We were somewhere in the desert around Barstow

when the drugs began to take hold when it finally dawned on me that we were coming near to the end of the trip. We'd already covered about 3400 miles (400 more than I initially thought we'd do) and this was the first big town in California, the last of the eleven states we'd visit.

We drove steadily west until we joined the 101 and turned north-west towards Santa Barbara, with the Pacific off to our right. Now it really hit home: we'd physically run out of America to cross. I felt a little sad at this; settled into the road trip mindset where the journey is as important as the destination, actually reaching that destination had immediately removed half of the reason for the trip.

We watched the signs roll past, and finally we turned off for Sheffield Drive. I say "turned off"; actually it was more like "careened off at high speed, utterly unprepared for the sharp corner on the exit, and jumped on the anchors to stop from rear-ending any innocents already at the junction".

We found Devon's parents' house at the end of a narrow driveway and abandoned the dusty Impala. Their house was fantastic: Spanish colonial-style buildings formed three sides of a courtyard, with gardens and patios in between and all of it basking in the much more reasonable California sun. After a fantastic meal expertly barbequed by Devon's dad Steve, Brenna gave us a lift (in their most excellent Toyota Prius, complete with geek-hypnotising power display) into Santa Barbara to check out the main drag. We were pretty much deflated after finally coming to a halt, and pent-up fatigue hit us all at once. We begged off a big night out and collapsed into our first non-motel beds for two weeks. I slept like a log, woken up, ironically, by Devon calling from the UK, trying to get a hold of her sister.

We spent the day at a snail's pace, driving into town to do some random errands and stopping off at the beach for a while. We swam in the slightly chilly Pacific, and lamented the fact that if we'd started the trip on the Atlantic coast, we could have swum off all three (some Gulf Coast dwellers call it the US' third coast) American coasts.

The rest of the day was spent lazing around by the pool, reading and catching up with emails. Our big night out in SB didn't come to pass; crossed wires and missed phone calls meant we didn't go anywhere, but instead enjoyed another massive barbeque and sat by the outdoor fire until it died down and the night turned into the first cold one since we arrived.

Edit: I forgot to mention probably the coolest thing that happened to me in SB: I was lying on a sun lounger type thing, reading a book when I heard a buzzing noise get louder and louder, until it sounded like a really big bee. I looked around, and hanging in the air maybe a couple of feet away from my head was a brown and red hummingbird, maybe two inches long! I don't think I've ever seen one before, and to suddenly find one looking at me like it wanted to check my ear for nectar was rather exciting.

Edit #2: "With the Pacific off to our right"? My sense of direction was completely screwed in the states. The Pacific was off to the left as we drove north-west along the coast. I think it was a driving thing: in order to not crash into all and sundry other cars, I had to mentally swap left and right turns in my head. UK right turns became difficult, or US left, turns. UK left turns became easy, or US right, turns. Hence the use of "left left" and "right left" pretty much in all our navigation.

"It's left."
"Left left or right left?"
"Right left. And then right."
"Right?"
"Uh, no. Left."

Hours of fun, and missed exits.