Our last few days in California took us back to the coast with our starting point at Monterey, (home of the world renowned ‘Jazz Festival’ which we missed by a mere two days…bollocks!) and from there working our way down to Santa Barbara just north of Los Angeles along the amazing Highway 1. From our base at the Comfort Inn Monterey… we explored the historic and extremely affluent seaside port of Monterey, home of the California state capitol until the 1850’s and at one time the most important sea port on the West coast. In more recent years the town boasted [View Full Entry]

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California really has got it all… beautiful beaches, rolling hills, lush farmland and last but certainly not least, some fantastic parks. In our Grand Tour de Cali we decided to visit as many of these as possible. After exploring the redwoods on the Northern coast, we ventured further inland to one of the nation’s most famous national parks, Yosemite. After that it was not far to Kings Canyon and Sequoia. None failed to disappoint! Yosemite Park is too huge and too impassable to explore it all, so we did what most of the 30 million annual visitors do and headed straight [View Full Entry]

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Now you may have heard, as we had, that San Francisco is possibly the most beautiful city in the world… Now, not willing to just take someone else’s word for it, we thought we should devote a good few days to discovering for ourselves what all the fuss is about. Throughout our time in the Bay Area, we discovered a thriving and cosmopolitan city with sweet surprises aplenty around every corner…and we are not just talking about the chocolate! Here a few of our favorite things about San Francisco… The Houses - If you have a bit of a thing [View Full Entry]

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Never being one to pass up a glass of wine, our arrival at the Sonoma and Napa Valley regions was akin to landing in paradise. Ahead of us lay 2 full days of sampling the best that the USA has to offer, and if you believe the California hype…possibly the best in the whole world, although I suspect the French may have something to say about that… Now, I could go into great lengths describing the outstanding natural beauty this area of California has to offer, the glorious rolling hills, the amazingly lush valleys filled to the brim with carefully [View Full Entry]

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After a glorious couple of days at Crater Lake, we set off driving South and finally crossed into California. It was quite a momentous occasion to reach the West Coast at last. We joined winding Highway 101, the Coast Road, and looked forward to seeing some sun, sand and the Pacific…good old sunny California right?! No no, that’s Southern California. We quickly learned that Northern California is much different, at least near the coast that is. The entire area was shrouded in fog…Not just a light fog that you might see in the morning that quickly dissipates by noon; no this [View Full Entry]

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Hello again, the really interesting geologist is back, with two more natural wonders to thrill you with! The two epic craters in the title refer to ‘The Craters of the Moon’ National Monument and the ‘Crater Lake National Park’. Both of these marvels have two things in common… 1. We went to both of them 2. They were both created by volcanic activity Another interesting fact is that both of them may well erupt again in a cataclysmic nature in the future, but only one of them is currently classified as an active site…read on and I will reveal the [View Full Entry]

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Finally after the seemingly endless journey across Wyoming, and South Dakota before that, we reached our first major national park, Yellowstone, whose beauty and grandeur we had been greatly anticipating. We entered the park through the East entrance and as we drove across the park to our campground in West Yellowstone, we soon realized that Yellowstone is a park with two faces. Over the next 4 days as we made our way around the park’s figure eight loop road, we came to experience the many diversities of the mighty Yellowstone and we encountered both the Beauty and the Beast. The [View Full Entry]

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Our journey from the Black Hills to Yellowstone was quite a long one so it required a couple of stop-offs along the way. Our first night in Wyoming was in the small town of Buffalo. We stayed in a nice little cabin in the KOA campground there, had dinner out at the one local restaurant that was open on a Monday, and that was pretty much it. Our next night however, in Cody, Wyoming, was much more exciting… Cody likes to brand itself as a proper little Western town; it’s the former home of Western hero, Buffalo Bill Cody. Now there [View Full Entry]

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After spending the morning in the Badlands, we continued our journey West through South Dakota to our next KOA campground in Hot Springs. With temperatures soaring to near 100F, we were not looking forward to setting up camp in the heat. Fortunately this campground had a nice pool (with no kids at the time) so once the work was done a cool dip sorted us right out! The next day we intended to drive North through Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park to Mount Rushmore which was about 50 miles away. In the end, we took so long driving [View Full Entry]

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First in this trio of wonders is ‘The Badlands’, and take it from me, this place is like nothing else on earth. Many a poet has tried to encapsulate the awe of this place into words…all have failed miserably as words alone cannot describe or prepare you for the sheer weirdness of this unique natural spectacle. The experts consider The Badlands to be a pocket sized version of the Grand Canyon, although we can’t confirm that as yet…if the Grand Canyon is even half as impressive as The Badlands we are certain to experience geological perfection. Without meaning to sound like [View Full Entry]

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