10/12/12  - The beginning of our journey began with a bit of a bump. The night before we left I seemed to come down with a bug -a really bad headache and vomiting and it is only today (Monday) that I am beginning to feel more like my old self.  Lucky I had done most of the packing but not able to leave the house quite how I wanted to for our house sitters. Sorry Marie and Jim!!  

We left Palmerston North at 10am on Friday morning for Wellington and our flight to Auckland. We arrived at 5pm just before Alice and Glen from Christchurch. Because of some silly person at Air N Z in ChCh A & G had to check their bags in at Auckland while ours had been checked right through from Wellington. Seems they need to know lots of details of where you are traveling and as I had done most of the bookings, had that information in a folder.  The flight from Auckland was delayed due to late connecting flights from Sydney and Melbourne so we were an hour late arriving in San Francisco. It was a long flight and the plane was full -we all were very tired when we arrived but managed to negotiate the SF airport by train and pick up our rental car and find our way to our hotel. It was early to bed and up early the next morning to go into town to pick up our train tickets to Denver, then on to deliver some cases to Jeremy and Ariel who are very kindly looking after them for us until we come back to SF on the 29th.  

Since Sunday we have been driving North up the coast Road - a very spectacular  coastline not unlike the lower west coast of N Z but with more inlets and larger craggie rocks. The bird population is huge and we have seen tiny wee hummingbirds and what appear to be huge eagles. we also saw lots of seals playing and frolicking around the ricks. apparently whales pass by often but we did not see any. 

Last night we stopped at a place called Ocean Cove -  the  owner was an interesting character and told us all about the "hippies" that lived around the area and his plans to have concerts on his land and market days where locals could sell their wares as well as all that was wrong in America. 

 We did some shopping when we left this morning and picked up some groceries and had lovely salad rolls for lunch and chicken and salad for tea. We have eaten out the last two nights but fairly expensive for mediocre food. Boy are we lucky with the quality of our food at home especially the dairy products.  Tonight we are staying  close to Fort Bragg and we're thinking we might have another night here as it is a very roomy motel with a microwave and we are in adjacent rooms. Tomorrow we will explore a little further north and then it will be time to head back to San Fran as we have to have the car back on Thursday then catch the train early Friday morning. The weather has been sunny and warm but believe we are going to get some rain over the next few days.  We will return via the freeway..