Show me the way ....

It's Wednesday, and it's Santa Cruz. Actually I think I'm in a "city" called Capitola, on the California coast. Free Internet access comes with the hotel, so I'm ignoring the curious in the lobby and bashing on as though my deathless prose were some vital dispatch from a war zone.

America is soooo huge. As we flew west on Monday, the clouds parted over what I now know was Texas, snowy flat land with what looked like enormous pie-charts all over to the horizon. Apparently these were oil well areas - I thought they looked like evidence of alien activity. The the desert, with the erosion patterns which provide the backdrop for John Wayne movies clearly visible. We touched down in Las Vegas - so I saw the Luxor hotel, Neil - and then had two short hops, up and down again, to LA and then to San Jose. Miraculously the luggage had followed faithfully and was first on the carousel, and equally miraculously Casey was there too.

So far we've had the tour to see the surfers - with pelicans flying over their heads - and downtown Santa Cruz, which has all the shops and cafes you could wish for. It's as well there is no more room in my case - I could turn into Imelda Marcos with the shoes they have here, all foot-shaped and desireable. And in the afternoon we walked in a forest of giant redwoods, cousins of the ones in Benmore Gardens but growing naturally, so that you can see the "cathedral rings" where new trees have sprung from the roots of the originals and where some of the trees are hundreds of years old - the oldes felled was 2,000 years old. As dusk fell it grew spookily dark and we could hear a frog croaking in the gloom.

Today we're heading down the coast to Monterey. The morning looks bright but not (yet, I hope) sunny - yesterday we had brilliant sun in the morning and coastal fog after lunch. I am putting on pounds in weight and have begun to plan a strict regime for when I return. Meanwhile I shall breathe in and hope my waistbands will survive. Maybe the hills of San Francisco will help.

And a quick update on the photo front: 103 pics are currently lost somewhere on Casey's PC. If I find them I'll post them. But don't hold your breath - you know what PCs are like ........