At home in Leatherhead

and so life continues...Grace is now 7 months old..

Sausalito

After a full day of shopping we decided to spend our last day out in the bay, with an afternoon in Sausalito. The weather was getting hotter, can't believe it's time for us to head home. A year has flown by, we've seen so much and now we need to find ourselves jobs to pay off our shopping sprees!

Point Bonita and the baseball - San Francisco Giants

Just across the Golden Gate Bridge is the Marin Headlands, where Point Bonita is situated, all ships coming into the bay come through this area where they have to be navigated by professional pilots. The day we were there the wind was so strong, we were almost blown over.

Had a night at the baseball - Barry Bonds was on th verge of becoming the highest scorer of all time, even though he had only scored 2 home-runs in the whole month we were in the US, he obliged with a "homer" while we were there.

Alcatraz

You can't visit San Fran without going to Alcatraz - it's only a mile out in the bay, but it really is a world away. The audio tour brings to life what it must have been like being imprisoned there, they reckon you could hear the sound of parties and things on the mainland and even smell food being cooked there - but still they reckon no-one has survived an escape.

c

San Francisco

Arrived in San Fran and started with all the main tourist sights.

The Golden Gate Bridge - one of those sights you immediately recognise, wherever you are. Also the worlds "crookedist" street - people live on this street and have tourists sitting on their steps taking photos and cars cruising down all day.

Reno

From Tahoe we headed up to Reno to visit some friends from South Africa that moved to the US in 1989. Brett is an orthopaedic surgeon and has his own practice in Reno. Thanks to Google for putting us in contact after all these years.

We had a great lunch with Brett and Jamie, and his parents Pat and Alan.

Lake Tahoe

The drive from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe was superb. The lake is clear and blue but absolutely freezing.

Yosemite 2

What an amazing National Park - first evening we saw the first bear of the trip. He was on the river bank and then just paddled in and swam all the way across.

Did a couple of hikes, the first one almost killed us and we only made it about half the way to the top of Yosemite Falls. On our second hike, the views from the top of Glacier Point were stunning - 8.5miles later we made it to the valley floor.

Yosemite

Our romantic stay in Yosemite - not quite what we expected. An unheated canvas tent - even in our sleeping bags under about 6 blankets we were absolutely freezing! It even snowed our first night - this is supposed to be summer!!!!!!!!

End of the Coastal Drive

Getting spoilt by beautiful beaches. Found ourselves an empty beach and had a game of bat and ball (finally bought a set with only a couple of weeks of our trip remaining!)

Carmel & Pebble Beach

Carmel is a great little town - never seen so many art galleries and antique shops. Right on the doorstep is the 17-Mile Drive which loops around Pebble Beach and the famous golf course. Found our ideal home right on the water - just need to work out how to raise $28million!

Big Sur

The road up the coast from Santa Barbara to Monterey is superb. The low cloud cover and mist added to the ruggered nature of the views.

Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara is awesome. We heard one of the local residents say that the people that live here either don't work at all or work really hard. The lifestyle is superb. We hired bikes one afternoon and cruised up and down the side walk. The basket on Em's bike was particularly impressive.

Malibu Beach

Super cool surfer Steve on Mailbu beach. After the National Parks it was good to be back on the beach and on our way up the coast.

Death Valley

The lowest point in Death Valley is over 200 feet below sea level. The tempertaure in the valley was over 35 degrees. Fortunately we arrived at 3 and left at about 8 and the temperature was still really hot. The base of the valley is a salt marsh.

Grand Canyon

Well the Grand Canyon really is amazing - it's massive, over 270miles long and averages about 10miles wide.

Route 66

We used Williams on Route 66 as our base for exploring the Grand Canyon. We were really lucky as it was memorial day weekend so there was a rodeo in town. We sat with all the cowboys, drank beer and whooped with the best of them. They even had a dance off in the arena which I was tempted to join.

After a long hot day in the canyon we stopped at one of the traditiona diners for milkshakes - awesome!!

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam is pretty impressive. Nevada and Arizona and pretty dry and in many places you find lush green golf courses surrounded by dessets. The majority of the water in the area and especially for Vegas is supplied by Hoover Dam.