Judy and Valerie On the Road

Monterey

In Monterey we stayed at the Monterey County Fair RV site. The site had water, electricity and ‘sewer dump’ on the pitch and then toilets and a shower. When the fair ground has events the RV site evidently gets very full, but when we were there it just had a few other vans, some smaller, and some huge. The people who ran the site were extremely friendly and helpful. It was fairly close to the centre of town and a bus ride took about 5-10 minutes and was very cheap.

Whale watching

Whilst in Monterey we went out for a morning with the Monterey Bay Whale Watch. Monterey has a submarine canyon close to the shore which reaches a depth of two miles. This creates a special environment providing food for deep water species of whales, dolphins and sea birds. Evidently this unique canyon makes Monterey Bay the best place in the US to view a variety of marine animals all year long.

It was difficult to catch photos of the whales. You’d see a spout and then the whale could be seen turning in the water and going back down to feed. We saw a mother with her baby, and the guide explained that the mother gives birth further south in warmer waters. They stay in the warmer waters while the baby is feeding solely on the mother’s milk and during this time the mother has no food herself. She fasts for several months, until the baby is old enough to swim north to the bay where the mother can feed herself and wean the baby by teaching it how to catch food. The baby stays with the mother for about one year and then is mature enough to go off on its own.

Here are some photos from our trip. All the whales we saw were humpbacks but we also saw an albatross with its huge wings, brown pelicans, sea lions and seals.(click on the images to enlarge).

Bike Hire

We hired e-bikes in Monterey and cycled along the coast, along part of the 17 mile drive, as far as Spanish Bay. There were lots of golf courses along the way – often, to our surprise, with deer grazing on them. The coast line was stunning, very rocky with white sandy beaches and crashing waves. As we set off we saw seals resting along the harbour walls and further along we aw some furry seals and their pups resting on the beach. All along the way the roadside was covered in pretty pink flowers.

On our way back we passed through Cannery Row which was given its name in honour of John Steinbeck and his novel of the same name. In the past it would have been full of sardine canning factories but now it is full of gift shops and restaurants.

Big Sur

Part of Highway 1 (the Pacific Highway coast road) was closed because of rock falls due to the heavy rain earlier in the year, but we drove down for the day from Monterey. The coastline is amazing with rocky coves, crashing waves, forests dropping into the ocean. There was one place where it was possible to drive down to a beautiful beach where dozens of people were enjoying the sunshine. As we were leaving more people were arriving to see the sunset.

We hiked along one of the paths into the forest up to a waterfall. When we stopped to eat our lunch we were joined by a beautiful Steller Jay perched on the edge. As we walked we were surrounded by huge redwoods reaching to the sky.

The redwoods are extraordinary trees and here is some further information about them.

Finally we had some refreshments at Nepenthe a delightful restaurant, cafe and shop in the woods. The place is owned by family of Kaffe Fassett and the shop contained colourful displays of works using his materials.

A brilliant day.

Carmel

While we were staying at Monterey we took the bus to Carmel, a very pretty town a little further along the coast. There are flowers everywhere, in all the public spaces and in the many perfectly tended gardens. There are also lots of “fairytale” houses which look a bit like the gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel. They were built in the 1920’s by a man called Hugh Comstock.

We were told that Carmel-by-the-Sea, to give it is full title, is rated the Number 1 dog friendly town in America and we certainly saw a lot of dogs, clearly all pedigrees and all immaculately groomed.

As well as strolling round the town we took a walk along the beach and enjoyed the beautiful soft white sand.

Carmel Mission

A friend who grew up in San Francisco told us we should try and visit a mission while in California, so we made our way to the Carmel Mission Basilica which was founded in1771by Father Junipero Serra, who is buried there. Spain built a chain of 21 missions across the length of California each approximately a day’s horseback journey apart. The Carmel mission had a very pretty garden and two museums, one with artefacts which had belonged to a prominent Monterey family, the Munras family, the other with artefacts, furniture, documents etc from the mission itself. Extracts from Fr. Serra’s diary were on display, talking about how helpful the indigenous people who had converted to Christianity had been, but themuseum did not seem to have any critique about the impact of colonisation on native Americans.

Santa Barbara

In Los Angeles we picked up the RV (motorhome) and arrived at our first stop, Santa Barbara, in early evening. The next day we walked along the beach, passing lots of sailing boats moored there until we reached the town centre. We then walked up the very pretty main street of Santa Barbara, State Street. It’s a pedestrian street with lots of palm trees, restaurants and interesting little shops. We had delicious empanadas in a Mexican restaurant and then visited the famous court house, which is still in use as a court house but is open to visitors. The building is in Spanish Colonial style and was completed in 1929 after the previous courthouse was completely destroyed in the 1925 earthquake. Like many of the buildings in Santa Barbara it has red tiled roofs, white stucco walls and various balconies. Inside it is gorgeous, with terracotta floor tiles, ceramic tiled walls and lots of interesting paintings showing historical scenes. It also has the amazing Mural Room featuring scenes from Santa Barbara’s history. It is such a beautiful building that it is frequently used for weddings – including that of US Vice President Kamala Harris -and a wedding was taking place in the garden on the day we were there.

Cruise America

On Tuesday, after tearful farewells to our lovely cousins we set off to the motorhome rental company to pick up the motorhome in which we were planning to spend the next ten days. We were very excited when we saw it and after being shown how everything worked, we set off for our first stop, Santa Barbara.

However our enchantment with the motorhome, or RV as it is called in the US, was short lived. We soon noticed water running across the floor and realised that there must be a leak. It got even wetter when we switched on the water heater. We called Cruise America’s Travelers Assist and they arranged for us to take it the next day to a repair shop which was on the way to our next stop, Morro Bay. We duly went to Sky River repair shop the next day only to discover no appointment had been made and they were really busy. However we waited a while and they managed to squeeze us in.

The bad news was that after doing a thorough check, the manager of the Sky River, which is a specialist RV repair shop, announced that in his professional opinion it was not safe to continue in the vehicle because it had a serious black mould problem. He said it had clearly been leaking for a long time. Also, he was concerned about the state of the vehicle generally. By this time we had noticed lots of problems – electric sockets which either didn’t work or were broken and not safe to use, lots of panelling coming away, rust inside the microwave…to name but a few.

After lots of phone calls back and forth Cruise America agreed to replace the RV but refused to deliver it to us. We either had to drive back to Los Angeles or drive on to San Francisco,so we opted to drive on. By the time we picked up the replacement vehicle, which was in a much better condition and had a considerably lower mileage, we had lost three days so we decided to cut our losses and not try to resume our trip by driving down to Morro Bay and then on to San Simeon but instead spend longer in Monterey. All was fine with the replacement vehicle, but we would definitely not use Cruise America again and would not recommend them to anyone.

Brent’s and Santa Monica

Monday 27 May was a public holiday in the US – Memorial Day – when the country honours US military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Services. It was a beautiful, sunny day (though the wind was chilly) and everyone was out enjoying themselves. Our cousins first took us to one of their favourite eating places, Brents – a famous family run Jewish deli and restaurant which has become one of the best delicatessens in the state. The place was packed with families enjoying their day off and we left feeling very replete.

We then drove to Santa Monica, a coastal town (or “city” as they call it in the US) west of downtown Los Angeles. It too was buzzing. We strolled along a delightful pedestrian street called 3^rd Street Promenade and noticed lots of brightly coloured wooden rocking chairs (we discovered these are called Adirondack chairs) just sitting on the pavement for people to use. Then we walked to Santa Monica’s wide, sandy beach for our first sight of the Pacific ocean. Interestingly Santa Monica is the western end of the famous Route 66.

LA The Broad

The Broad is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad art collections.

In the entrance hall is an installation by Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away. This was in a separate room which you entered and stood on a platform in darkness, and then ….

It is a fantastic gallery and has a standing exhibition of works by Roy Lichtenstein, so this was our next port of call.

When Eli and Edythe Broad acquired Rauschenberg’s Untitled in 1983, they traded Vincent van Gogh’s drawing Cabanes à Saintes-Maries, 1888, which they had cherished for a long time. For the Broads, Untitled represented a turning point in their lives as collectors, a symbol of their increasing commitment to the works of contemporary artists.

Jean Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn to Haitian and Puerto Rican parents in 1960, and left home as a teenager to live in Lower Manhattan. In the late 1970s, he and fellow artist Al Diaz became known for their graffiti, a series of cryptic statements seen around Manhattan.

Many of Basquiat’s works have been likened to the improvisational and expansive compositions of jazz. Often themes accumulate through multiple references on a surface, emerging as patterns out of gestural brushstrokes, symbols, inventories, lists, and diagrams.

Basquiat’s work celebrates histories of Black art, music, and poetry, as well as religious and everyday traditions of Black life. At the same time, his paintings and drawings offer these references against the American and global backdrop of the white supremacist legacy of slavery and colonialism.

In his work, Basquiat integrated critique of an art world that both celebrated and tokenized him. He was keenly aware of the racism frequently embedded in his reception, whether it took the form of positive or negative stereotypes. Basquiat saw his own status in this small circle of collectors, dealers, and writers as connected to an American history rife with exclusion, invisibility, and pater-nalism, and he often used his work to directly call out these injustices and hypocrisies.

Jeff Koons created the ‘Puppy’ outside the Gulbenkian in Bilbao and here he is in Los Angeles with Balloon Dog

There were many other artists but we’re saving them for the next time!

LA – The Getty Centre

Our friend Sheryl took us to the Getty Centre for the day. It’s an extraordinary set of buildings set high up on a hill with stunning views of Los Angeles and the surrounding area (click on a picture to enlarge).

The architecture is beautiful. The buildings are very light in colour with clean lines.

The entrance hall has a superb installation by Mercedes Dorame entitled ‘Looking back’

Camille Claudel

A trailblazing woman artist working in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Camille Claudel defied the social expectations of her time to create forceful sculptures of the human form. Her innovative works of art treat the universal themes of childhood, old age, love, and loss with an expressive intensity in a variety of genres, materials, and scales. Collectors and critics immediately recognized Claudel’s talent, but today her art remains little known outside France.

Other works within the studios.

And further sculptures were to be found outside, down by the carpark.

Draped Reclining Mother and Baby – Henry Moore

The Getty also has a restaurant with wonderful views and delicious food. All in all a fantastic day.

Flight across America

We flew from New York to Los Angeles, east – west across America which took about six hours, and here are a few photos of our journey along the way.

Los Angeles

We arrived in LA to be met at the airport by my cousin Simone and her husband Marvin. We stayed with them in their home and we were made so welcome. They have a beautiful garden full of colourful flowers and also orange trees. It was wonderful to be able to eat oranges which we had picked that morning.