Santa Cruz (the holy cross), San Francisco (St Francis of Assissi), Sacramento (the holy sacrament).

We spent our warmest day so far in Santa Cruz, walking along its famous boardwalk, watching screaming kids on the ferris wheel, popping into the O’Neill surf shop and walking along the longest pier in California. Golden seals populate the wooden platforms below the pier and vie for prime positions. Watching these sleek swimmers try to heave themselves onto a platform while those already basking in the sun try to keep them off was the best entertainment. Later we walked along the pathway that runs along the surf beaches and saw some intrepid surfers catch waves that broke off the point near the lighthouse and ride them till they reached rocks. All the while pelicans and seagulls soared overhead.

San Francisco is a beautiful city with its famous bridge, vertiginous streets, architectually pleasing buildings and ornately painted houses. Highlights were a browse in City Lights Books and a wander through the Haight Ashbury area. The Love on Haight store, whose slogan is “whatever the question, love is the answer”, keeps the spirit of the 60s alive.

But San Francisco also has masses of noisy traffic, large numbers of homeless people and it seemed almost every resident of the city has a dog, which can make some streets unpleasant to walk along. There is also the pervasive smell of marijuana, now legalised in California, wherever you go.

Sacramento’s origins go back to the gold rush of the 19th century and the building of the Pacific Railroad, vestiges of which can be seen in the Old Town. It is now the state capital of California with large and ornate buildings, like the City Hall and the Courthouse. It is also called the city of trees, which is appropriate as the wide streets in the city centre are flanked by huge trees providing welcome shade in the heat of summer. We had excellent coffees and shared a slice of delicious corn bread in a cafe run by friendly Guatemalan migrants. But the whole city has an air of neglect and there are a large number of homeless people living in the parks and tent cities.

The surrounding areas are vast with tinder-dry fields of grass, which explain why the wild fires are so difficult to contain here. There are forests of tall pine trees and spectacular rivers, like the American River and the Truckee River, which rises in the Sierra Nevada mountains and is the sole outlet of Lake Tahoe. We saw the breathtaking mountains, which still have vestiges of snow, and deep-blue lake on a magnificent day. It was a fitting end to the Californian leg of our trip. Now onto Utah and Colorado!