After 365 days of travelling and nearly 70,000 miles, we have finally made it back home to England! We landed back at London Gatwick Airport to an emotional welcome home from our parents, who had come to meet us at the airport and it was so great to see them after such a long time away. We were soon back at Elaine’s Mum & Dad’s house, drinking our first cup of English tea for a long time, and enjoying a good bacon sandwich again to wake us up after our long flight across the pond! We’ve been back a few days now, and it is only just beginning to sink in. We’ve travelled through 15 countries, enjoying every single one, and most we would return to again as well. Somehow, we have managed to take over ... read more

Philadelphia was the only place we were going to on our round the world trip that we had already been to before. Our friends live just outside Philadelphia in a town called Plymouth Meeting, and as we were driving in, Elaine started to remember places she had been many times and it was all a kind of coming home feeling! We spent a long weekend in Plymouth Meeting, enjoying spending time with our friends talking about our adventures so far. It was great to be in a home again, and simple things like enjoying a home cooked meal and watching the baseball in the evenings were very much appreciated! On the Saturday, tropical storm Hanna, hit causing heavy rain and strong winds, there was even a tornado about 30 miles away (only a small one though), ... read more

We stayed in the town of Jackson, just south of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. It was a great little town, very much set-up for the tourist and we could easily imagine it covered in snow in the peak of the ski season. We had an awesome drive in, coming up and over the mountains, from Teton Pass, with a great view of the town from the top. We didn't have a great deal of time in the town, as we spent most of it in Grand Teton National Park, but we got some time in the evening to look around and enjoy a meal overlooking the main square. Grand Teton National Park has a stunning background of the Teton Mountain range, with forests, lakes and meadows covering the valley below, the whole area has ... read more

After leaving Yosemite, we decided to head back towards the coast of California to the area known as the Redwood Coast. This is home to some of the last remaining forests of the huge Redwood trees, and as it was pretty stunning walking through the Giant Sequoias in Yosemite, we thought we'd pay them a visit. It was a pretty long drive to get there in one day, so we stopped at a town called Redding for the night and the next day we continued our journey, but as we got out of Redding, we noticed an electronic board saying the highway we were going to take was closed due to a forest fire! Now, we had been navigating our way around America so far by using Google Maps, and then taking pictures of them on ... read more

We left the mad world of LA behind us and headed up the coast, hoping for some great weather and some gorgeous scenery. As we drove out of Santa Monica and joined the famous Highway 1, we passed Malibu and other typical Californian beach scenes on the way up to our first stop in Santa Barbara. The real spectacular section of Highway 1 was further up the coast, but Santa Barbara was supposed to be a picture perfect coastal town so seemed like the ideal place to stop. We soon found out it was also one of the best places to go whale watching, so we quickly booked ourselves on a whale watching boat for the next day. Santa Barbara is not a backpacker town in the slightest, filled with expensive restaurants and designer boutiques... home ... read more