The drive to San Diego is long – 353miles to be precise but it’s an interesting route and worth driving to experience the changes across the deserts. Going across the state line with California, the deserts are quite mountainous with large flat plans intersecting them. Then where the state line borders with Mexico at Yuma, the desert […]

We didn’t want to leave the Canyon and so ventured out on our final day to the eastern end where we viewed the gorges from the ‘Mather Point’ and the expanse of the area known as the Painted Desert that runs eastwards from the Canyon and is home to the ‘Little Colorado River Canyon’ – […]

On Saturday we left behind the buzz of Vegas and made our way to Arizona, whose state line with Nevada, runs right through the middle of the Hoover Dam. It took us an hour to travel 4mls to get over the dam but the journey was worth seeing this magnificent engineering structure. What was unexpected […]

The morning drive into Las Vegas was predictable, running 160 miles across desert plains, on long straight roads and in searing heat. As we rolled into Vegas the temperature hit 112f (45c in real money) and grand buildings rose out of the desert like an oasis. We had no idea which road we were to take to […]

We arrived in Santa Barbara in the damp misty fog, Sven played golf in the damp misty fog, whilst Martha & I got cold and wet in the golf carts driving the boys around, we left Santa Barbara in the damp misty fog! We had hoped for some clearance in the weather as we drove […]

At the start of this week we visited Santa Cruz to see the seals sleeping and fighting on the wharf and to marvel at the giant Coastal Redwoods in Big Basin that have since been badly affected by fires which swept across an area of 15,000 square miles. We motored down from Silicon Valley to the Monterey Peninsula. Arriving […]

This backpacking marlarky is easy!! After an upgrade to BA First Class (many thanks to BA overbooking & Caroline, our personal T5 manager) we thoroughly enjoyed our flight to San Francisco, landed safely and smoothly in the heart of the city and WE LOVE SAN FRANCISCO!!! Our arrival was very smooth, despite Sven trying very hard […]