LOS ANGELES TO VANCOUVER 2016: MONTEREY GRAND PRIX AND LAGUNA SECA

DAYS 26, 27 & 28

FRIDAY 29, SATURDAY 30 APRIL & SUNDAY 1 MAY 2016

YOSEMITE TO MONTEREY

This weekend has been all about Laguna Seca.

Just to rewind however to Friday morning when I pushed out of Yosemite and drove 5 hours straight to get back here to Monterey late in the day.

I had decided to do one final hike before leaving Yosemite and opted for the Hetch Hetchy section of the park as it is well known for having far less tourists than the valley.

Whilst I wouldn't say it was exactly deserted when I got there, there were indeed less tourists about and those that were looked the more serious-hiker type and were kitted out accordingly as though they were about to leave and not return for several days.

The walk I chose to do was one that was going to fit best with my day-plan and also with my body, as I had acquired some pretty decent blisters on my feet from nearly 25 miles of hiking over the previous 2 days and they weren't up for a long one.

So the Wapama Falls walk ticked the boxes that it needed to and I was able to punch out the 5.4 miles in just over 2 hours.

From there, I motored towards Monterey for the remainder of the afternoon.

HETCH HETCHY AND THE O'SHAUGHNESSY DAM

With the advantage of having a GPS unit included with the Dodge Dart, I was able to give it the proper instructions and what it was able to give me in return was a magical mystery tour of central California, all the the way to Monterey.

There was some extended back-country touring for a good share of the afternoon and the best part was, I had not a clue where I was for most of it.

We passed through towns called Coulterville and Merced along the way and hit a nasty traffic snarl in Hollister about 5 pm, the Dodge Dart and me.

Once off the mountain elevation, this is all dead flat and prolific agricultural land most of the way to the coast and anything that will grow out here is pretty much being grown right here and now.

For nearly an hour, I was headed towards a place called Gilroy and although I never exactly got to Gilroy, I began to recognise place names more frequently the later the day became - San Francisco and Los Angeles being chief amongst them - but as I started to see freeway exits to Castroville (remember, the artichoke capital of the world...), Sacramento and Santa Cruz also appeared on some of the signage.

And when I eventually hit the 101 and started to see the exit signs to Monterey Peninsula, I kind of figured I would make it....

LAGUNA SECA

I don't actually claim to have many vices in life but one that comes to mind is that I spend way too much time on Playstation.

My PS3 is mostly occupied with 2 different versions of Gran Turismo which has seen me complete hundreds of laps of Laguna Seca in all sorts of different high-powered vehicles.

So I have maintained a desire since my last visit to Monterey in 2004 to experience the real thing.

Therefore when I learned that there was an event on this weekend, I made sure and certain I had tickets for it.

The only issue has been the timing; since I first pedalled into Monterey 2 weeks ago, I had to figure out a way to fill in the time between now and then.

So enter San Francisco - followed by Kings Canyon, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks and all facilitated by the Dodge Dart.

It worked out pretty well.....