Camping California

I have been a little quiet of late on social media and my blog because I have been taking a holiday in California USA, which has been an amazing adventure. We choose to spend the first eight days of our trip on the road in a Jucy camper. As I am tapping away I have a view of the Strip in Las Vegas, so my holiday is not yet over. Lucky me!

We picked up our bright purple and green camper in LA and drove up the coast through the cutest little towns such as Santa Barbara, Solvang, Morro Bay, Big Sur, Carmel & Santa Cruz finally arriving in San Francisco for one night then we continued to Yosemite National Park and then to Las Vegas where we said good-bye to our colourful camper.

There are so many amazing sights and cutesy towns to see up the coast and there are lots of wild life, which was a highlight for me. We had breakfast with the sea otters in Morro Bay, got up very close to the seals and stopped to watch the huge Sea Elephants that spend their days lazing on the beach just before Big Sur. There were cute little squirrels and chipmunks everywhere we went.

Our camper came fully equipped with a full kitchen in the boot, we had a stove, a fridge and even a kitchen sink, so we were able to cook up a storm as we traveled. I love out door cooking, it is so much fun. It was fairly easy to cook real food along the way, especially by shopping at places like Whole Foods or Trader Joes where you can buy chopped veggies, fruit and fresh meats. We ate very well…. bacon and eggs, omelette’s and tomato salad with poached eggs for breakfasts.

For lunch we mostly ate at local stops and for dinner next to the camp fire we had steak, chicken fajatis, vegetable kabob, salads and heirloom tomato salsa. California has the most amazing Heirloom Tomatoes that I have ever tasted!

We ate at lots of lovely places for lunch, one of them was Nepenthe in Big Sur and the other was Crows Nest in Santa Cruz. We tried a cocktail glass full of fresh Dungeness Crab, which is a local specialty and quite the treat.

We only spent one night in San Francisco as we were running out of time, but we still squeezed all the major sites in. We ate at a beautiful restaurant called A16 for dinner and it was an amazing dining experience. We had local clams in a tomato sauce, seared Albacore and a stone fruit salad with prosciutto. The food was divine and made with simple and fresh ingredients. I definitely banked a few ideas for some new recipes that will be inspired by my visit to A16.

After we left San Francisco we drove to Yosemite National Park which was by far the best part of the trip, simply because every corner turned had me gasping for breath at the sheer beauty and enormity of the cliff faces, water falls and meadows.  We entered the park from the 140 road and passed through these amazing rocks, that was just the beginning of the wow wow wow!

We camped in a very isolated camping ground off Tioga Road surrounded by big boulders and pines.We spent the days cycling around the valley floor, swimming in lakes and hiking to water falls.

When it got dark, it was completely dark apart from the most amazing stars that I have even seen.I loved camping in the tree’s it was beautiful and peaceful. The brown box is for campers to place their food in overnight so that bears don’t attach your car. We didn’t see any bears, but I was on the look out as that would have been a bonus for me to have spotted Yogi in the forest!

On the last day of our camping California adventure we started to make our way to Las Vegas, which in itself was an amazing time. We drove out of Yosemite National Park on the East side, at that point we were at 9800 feet above sea level. The scenery was spectacular. We ate lunch at a little place near Lee Vining and I had the best fish tacos covered in mango, pineapple and chilli salsa. On our final night we crossed over into Nevada stopped in a funny little town called Beatty, that is famous for its jerky, wild donkey’s and good old fashion American hospitality. We bought some home-made Buffalo Jerky, which was wonderful. The next day we set off for Las Vegas on our final leg of driving which was only a short two-hour journey.

We all loved our camping trip, it was a great was to see a small part of California. I love American hospitality, everyone is so friendly and can’t do enough to help. The food is amazing but the portions are way too big and we still haven’t learned to just share a plate. The next week in Las Vegas and Los Angeles will include eating, shopping and more eating!