“Ahh , yeah just the tum tums and the egg sandwich . ” The woman looks me up and down . Yeah I know an egg sandwich with stomach settling tablets . I look over at the boys with their coffees and pastries , Mother fuckas . With an 8 hour drive ahead and coming off a night sitting on the throne I don’t like my chances of keeping a coffee in my gut . There’ll be very few toilets on this drive . I’ve brought a roll of toilet paper as backup .
Vegas to Monterey , that’s what we’re doing . There is some vivid desolate country between Vegas and LA , with Tim driving we get a good look at this arid but oddly beautiful area . It’s an almost alien landscape dotted with the odd roadhouse and some bizarre airport or plane storage place in the middle of nowhere. It’s scattered with all sorts of passenger jets from different carriers , weird . We are travelling slightly north through the Mojave Desert , just bypassing Area 51 , the famous no go zone owing to the private military base hidden out here . The Mojave Desert is where we stop for Tim to take a few photos . He’s after the Joshua tree and we’ve found a beauty standing all by herself 
Its extra hot , no surprise there . The Joshua tree is a unique beautiful tree , an almost ornamental feature that is scattered throughout the area . It’s not long before we get creative 
There will be shots of nude men that will surface sometime down the track , for now I’ll spare you . For the passing traffic some 200m off , yeah it’s fair to say that there was a bit of tackle hiding out in the scrub . On walking back we all became very itchy as a result of stomping on small plants that dispersed small spikey hairs that all of a sudden had the legs and umm yeah , as we were nude the nuts did itch , just a bit . Fate plays its hand …… In 48 hours time the Mojave Desert will be the epicentre of 2 earth quakes that would rock California .
Eventually I get those egg sandwiches down, 8 hours later we hit Monterey . It’s only the last 30 minutes that we see trees and green vegetation , passing absolutely enormous vineyards , ugly oil fields and mile upon mile of scrubby inhospitable terrain . Just before we hit the coast you could’ve sworn we were in Australia , with gum trees on either side of the road , opening up into a large bay and a small fishing town , with green lawns , beach paths , space and just clean and quiet and serene and a place and an area that needs more than the few hours we’ve got here .It felt a little like Apollo Bay . 
This is a beautiful stretch of coast a world away from the crush of LA . 2 hours south of San Francisco and only an hour south of Santa Cruz is Monterey We eat out at the local pier which has restaurants on either side as it struts out into the bay .
Each restaurant tries to lure you in by giving you samples of their clam chowder , by the time we get to the end of the pier I’ve had 5 samples . 
Margaritas for happy hour gets us in. Tomorrow we leave for Big Sur , tonight I’m back on the toilet ….. egg sandwiches , clam chowder and margaritas straight back out in liquid form
aussiehowieinla 