Blogs from California, United States, North America - page 1159

Death Valley is nothing but rocks, dirt and beauty. During our visit the temperature usually ascended into the 90s as we descended into our air conditioned trailer. We would wake up before sunrise to be able to get in some hiking before it became too hot to be out. Our first full day in Death Valley we started off as tourists and driving to some of the usual sites. We started with “The Devil’s Golfcourse”. Located in what was once a salt lakebed, then on to a drive on a 9 mile one way rough dirt road called “Artist Drive” which winds into some beautiful pastel colored hills. We saw all shades of brown, red, pink, blue & greens thanks to the different mineral deposits. It looks as if someone splashed huge buckets of paint on ... read more

Our last day and I feel rough. My body has taken some serious abuse these last two weeks but that is the trade off you gotta make. It feels strange to be back in San Francisco like this. I have done this before when I stopped off in Bangkok for a few days on my way back home from New Zealand at the end of my Asian Odyssey. What to do? Really you should take it all in, visit somewhere you previously didn't have time to visit, do something really iconic. But I can't, because I'm tiring and it's still bloody hot so I grab a coffee, a Gatorade and some kettle chips from the shop next door, like I have done on many a morning whilst over here, and bed down in the common room ... read more

I assume we made back a little of the sleep debt we had been gradually building up over the week, but Nathan ensured that any hopes of pushing our accounts back into credit remained unfulfilled. He did this by being very audibly active; doing nothing very much in particular as far as I could tell, except repetitively exiting and then, moments later, re-entering the room again before adjusting the curtains to let in an irritating amount of light. I couldn't take much of this so very quickly took the opportunity to jump in the shower before the other two similarly lost patience with this charade and contemplated doing the very. A good call, because it gave me precious moments to acquaint myself with the surroundings whilst Max and Charles got on with their morning ablutions. Then ... read more

As was inevitable we got up very late that Saturday. It was to be our last day (or Max & Charlie at least) in San Francisco, for tomorrow we were due to hit the road. Time for some dignified sight-seeing then. The North Beach area of San Francisco look out towards Alcatraz & The Golden Gate Bridge. The water front has a slightly faux-old world feel on one hand and is a bit tacky on the other, but knowing how these things go it could be a hell of a lot worse. The area is clean and had the weather not been so untypically blithe for that time of year we may have been able to save the couple of hours walk it took us to get to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge by ... read more

The plan from the outset was to make my two week stay in the USofA a kind of journey. Max and Charlie were involved in their own American Odyssey that was to last in excess of two months and would take in about 4 different states. They had been to Mardi Gras and hung out in Houston and now they were here with us in California. From San Francisco they had no fixed plan but they did have the very distinct possibility of hooking up with more friends in L.A. in a couple of weeks time. Nathan and I were to be their travelling partners in the meantime and it was sort of accepted that Vegas was probably going to be involved at some juncture. To aid in the planning of all this Max and Charlie ... read more