Journey home!

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Packed all the bags and headed for the airport at San Francisco. Had a good journey and it was strange to be back in California with their huge roads and countryside of orange groves, almonds and nectarines. Passed the gigantic Altamont Pass Wind Farm which has 4900 wind turbines! And that is not the largest wind farm! Was strange to be back amongst greenery and towns after all our trips in the wilderness. Had a good journey and arrived at the airport in time, said goodbye to the lovely car and checked our bags in which caused a shock as we suddenly had five bags! And they wanted to charge us $60 for the extra one. I had forgotten that we packed an extra bag to carry into the hotels with us. Had a mad scramble to re pack everything into four bags and keep them all below 23kg, but with the help of lots of hand luggage we made it! Had a great flight home, it was amazing how quickly 9 hours goes and i only got up from my seat once! Watched Date night which was really funny and I love you Phillip Morris with Jim Carey which wasn’t that good. The meal was nice but not as nice as on the way out. Got back to overcast England (had almost forgotten what those skies looked like) about 11.15am which was about 3.00 am American time. Peter picked us up and we finally got home at 3.15pm. Relived lots of our adventures with Mum and Dad. My legs were still killing me and i could still barely walk, i am glad Yosemite was the last stage of our holiday! We were shattered and went to bed at 8.00. Was hard to believe that we had been away for three weeks and were back home and that we had done it all without any major problems. What a fantastic holiday!

Some final thoughts..........
Would we do it again? 100% yes, but there are other wonders of the world to see....

Do we wish we had done it earlier? Pre children yes, but this was a perfect time for the boys as they were old enough to appreciate this sort of trip.

Would we do it any other way? No. One of the thrills was the beautiful places we stayed in and it was nice not to worry about where we were going to stay and what it was going to be like. The one night we had nothing booked we stayed in a lovely motel for $45 which was much cheaper than all the hotels we had stayed in so we could have saved ourselves some money, but i am glad we did what we did. We could have done with more time at every place we went to but that is the nature of touring. There are loads of things i wished we had done but nothing i wished we hadn’t done (apart from falling off my bike)! We loved the Hampton Inn range of hotels, mainly because of the lovely breakfasts and would consider booking it all ourselves using this range, but Thomas Cook did a good job for us and took away a lot of the worry.

What would we do differently? Not pack so many clothes, we took far too much and only wore half of it, and not get knocked off my bike, my thumb is still sore!

What was our favourite hotel? For me the Best Western Grand at Bryce Canyon because of the luxurious beds, for the boys the Yavapi Lodge at the Grand Canyon because of their individual beds and for Andy the Hampton Inn at Santa Clarita, Los Angeles .

What was our favourite meal? For me the first meal at IHOP because of the lovely pudding, for Andy the meal at the Outback and for the boys the eat as much as you like at Sea world!

What was our favourite place? For me, Andy and Nick, The Grand Canyon and for Steve Las Vegas. But it was very hard to pick out a firm favourite as we loved everything.

Thankyou for reading my blogs and i hope for some of you it has helped you relive it and for others made you eager to go yourselves.....and it wasn't true that all we did was eat, but we do enjoy our food!

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