all photos by: veganunderground.com 

 

We’re back!  As usual, our west coast road trip seemed like a whirlwind.  We covered a few thousand km’s (that’s a couple thousand miles), ate quite a few pounds of vegan food, visited with some old friends, made some new friends and discovered some new destinations.  It was also a chance to bring Brody, our dog, back to the vicinity of his birthplace (somewhere in Los Angeles).  Here are the highlights:

•    Lunch in Portland at the Red & Black Café – review here.  Great vegan food and a real sense of community connectedness, a true Portland experience.
•    Hanging out for 2 hours with our good friend Robert Cheeke, of Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness fame, and a few of the PDX crew from Robert’s tight online community.
•    Shopping at the Vegan Mini Mall around the corner – Scapegoat tattoos (booked months in advance so no new vegan ink for us); road snacks and a Veg News at Food Fight!, the coolest vegan grocery store anywhere; some fine vegan threads from Herbivore Clothing and vegan, gluten-free brownies from the Sweet Pea Bakery.  All this in one stop! 

 

•    Sunrise at the beach in Crescent City, CA – Brody’s first chance to get his feet wet and his nose sandy on the trip.  There’s nothing like an open ocean beach all to yourself at first light. 

 

•    Turning off Hwy 101 onto old Hwy 1 at Legget, its northern terminus – it’s a 22 mile roller coaster that ends dramatically at the ocean.  Nobody got carsick this time!
•    Driving Hwy 1 all the way into San Francisco – always magic.

 

 

•    Dinner with friends at Avatars in Sausalito – review here.  Not a vegan restaurant,  but enthusiastically vegan-friendly and the food is incredibly good.  The visit to our friends’ new hilltop hideaway in Tiburon to watch the sun set on San Francisco Bay from their back yard was a perfect way to finish off the evening.
•    Being turned back from the southern half of Hwy 1 by a marathon – at least they’re doing something healthy!  The unintentional scenic tour of Carmel wasn’t so bad anyway. 

 

•    Stopping at beaches along the coast to stretch our legs and let the dog run – the temperature rising with every kilometer, sorry, mile we travelled.
•    Waking up in our very nice room at the Blue Sands Motel (pet friendly and highly recommended by us) in Santa Barbara to sun streaming in the window.  This was topped by crossing the street and walking the dog on the beach as the morning sun warmed us. (These moments are preciously rare in rain-city Vancouver where we reside).
•    Shopping at Trader Joe’s for dinner and lunch foods – I wish we had TJ’s in Canada! 

 

•    Driving through the mishmash that is Malibu.

 

•    Lunch-breakfast at Euphoria Loves RAWvolution – review here.  Delicious raw vegan food on Main St. in Santa Monica.  A true L.A. experience! 
•    Walking past the original Dog Town Store and taking a picture of the Rip Heath message spray-painted on the wall.  This was made more poignant for me as I just finished working on what will be Heath Ledger’s last film ever.  Sadly, I didn’t have the pleasure of working with him as he was gone by the time the Vancouver Unit of the film started production. 

 

•    Buying our copy of ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ on opening day at the Best Buy in Oxnard, California.  A couple of hours prior we happened upon a rush-hour pile up in Oxnard so bad that a car was on its roof, sandwiched between several other cars – how they managed this in stop-and-go traffic could only be related to a GTA-inspired stunt. 
•    30 degree Celsius heat and sunny skies.
•    Beaches, beaches, beaches. 
•    Palm trees, palm trees, palm trees.

 

•    Viewing the elephant seals at their rookery near the Hearst Castle on Hwy 1.  We could have watched them for hours.  We also got really close to the resident squirrels who were very accustomed to humans (we didn’t feed them!)

 

•    Another lunch at the Red & Black.
•    More shopping at Food Fight!/Herbivore/Sweet Pea Bakery

 

•    Breezing through the border back into Canada, feeling thoroughly sun-drenched, although a mite melancholic at the drizzle hitting the windshield. 

That was pretty much the trip.  Our mode of transport was a 2007 Honda Civic LX 5 speed that got averaged pretty close to 50 miles per gallon.  We would have driven the Smart Fortwo CDI, which is capable of over 70 mpg, but it would not hold all of our luggage, the camera gear, Brody, Brody’s luggage or provide Brody with enough shelter from the heat (it has no A/C).  Now that we’re home in the wetlands, spring training has seriously begun and I’m getting down to writing my book while I take a nice, long hiatus from my day job.