We left LA this morning driving the A1 highway along the coast. We drove through many seaside villages such as Malibu, Morro Bay, San Simeons and Pismo Beach.

Morro Bay has this huge rock in the bay, believed to be a volcano.

A lot of berries are grown in this part of California.

We heard more Spanish than English, and more towns have Spanish names than English names.

Heading a bit more inland looked so much like Natal – with rambling hills. Beautiful!

We arrived at Santa Cruz well after dark – but the sun sets before 6 here.  We found a hotel to stay, got some supper and fell into bed.

Some interesting road names We saw today:

Locust Street

Telephone Rd

Front Street

NA Street. (It turned out to be North A Street. The next one was North B, etc. By the time we had to turn off we had got to North H Street.)

An interesting sign you see all over California is this…..

When we first saw it we thought that it was a place. Then we started noticing more of them.  Some just said “Xing”. Some say “ Xing Ped” and the odd one says “Xing School”. So……Google to the rescue! The x stands for cross, so it is denoting a crossing!