We left the Redwoods on Christmas eve and continued south to our Christmas location of choice: Healdsburg, California. It’s in a region famous for wine production, adjacent to the world famous Napa Valley.

Being Christmas, all of the wineries were closed. In fact on Christmas day everything was closed except McDonalds. So we chose McDonalds for Christmas lunch. That’s two Christmases in a row we’ve been on the road. Last year we were in Longreach, Queensland.

Even without the wineries and wine tasting it was still good to chill out in a hotel for a couple of nights after being on the move for quite a while. We enjoyed strolling around and checking out the town. Healdsburg we found to be quite nice but it’s inundated with pompous middle aged women.

On boxing day we took off for San Francisco, passing through Napa on the way. San Francisco was really busy with Americans on their Christmas holidays. It was really crowded. We waited ages to jump on the tram and we were jammed in there like sardines. A highlight was the sea lions at the wharf. There were heaps of them and they were really noisy and active. We enjoyed watching them for a while. Driving through San Francisco, we played a game of “spot the Prius.” There’s many hybrid vehicles in San Francisco since the people are so progressive. We made friends with some students who were staying in the same accommodation as us. They came with us for a drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and climbing up some San Francisco hills. We would later see them again when we returned to Los Angeles at the end of our trip.