somehow the tranquility feels like an extension of the town, and not an escape from it.

But all the nice views and good coffee in the world don't amount to a whole hill of beans without good people to shepherd you through them. With Erin's mom, Terry, looking after me I can relax and enjoy everything that this amazing little place has to offer. It's far too late now to start the world from scratch, but if you were thinking about it, there'd be plenty worse places to begin than here. I might even go so far as to say I love it...

Terry and I

Home turf

It was only really when a familiar smell wafted in through the aircon that I noticed the change. Even then it took a second to register. It made me look out the window, and I saw green. I saw fields, trees; I saw the Rocky Mountains lining the horizon, and I saw the freshly cut grass. Colorado. I could be on another continent.

I take on one more canyon for good measure - the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The climb up to the rim is through corn fields and arable land; water sprinklers and ranches. Looking back, I could almost be in the South Downs (minus the Rockies). The canyon itself is more what I had expected to begin with - narrow, steep and rugged. With the extra moisture and foliage comes an abundance of wildlife in addition to the ubiquitous squirrels and lizards.

It's getting late and I have some miles to make up. The San Juan range of the Rocky Mountains looms ever larger as I heave the horizon towards me. Although the red rock, dust and sandstone of Utah and Arizona are gone, they still manage to have a Red Mountain Pass that I need to negotiate, and above the treeline orange rock shines down on me. The rain and the sheer drops make for slow going, but the scenery is incredible.

It all seems a long way from the barren, hostile landscapes of the last week or so. I no longer feel like I've wandered onto the set of Star Wars, but back in Europe. Ouros, that I pass on my way, could be anywhere in Switzerland. By the time I reach the old Victorian mining town of Silverton I'm ravenously hungry and tired of driving. Any sense of being closer to home quickly evaporates - the backdrop may be Alpine, but I'm back on a film set and this time it is pure wild west. I have an Elk burger for dinner, drink a few beers and manage not to get shot at on my way back to the motel.

10.55 to Yuma

My day begins in San Diego and needs to end in Phoenix. That means a fair bit of driving - 360 odd miles of it in fact. And all of them on freeways, which are tedious and tiresome.

My plan is to get on with it - an early start (well, before check out anyway), foot down, knock off some miles quickly, and stop for lunch in Yuma, just inside Arizona. I download some Metallica to get me on my way, and am headbanging my way along the Interstate when Wherever I May Roam comes on. You don't need me to describe the scene inside the Camaro:

And the road becomes my bride
I have stripped of all but pride
So in her I do confide
And she keeps me satisfied
Gives me all I need

And with dust in throat I crave
Only knowledge will I save
To the game you stay a slave

Roamer, wanderer
Nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will

But I'll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind anywhere
And I'll redefine anywhere

Anywhere I roam
Where I lay my head is home

And the earth becomes my throne
I adapt to the unknown
Under wandering stars I've grown
By myself but not alone
I ask no one

And my ties are severed clean
Less I have the more I gain
Off the beaten path I reign

Round about this time, I spot a black and white car in the rear view mirror, bearing down upon me with notable urgency. The red and blue lights on its roof are flashing frantically. Fucking Metallica.

Officer Hernandez is actually very nice. He clocked me doing 95 from the other side of the freeway, and had been hooning it for the last ten minutes in an effort to track me down. He writes me out a ticket for Travelling in excess of 70mph and advises me to slow down a little.

I Watch as all the cars I have passed in the last half hour tootle on past. Eventually I resume my journey, and reluctantly engage the cruise control at a seemingly pedestrian 79mph. This is intolerably boring, until I observe something interesting to the south. A thin black ribbon is meandering across the desert. It's the fence - the one that separates the USA from Mexico. And it is heavily patrolled.

The freeway is barely a hundred yards from the frontier at some points. And so they have roadblocks, to check that you don't have a stray Mexicano clinging to your rear axle, or small children hidden in the footwell. A combination of the car and my accent encourage a little further research:

-You rented a Camaro? Awesome. V6 or V8?
-V6, not that it matters since I can't do more than 80.
-Bro, you can drive as fast as you like in that thing; just don't get caught.

Wise words, but a little too late in the day. I stick Simon and Garfunkel back on the stereo, adjust the cruise control up to within five of the limit and carry on where I left off. You know it's Sad but True...

Halfway House

Today is the 12th August. Which is exactly six months to the day since I left England. It is also one month to the day since I left Seattle, and thus a suitable time to arrive at the end of my Pacific coast road trip and roll quietly into San Diego.

I genuinely feel that I have just enjoyed the most significant and rewarding month of my life so far. It has been a revelation, thanks mainly to the constantly evolving but persistently stunning landscape. I've watched it change gradually from the rainforests of Washington State to the parched coastal bluffs of Torrey Pines that I hiked this morning.

Torrey Pines feels like another country completely. (It almost is - Mexico is just down the road). In the northwest the droplets of moisture gathered on every branch. Here the whole land is crying out for water. The trees are sparse and barren, a million miles from the bunched giant redwoods of northern California or the pine forests of Oregon.

In between these extremes I've walked along a seemingly endless driftwood beach and gazed from the capes at scattered sea stacks clinging on from a long lost past. I've seen mountains tailing off into the ocean; trekked up and over golden sand dunes; peered through hazy sunsets and across misty mornings. I've walked great cities; Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. I've stared into campfires and gazed at the stars. I lost myself in the splendour of Yosemite; a constellation etched into the timeless land. I've watched the marine layer slowly burn away and reveal the golden beaches of paradise. And my only real regret is that I can't go straight back to where I began, and do the whole thing over again.

I've realised something in the last month, that I hadn't really seen coming. Writing this blog contributes greatly to it, but I can see now how much joy I get out of discovering new things, photographing them and writing about them. This year may have begun as a food odyssey, but I feel it slowly contorting into something else. I said, in Yosemite, that it felt like the Heart of the World. Seeking out that Heart and being close enough to feel it beat, are all that really matter now.

To delineate and categorise is a human trait. I've reached the end of one stretch, and another awaits. In a day or two I will move away from the coast; to the depths of the south west, and the natural wonders concealed therein. It feels like a sea change but of course it's not. Just another gentle leaning from one thing to another, and in time they will all blend together, and it will become impossible to say which was which.

A night on the (Floor) Tiles

I finally found somewhere to sleep the other night, once I'd got clear of Big Sur. Before even finding my room, I found the bar and relaxed out of driving mode in the only way I know how.

There were a few local drunks knocking about, the funniest of whom, a rancher, was parked resolutely at the end of the bar. In a lengthy phone call to an employee, he revealed he'd "had a few drinks" then fired him for being an "asshole" before apparently arranging to go on a fishing trip with him to Oregon. Finding himself down a cowboy, he offered the job to Anna, the bartender. When she gave him some backchat a few minutes later, he replied "You know what? You're fucking fired."

A group of far jollier drunks were attempting to play pool. When Anna took time out for a game, and it became apparent that she was an extremely good player, I swung off my stool and threw some quarters on the table. She had that confidence and assuredness around the table that only comes from being a snooker player. However, the best man doesn't always win, and I kicked her ass.

All this ended up with me sat around a huge fire in her back yard with her mom and a collection of other interesting people. We drank, told jokes (well I did) and had a lot of fun. No one really wants to start talking religion at three in the morning, but when Gillian claims to be a Lutheran Quaker, who believes in the story of creation and declares "My God is a jealous God", but when pressed reveals that she has never read the Bible, I can't help but share a few of my own views with her. I don't think they made any real impact.

The highlight of the evening were the stories that Peggy (Anna's mom) read us: tales from her childhood that she has recorded for her children. Along with three teenage friends, she would ride over to a nearby ranch to flirt with the Mexican boys. The poorest of the girls, unable to afford a horse, was saddled up on a lactating cow whose brimming udder was swinging back and forth in the dust, and the last of the group was riding a horse that no-one else wanted on account of its persistent and acute flatulence. The stories were so lucid, lively and funny, and her reading of them so wonderful, I was almost in tears.

I grabbed my camping gear out of the trunk and finally curled up in the sleeping bag on the floor. Anna's cousin Gary was on the couch, a dog had the other couch. I managed to sleep quite well for an hour or so, until a cat woke me up by licking my face, whereupon the cacophonous combination of snoring from two dogs and a drunk barmaid kept me awake until the chickens started up outside. I dozed off again just in time for Gary to have woken up and started using power tools in the back yard. A jealous God? Bloody well vindictive more like.

In the morning we discovered that a neighbour's dog had eaten a bag of peanuts we had left out, and was now shitting them out whole all around the yard. I took this as my cue to leave. Not exactly refreshed by the whole experience, but certainly amused, I threw my bedding in the back of the car, rubbed my weary eyes and, unhesitatingly, took to the road once more.

A good walk spoiled

Right, I'm back on the road. Sunday morning I roar past the miles of cars queueing up to get into Yosemite and don't stop until I hit the coast. Monterey, to be precise.

I haven't showered in days, I stink, and my feet look like Mowgli's would had he just returned from Glastonbury. I check into the Monterey Hotel, whose wi-fi network is called MoHo, which amuses me briefly before I spend the next hour scrubbing dirt from my pores.

Next morning I go for a stroll along the wharf, and head up to Cannery Row, the setting of the Steinbeck novel (they changed the name from its original one to cash in on the notoriety). Suddenly I am struck by an ungodly stench. Large colonies of sealions are basking in the sun, and they smell like a load of unwashed dogs. Disgusting. I quicken my pace.

I wish I hadn't, because Cannery Row is a shameless, tacky, cheap experience that I would sooner forget. Everything is faux. The Cannery Row Brewing Company is housed in an old brick building, the cracked and peeling white letters spelling out its name, adding Established 2010 at the end. I'd be getting on the phone to Dulux for a refund. Every other company has Steinbeck in its name. The Steinbeck Plaza, a collection of bargain bucket souvenir shops peddling sub standard merchandise, would surely have the great man spinning in his sardine can.

I press on, heading further west to the exclusive Pebble Beach area. Through the open car window I hear the uniquely glorious sound of a golf ball being driven off the tee, and my mind flashes to my clubs, gathering dust in the garage back home. 17 mile drive is a toll road that loops around the golf courses - ten bucks to drive on it but you can knock it off the check if you stop to eat. I choose to lunch at the Stillwater Bar and Grill that overlooks the 18th green of the course that staged this year's US Open. The food was average, the view better.

The unmistakable smell of money continues in the heady little cluster of old cottages, antique shops, art galleries and jewellers called Carmel. The contrast with Cannery Row couldn't be any clearer. If money is indeed the root of evil, then there must be some bad ass people living in this little town. I would still prefer it over the ostentatious tat of the former any day of the week though. I speak to two ladies in consecutive shops, both with incurably posh English accents that their respective twenty years in California have failed to tarnish. Evil to the core.

Having narrowly escaped Carmel without shedding a large amount of cash on an exceptional photograph by a guy named Robert Taylor, I hit the road once more. The stretch of highway south of Carmel is the famous Big Sur, where 5,000 foot mountains collapse into the sea. There is NOTHING on this stretch of road. Towns marked on the map are in fact single buildings. It is wild, remote and that fog is rolling in again.

It's getting late, I have no chance of a campsite, so the old hotel budget is going to get a stretching again, if only I can find one. In my rear view mirror I see a great sky developing. When I finally get a chance to pull over, the mist encroaches, and the sun is just a bleached light trying to shine through the cloud. I think I might prefer it that way.

The Lost Coast

The first hundred miles or so of California are dominated by the Redwoods. Once you are past Crescent City, which sort of feels like it's there because there has to be a town somewhere, there are just a few little clusters of buildings masquerading as villages along the way.

Most people are here for the trees. Those that aren't camping or in their RVs head for Trees of Mystery, a kind of forest theme park, somewhat unmissable form the highway by virtue of a 50-foot high statue of mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. I skip the ride through the forest but stop to marvel at the statue. In what is surely one of the world's most interesting jobs, some guy is employed as the voice of the giant, exchanging pleasantries and engaging in idle chit-chat with the assembled masses in the parking lot.

A little further on, and after a restorative breakfast of Biscuits and Gravy in the smattering of buildings and a gas station that calls itself Klamath, I hit the town of Arcata. It feels, well, Californian. An eclectic mix of students and old hippies are milling around the main town square where a band is playing (it is Thursday lunchtime after all). People are wearing tie dye shirts, and some of the older ones look like they didn't bother getting changed after Woodstock. There are a few Victorian buildings but the coolest is the art deco cinema. (Showing The Thing! Awesome).

South of Arcata is the equally cool town of Eureka, with its historic district and quaint little bookshops and cafes. I press on west, away from 101, and with all the campsites booked up, crash in a real bed in the strange little enclave of Ferndale. It's an old dairy town, that has preserved an extremely antiquated feel, presumably for touristic reasons, since it sells itself as a "Victorian Village" and hands you a souvenir "ye olde newspaper" when you check in. Hmmm.

The region west and south of Ferndale is known as the Lost Coast. It's a wild, desolate, bleak but beautiful place, completely undeveloped. With just a few small hamlets, inhospitable terrain and a thick sea fret that hardly ever relents, there are no highways, and no reason for them. Inside the mist, the colours only seem to penetrate the foreground, and the rest of the world beyond is just a palette of grey.

The road twists and turns through stunning scenery, occasionally climbing high enough to afford a vista over the low lying cloud, when Grassy green pine forests give way to brambles and coarse, mustard yellow scrubs, while the roads are lined with bright azaleas and a glorious clear blue sky lets the sun warm you. Descend into the mist once more, the sun gives up the ghost and the colours fade. In the fog, a stag bounded out of a hedgerow in front of me, but instead of cutting in front of my braking car, he skipped alongside me for quite some distance before acknowledging me, or so it seemed, with a doff of the antlers, and disappearing into the trees once more.

Edging away from the coast, the fret clears, and the road finally, after so many ups and downs, sheer drops and hairpin turns, rolls me right into the Humboldt State Park, where I drive another thirty miles or so in and out of the biggest Redwoods in California. South of the Avenue of the Giants, the stretch of road that runs through the forest, I take Highway 1 back out to the coast. It's yet more twists and turns, and I'm beginning to feel like I'm playing an arcade game rather than actually driving. When I finally hit the ocean, after four hours behind the wheel, I manage to stop in a mist free patch and enjoy my first proper glimpse of the Lost Coast that I've spent the whole bloody morning looking for.

The Cape Crusader

Up in Washington, Highway 101 keeps a fairly respectful distance from the ocean in most places. In Oregon it comes much closer, and tangential offshoots and loop roads take you right up to its edge.

The shore line ducks in and out of little coves and harbours. Huge promontories venture out into the surf, overlooking the sea stacks that litter the coast. You can trace the outline of what would once have been land by these last outposts. In places they are reduced to tiny fragments of islands, and shelter sealions from the waves. A string of old lighthouses warn of their presence, and provide shelter for the tourists, among whom I must unfortunately number myself.

The last headland on the cleverly named Three Capes Scenic Drive is Cape Kiwanda. It comes as something of a welcome surprise to me, since it is neither green nor light-housed. It is a rocky cliff banked with steep sand, falling towards a long, wide beach with a huge sea stack sat defiantly among the waves. It's a wonderful spot - surfers and kayakers tackle the waves, everyone else tackles the dune. Climbing it is a struggle, running back down a lot more fun. At the top, you are rewarded with a breathtaking view (not that you have any left), and an old tree lies prostate, as though it had just made the climb itself and needed to put its feet up for a while.

Washington State

When I first flew over Washington on my way into Seattle three or four weeks ago, I was amazed at how green it was. My Road Trip (sorry) through the state was cut short - condensed into three days by an eye infection, lack of planning and a propensity to leave mobile phones on toilet roll holders when using public conveniences.

It takes a bit of adjusting to the practicalities of a Road Trip (somehow capitalising it makes me feel less culpable). Obviously, the first job is to actually get somewhere. This prohibits stopping every time you see something you want to take a photo of, taking excessive detours just to tick off boxes, or pulling up in every town you drive through. I have a small guide book which I'm stealing ideas from (well, they cost me $14.99) and the rest is just intuition really.

Washington was fairly easy because I didn't drive through that many towns. Port Angeles? No thanks. Forks? Knives more like. Aberdeen? Ha ha ha. Just keep driving and admire the view. I had a target too - Portland by Thursday, so I knew I couldn't waste too much time. Consequently I aimed to reach the south-westernmost tip of the state by Wednesday night; the quite brilliantly named Cape Disappointment. (So called because the guy who first arrived there incorrectly assumed there wasn't a river there, as promised. There was - the bloody massive Columbia River that requires a four mile long bridge to cross it. Must have been foggy that day).

I stop in a few places along the way, to eat or photograph the local curiosities, like this statue of a running fish (?) in Sekiu, or the world's largest frying pan in Long Beach:

In a small town called Westport, I stop at Brady's Oysters, which is meant to kick ass. I somehow manage to spunk forty bucks on wild smoked chinook salmon that is out of this world, smoked ling (good), a few oysters, some crab and a couple of pounds of pickled herrings that are a particular weakness of mine. I grab a polystyrene eski, fill it with ice, add a six pack of beer and now have a travel fridge in the trunk of the 'stang.

But really, the whole thrill of the RT (abbreviating it makes me feel even less culpable) is what you see behind the wheel. It's not knowing exactly what is round the next corner, bar two yellow lines and some breathtaking views. And it's getting used to the fact that you have to drive past so many places where you really want to stop, and stop at some where you don't. I try and pull over for the viewpoints, but they're normally crap for photos. The only exception so far being this spot on Lake Crescent, where the sun shone through the trees, round about the time that some honest guy was pulling his pants down back in Port Townsend...

Coasting

For the next three or four weeks, bar a few brief inland sorties, I will be hugging the coast of the Pacific Ocean. My first glimpse of it since I left Lima back in May came at Ruby Beach on the Washington coast, and it looked very different.

You have to walk through a forest of coastal firs to get to the beach itself, which is littered with driftwood. It's the same story all along the coast as I make my way down to Oregon. Every stretch of beach is piled with dead trees, brought to the ocean by the rain and the rivers, tossed about and eventually left on the shore to bake in the sun.The same trees that stand proudly between sea and land lie broken in their own shadows. So tall and uniform in life, they take on all manner of aspects in their almost petrified death. I wander around looking for the strangest, tossing aside those logs that are strewn in my path like a young Geoff Capes.

The first thing to strike me about the ocean itself is its force. Sea stacks testify to its power - the remnants of promontories eroded away by the relentless pounding of the surf. Rocky land tunnelled through then completely isolated from the land over thousands of years. No reason nor purpose to the destruction, just the inevitable result of a seemingly irresistible force meeting an apparently, but apparently not indestructible object.

The isolation of the rock is brought about solely by the movement of water. And yet when they first meet, when the huge body of water strikes the land and dissipates into thousands of imperceptibly tiny droplets, it would seem as though the rock won. Only in the fullness of time, and with the cumulation of that relentless impact, does its true power manifest itself. A few feet from where the surf crashes into the rocks, that same water, pooled around the pebbles it has smoothed away over the centuries, lies perfectly, harmlessly still.

The sea never sleeps. On Tuesday night, by Lake Quinault, I thought I could hear the ocean in the distance, as though a tiny shell were pressed to my ear. Last night, on the Long Beach Peninsula, I camped barely a hundred yards from its edge and the sound was deafening, all night long. The spray hammered down on my little canvas house. It is almost frightening, and certainly humbling, to feel Mother Nature so close, and with nothing but a two hundred dollar tent to protect me from her irresistible force.

A kind of magic

Having brought the car situation firmly under control, I took care of accommodation worries for the next eight weeks before I left Seattle. I dropped into the local REI and bought myself a tent, sleeping bag, floor mat and a couple of pillows. May a canopy of stars be my majestical roof.

I never went camping as a child, so it doesn't really hold any magic for me. The kind of magic you need to make sleeping in an area the size of Alec Guinness's 'cooler' in Bridge on the River Kwai seem like a good idea. To make you wilfully, gleefully even, subject yourself to being bitten, pissed on and generally set about by a host of God's tiny creatures you didn't even know existed, and do so in the absence of every convenience, modern or otherwise, that man has ever deigned to create. But hey, you've got to start somewhere.

I make it as far as Quinault Lake in the Olympic National Park, Washington, where I'm planning to bed down for the night. Driving through the forest, I'm thinking Deliverance, laced with a bit of Carry On Camping for comic effect. I quickly come to my senses and pull up at the Rain Forest Lodge and enquire into the availability of rooms. Then I man up, tell them where to stick their $130 and find myself a pitch down by the lake. Fifteen head scratching minutes later and the tent is up, with only a few minor complications.

The campground itself is tiny - just five plots, a car park and a hole in the ground. But each one is nicely secluded and right on the edge of the lake. I crack open a beer and sit back to watch the sunset. A family camped down the end set off in a canoe to paddle around the perfectly still waters as the sun, already slipped from sight, casts its last rays into the nascent night sky. In that brief moment, I can't honestly think of anywhere in the world I would rather be.

As darkness finally envelops us, I retire for the night. Later on I make a mental note not to drink more than three beers when camping, since getting up for a piss involves clothing oneself in an extremely confined space before negotiating a series of obstacles only slightly less challenging than the Krypton Factor assault course. Nonetheless, and to my lasting surprise, I actually sleep extremely well. All to be heard are the sounds of nature: the tweeting of the birds as they too drift off to sleep, the croaking of frogs and the occasional call of a desperate cougar. I can hear the calm lake lapping gently at the shore, and in the distance, I am certain, the faint sound of the Pacific Ocean as it pounds the coast.

I wake twice in the night, in contrasting circumstances. First up, my neighbour Richard and his son, Richard III (I shit you not*), are having raccoon trouble. They attempt to rectify this by whisper-shouting to one another - "F**king 'coons dad" - and then throwing large heavy objects, presumably logs, wherever they think the little blighters might be. Strangely, since I am only ten feet away, they seem to be leaving me alone (the raccoons, not the pair of Dicks).

The next time I wake it is to the sound of dawn slowly breaking in the temperate rainforest around me. As the animals stir themselves into life, it is as though their combined calls are beckoning the sun forth from its daily hiatus. It's a unique experience, and quite wondrous for me by virtue of the fact that having enjoyed it for five minutes, I stick some earplugs in and miraculously fall asleep for another five hours. And that, in itself, is a kind of Magic.



* In Seattle I heard a woman calling out to her two sons Hudson and Beckham. Good job Danny Shittu didn't marry a Spice Girl and move to LA, I thought.

My name is Joe

If I'm being honest, Monday was a complete false start. Eagerly springing from the blocks then trudging back sheepishly (though not sluggishly) for another attempt. Driving back to Port Townsend, I felt I could reconcile myself with the wasted day if I did something or went somewhere I wouldn't have otherwise. I didn't.

I didn't because I didn't have to. Having found a motel in Port Townsend, I then found a bar, and at that bar I got talking to the guy sat next to me. We had plenty to talk about since he had lived in Chile in the sixties and travelled extensively throughout South America. We talked about travelling, about travelling alone, and the places we'd both been to and how they had or hadn't changed.

Just before I left I asked him if he wrote a journal - he said he'd kept diaries, but that they were erratic and probably indecipherable. But also that maybe one day he could try and transpose them. And you know what, I got the feeling that, with memories reawakened by a passing stranger, he just might. Offering my hand as I left, I told him my name, and he replied with his. It was easy really, since they were the same.

I wonder if that will be me one day.

The Beast

When I was in Texas, I rented a car. It was a Dodge Avenger. Quite what it was supposed to be "avenging" is anyone's guess. Some extremely trivial infraction, it would seem. Had my first ever car not been a Peugeot 306, I would have no hesitation in declaring it the shittest thing I have ever driven. It handled like a cross channel ferry and accelerated at roughly the pace of the local armadillos.

Yesterday morning, I began the "road trip" portion of my trip (I cringe when I hear that term, sorry). It had already occurred to me that undertaking a trip down the pacific coast of the United States in such a ve-hicle would be nothing short of a crime. When I was in Australia last year, I bought myself a Nissan Skyline R33 since I wanted to blend in:

But this is America. Driving a Nissan around here would be like taking a fart to a shitfight. No no no. If you want to drive across, around or through America, you're going to need a car with a special kind of symbol on the front. And that symbol looks like this:

And if you're anticipating some good weather, and used to play Out Run on the ZX Spectrum (tape version) when you were a kid, then the rest of it should probably look like this:

Silver wouldn't have been my first choice but I'm not complaining. The 'stang, as I am affectionately calling it, has a 3.7 litre V6 that absolutely roars when you stick your foot down, though it would appear to be mechanically limited to 115 mph. At one point, snaking around Lake Crescent in Olympic Park, Washington with the top down, I saw a Golf Cabriolet up ahead. Long blonde hair flowed from some beauty in the drivers' seat, and my heart raced in anticipation of a Bond style chase that would culminate in an exotic and potentially deadly tryst. Sadly it wasn't so much Out Run as School Run, and after five minutes of being stuck behind her Miss Daisy style driving, I was rueing the day she ever got behind the wheel.

Fifty miles later, and I was rueing the fact that I no longer possessed my cellphone. One quick call revealed that, mercifully, it was safe in the custody of the Port Townsend Police Department. Port Townsend: a mere 110 miles back from whence I came. So the first day of my "road trip" involved driving 220 pointless miles and staying in a motel only marginally further along from where I'd left ten hours previously. At least I did it in a decent car - if I'd been in the Avenger, I'd have probably just driven it straight into the sea.