Nuts, Bacon and Denmark Fakin!

This morning we left LA on our three day drive up to San Francisco. I’ve been a bit lax on the blogging front, so I’ll do a bang up-to-date one and then I’ll fill in about our time in LA later.
We headed off this morning at about midday, heading up the scenic pacific coast highway. At least, I’m reliably informed it’s very scenic, I’ve never driven an automatic car or on the right side of the road before, so my sight-seeing was slightly curtailed by the unfortunate necessity of trying not to kill us. There was plenty of ocean and rolling hill-sides and fantastic houses over-looking both that I didn’t really get to see but Elaine assures me were fantastic.

We stopped in a nice town called Ventura where we chilled out on the beach for a bit and I got to work on my farmers tan. I’ve either got a bit of colour now or I’ve developed into a permanent state of embarrassed at my ludicrously pasty look, either way... mission accomplished. On the beach I saw something I was surprised by, a grey squirrel. I didn’t think that was something you’d ever see at the beach, the availability of nuts etc. Not being exactly bountiful save the occasionally misplaced Snickers bar. Maybe he was on holiday too? Either that or he’s an advanced scout for the grey squirrel army. After their successful colonisation of Britain and the wiping out of their red squirrel brethren, maybe their next step is Japan? Someday, somebody is going to leave a speed boat unattended and then its lock up your nuts Tokyo, those crazy Yankee squirrels are a coming! If nothing else it would explain why he was wearing a kimono and reading a Japanese phrase book. Grey squirrels are the ultimate Americans; constantly looking to expand their nut-lead empire.

I decided to liven up the rest of the drive by playing chicken with the car’s fuel tank. Well, I didn’t decide it, that’s just how things turned out. We started looking for a petrol station when the tank hit one quarter full, it dawned on us at about the one tenth of a tank left mark that ironically, despite America being the ultimate service economy, they’ve no concept of a motorway services. When we figured that out we were unfortunately, in the delightfully scenic arsehole of nowhere and the panic really set in. In twenty miles all we passed was a pig farm which helpfully had fully grown porkies for sale. I stopped looking at the gauge at that point; instead mentally trying to figure out the complex maths of Elaine plus how many pigs would be required to tow our car? It was hilly and pigs are undisciplined creatures – I was just hoping they’d be won over by Elaine’s cheery disposition and give it some oink. Failing that, we’d never go hungry. I’ve limited experience in management but I’ve always believed if you eat one of the employees, the rest will typically fall into line sharpish.

On we went with the car now reading empty. It’s hard to describe the feeling of coming over a hill top to be greeted by a spectacular panoramic view of miles and miles of glorious rolling countryside and your only thought being, why the hell hasn’t some yank plonked a big ugly petrol station here? They mess up everywhere else but they leave this untouched, the selfish bastards! Anywho, we eventually made it to a gas station, running on nothing more than desperation. A full tank of gas cost about £25 compared to £45 in the UK. Americans get the cheapest tank of gas in the first world but you’d never guess it from the amount of moaning they do about it. If they want to live somewhere with an endless supply of oil why don’t they just move somewhere like that? Oh wait, I’ve just seen the news – apparently they tried that but it’s not been working out too well.

We’re now staying in a hotel in a town called Solvang. It is genuinely one of the weirdest places I’ve ever been, so much so that I’m not entirely sure this evening wasn’t a very odd dream. At some point this town had a meeting and said to itself – we need something to bring in the tourists. Las Vegas has the gambling, Los Angeles has the showbiz glamour but do you know what people really love and they just aren’t getting enough of? Denmark! Let’s go Danish crazy!
The town is referred to as ‘Little Denmark’ and every last building is done in this style they’ve clearly decided is Denmark through and through. It’s a kind of Hansel and Gretel style of architecture which gives you the odd feeling you’re walking through a scaled up version of Legoland. They have lots of windmills and shops selling clogs. The thing is, both Elaine and I would consider those to be associated with Holland, not Denmark. It seems rude to point that out, not that we could though, the place is virtually deserted. We had to walk around the whole town to find the only one of its many many restaurants that was still open, this was at 8PM. The only people we passed were another couple with the same ‘is this place real or am I having a bad sea-food based hallucination?’ expressions. There are a good dozen reasonably sized hotels here, which I’m guessing is about two more than the current amount of tourists staying here.

There’s a plaque in the hotel lobby proudly proclaiming that the King and Queen of Denmark came here a few years back. I really hope they rocked up unannounced on a Tuesday night like we did. I’m cheered by the image of the royals in fully crowned regalia wandered around going – ‘Christ, who thought this was a good idea? And what’s with all the clogs?’ Perhaps I’m being harsh, maybe the place did a roaring trade in Muslim coach parties until the unfortunate cartoon fiasco of a couple of years back and now their economy is heavily based on idiots who don’t realise they should have filled up the tank in Los Angeles.
No pigs, squirrels or clogs were harmed in the making of this blog entry.