Phew. Where to begin. We woke up in San Fran yesterday to the sound of knocking at our hotel room door, those maid are always so eager to clean your room. I guess the majority of hotel guests do get out of bed before 9am, but hey we had a long days drive and were enjoying a little sleep-in. Anyways that was a good alarm, because our breakfast that came with the room was finished at 10am, and for the stupid amount of money we ended up paying for that room we were going to eat, and eat a lot. We rushed through our showers, got the girls dressed and headed down to gorge ourselves with eggs, sausage and pancakes. It was as much as we expected from a Holiday Inn Buffet, though it was food in our belly and after breakfast we headed out into San Fransisco. There was all sorts of different realities clashing on the streets, as you find in big cities. People driving Hummers by people begging for food kind of stuff, though there was definitely a cool vibe in the streets. We "had" to take the cable car down to the beach as we'd feel pretty stupid passing through without taking a ride in the infamous public transportation. Now I don't know how many of you watched "Full House" as kids, but I can assure you the cable car is not as footloose and fancy free as the intro to that beloved show may insinuate. I was being constantly reminded to not lean out of the cable car, which of course is most of the reason you go on these things. It was still pretty cool and Freja seemed to really dig being on the "train". I was quite impressed with the engineering of the whole system, so simple yet so useful in the hilly streets of San Fransisco. So after our ride down to the waterfront we sat and watched Freja build her sandcastles and I dipped my toes into the cold ocean water a bit. The funny thing about doing these kind of trips, is that until you get settled where you want to be for a while, it's almost as if you are a tourist on speed. Okay. Gotta do that. Gotta do this. Then drive. Then do this. It's fun in it's own sort of way I guess. So after another cable car ride with a much more pleasant driver we were back at the hotel to pack up Dora and start the next leg.

By this point it was pushing 5 o'clock and we knew we weren't going to get far, we set off anyways with no real destination but as far away as that expensive hotel as we could. Not again, my friends. We drove through the dark and Shona found an RV park in a place called Caramel. The park was called Carmel by the River. Secretly as I drove I was imagining chocolate covered palm trees and a river of caramel, but I kept those childish thoughts to myself. When we finally arrived at our camp for the night we very quickly realized that we were in Southern California. No not because of the weather of the famous people. Because an RV park can get away with charging $65 a night. Holy. We were too tired to argue, or find something else, so once again we paid the man and set up shop for the night. I passed out early with Freja and that was that.

The next morning we awoke to sunshine, had our breakfast and plotted out our days drive. We decided to go all the way to San Diego and see what happened from there. It was a long drive. The first portion of it was probably the steepest cliff drops I've ever driven on, not only that but the road was extremely windy. You can ask Shona about that, she was looking a little bit green after bravely trying to make sandwiches in the back. All that being said it was beautiful and I made sure that the line of cars behind me could appreciate the beauty as I was only going 30km/hour. He He.

So after that windy road, it opened out to more of a beach landscape and it was here that Shona said something along the lines of "Look, I can't tell if thats loads of driftwood or seals on the beach.". We would find out shortly that it was in fact seals, loads of juvenile male elephant seals. Freja was so excited when we got out of the car she couldn't stop saying "Robby Seals, Robby Seals!". Why Robby? Two cartoons that she loves both have seals named Robby. "Pingu" and "The Little Polar Bear". So we hung out there and watched the seals for a bit, it was pretty neat. I couldn't believe it but a lady standing next to me actually asked if seals hatched from eggs. I tried really hard not to laugh and explain to her that they are indeed mammals and there is only one mammal that hatches from an egg and it is definitely not a seal. It was amusing.

So after that it was a pretty steady drive, driving through some beautiful country just before Santa Barbara and then we hit Mailbu. We were trying to stick to the coast all the way to San Diego to avoid any L.A. Freeways, but our luck was foiled as the street was shut. So off to the freeway our handy little GPS detour function takes us and it is within 10 seconds of being on it that I feel my blood pressure rising. I've driven the 401 in Toronto many times, even a few in a '78 Volkswagen bus, but that didn't even compare to what I experienced tonight. I will do my best to avoid driving on that freeway ever again. It's like war out there. You have people passing you left and right, speeding by, riding your tail, it's insane. If I had to do that drive everyday I would probably go postal and I'm sure that some people have. We made it through safe and sound though and now I sit in an KOA kampground in San Diego, writing this blog. Everyone is sound asleep and I'm going to join them right now. We're most likely going to stay here until Monday, get Dora in for a oil change and checkup and then it's into Mexico. The trip feels real now. Buenos Noche. Goodnight.

The Banana Peel in the title has no relevance other than that Freja and Eir ate lots of Banana's today. So I guess that means it does have relevance, but I didn't include it in the blog. But I guess now I did, so nullify this whole end section. I need sleep.