Chloe and Paul

Yesterday we woke up to sweltering hot sunshine and set off to find something for breakfast. There was a little breakfast cafe just up the road from the hotel which was good. We left Morro Bay and headed south for Los Angeles. We passed some fabulous scenery along the way and found a place called Carpinteria where we stopped for a while on the beach and had some lunch. While we were walking to the beach Chloe discovered, much to her amusement, that I had left one of the stickers on the back of my new jeans. After lunch we made the final part of our journey to LA. We found our hotel, for the next four days, in amongst the traffic congestion. To kill some time in the evening we found a shopping mall which ... read more

Today we were woken up by the sound of a Helicopter hovering outside our hotel window at 8.00am. I opened the curtains to see it slowly disappearing down between the two buildings opposite us. It then reappeared with some construction equipment slung below which it then placed on top of one of the buildings. After breakfast we ventured out to explore San Francisco. Our first experience was 'Crazy Street' where every 5 yards there appeared another crazy person, people talking or singing to themselves, people shouting at themselves or somebody else. There were people standing on the pavement selling absolutely anything!! One woman was standing there with a packet of Kellogs rice krispies in her hand which she was trying to sell. Every street corner had some sort of street entertainer on it including one man ... read more

Today we set of for the Sequoia national park to see the giant redwood trees. We left Barstow and headed towards Bakersfield passing through one of the biggest windfarms we have ever seen. Bakersfield was full of oil fields and not very interesting. From Bakersfield we headed north towards the park. We entered the park and immediately saw signs warning us that the Bears are wild animals and should not be approached. Ten minutes later while negotiating some tight bends in the park we spotted a large black bear about 40 feet from the road. We stopped the car and got out to take some photos, the bear was totally uninterested in our presence even after we shouted to try and make it look towards the camera. It stayed in sight for a couple of minutes ... read more

Today we left Vegas and started our 260 mile drive to The Grand Canyon. Our first stop on the Way was to visit Hoover Dam. As you can see from the photos the water level is extremely low at the moment and has been for some time. We left Hoover Dam and made our way south to the town of Kingman, where we stopped at Popeyes for some chicken and biscuits! After lunch we headed east along I40 towards the town of Williams. The scenery along the way changed from desert to mountains, mountains to forest and back to desert. At Williams we turned onto SR64 which leads to The Grand Canyon. We arrived at our hotel at about 5pm which gave us enough time to check in and then drive to the canyon to catch ... read more

Today we visited Universal studios. The weather was fabulous but the park wasn't very crowded so we didn't have to queue to get on any of the rides. We did the studio tour and saw lots of film sets. Chloe was petrified by the Van Helsing haunted house. We went on the city walk and did some shopping and ended up going to see the Borat movie, which was one of the funniest films we've seen.... read more