The drive from San Fransisco included a stop at the beach in Carmel where we decided we would make some lunch as it was such a lovely little  place. We decided on artichokes and rice with a lemon butter dip for our artichoke leaves and had everything in our two pans just starting to bubble away when the gas ran out. Typical.

We put the pans of near boiling rice and artichokes in the sink and set off in search of a fuel station that fills propane gas tanks. 3 garages and 30 miles later we had gas and parked outside the garage to finish cooking our lunch, a lovely beach picnic in the van on the side of a highway wasn’t what we had in mind but its the way we roll!

With lunch out of the way we completed the last leg of our journey actually into LA. We arrived at the KOA in Santa Maria after driving 311 miles at 8pm worn out, crabby and hungry. The office had closed so the late check in board told us it was $60 to stay the night and leave at 11am. We decided it wasn’t worth it and set off to find a carpark to stay in for the night. We drove to Starbucks but the carpark was signed everywhere for no over night parking. We set off again and luckily saw a street with 3 or 4 campers parked and set up for the night so we joined them, had some cereal and crawled into bed worn to a frazzle…just another 100 miles or so and we would be there!

Apart from a crazy Mexican playing the loudest music EVER from his car at 4am whilst parking behind us, we slept really well and started on the last leg of our epic 1500 mile journey down the West Coast to LA. We stopped to buy flowers and sweets for Mike and Lisa to thank them for allowing us to take over the Vampire Lounge for Halloween, we stopped in Santa Barbara just because and we cruised into Hollywood LA at a cool 1 mile an hour in the rush hour traffic and finally made it to the Vampire lounge.

We had drinks with Mike and got excited about the up and coming wedding. We had just learned that Marino De Silva was going to be playing guitar at our wedding and we were so excited. Alex hasn’t seen Marino since he was 8 years old and was really looking forward to catching up on all the last 23 years of rock and roll stories. We met Nick, a fellow Brit at the bar too and he was promptly invited along to the wedding!

When we left the bar we realised we were 50 miles from the nearest camp-site so decided to find a side street for the night so we were local the next day for looking for our Halloween costumes. We also had a shark attackiversary party to go to so we needed to be close by.

We spent Saturday trawling costume hire shops…with the rest of LA! Bearing in mind there are 14 million people living in LA and that day they were ALL in the fancy dress shops or driving to them. It was hell on hell toast with a side of hell! Never the less we found some costumes and stood in the static queue for 20 minutes before deciding to give up and hide our costumes and go back for them on Monday. We left and got changed for the Shark Attackiversary party we had been invited to by Megan from Off Beat Bride. Kelli ( Shindig Events) from Seattle had suggested we ask her if she would mind taking some pictures at the Halloween wedding, and although Megan had other plans she invited us around all the same which was just so kind. Its so nice to be invited somewhere as complete strangers and leave as friends and this party was no exception. We had a great night celebrating Megans husband Aaron surviving a shark attack in Maui! Read all about their wedding on Off Beat Bride and if you can bear gore and bone pics ( not recommended whilst, or shortly after eating!)then click on shark attack!

Anyway, I know I am rattling on but there is so much to tell…at this party we met some great people, drank a LOT of wine, talked about sharks and weddings…mainly, were offered an apartment to stay in for a few days by Megan, made friends we will keep for life, discussed religion and Tim Minchin…oh…and we met Tim Minchins absolute double! It was a great night and I will never forget the bits of it that I can remember! We stayed in the apartment that night and spent our hangover in it the next day…we have pretty much moved in now.

See what happens next on our wedding travel adventure!