Jen and Chris

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 one of the largest sardine fleets in the world until for some unknown reason the catch dried up and the town reinvented itself into its current incarnation, as a wealthy seaside resort. The old fisheries ... read more

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 for real estate, and like to go around looking at other peoples houses like we do…dreaming about the future mansion that you will one day own… then like us, you will truly love San Francisco. ... read more

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 was a thick, dense fog that rolls in off the ocean and looms over all day and night like a giant grey blanket, sometimes dropping down some mist on you just for good measure. So ... read more

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 Beauty Yellowstone Park is a place of natural wonder and majestic beauty. Rolling hills and mountains, raging rivers and waterfalls, luscious fields and forests… Yellowstone has it all! The enormous Yellowstone Lake occupies the Southeastern ... read more

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 through the parks and pulling off at every opportunity that we had to save Rushmore for the next day. Wind Cave NP sits atop the Wind Cave, which is one of the longest and most ... read more