The road trip part of our USA travels has begun, we are now in Utah after visiting Vegas and the Grand Canyon but I’ll leave that for the next blog. I started writing this on the way to San Diego, so the next issue may be a while!
After our stop offs at Seattle and Portland, the next stop was San Francisco. We had a 21 hour bus journey from Portland to Seattle, which suprisingly wasn’t too bad, apart from a 5 hour stop at 2am in Sacramento. For the price we couldn’t really complain and it saved splashing out on a hotel for a night… every little helps when you’re on a budget!
I loved San Fran. I don’t want to make a hasty decision but it may just have made it to the top of my favorite city list…. For now! (Vancouver is now second FYI!). In the three days we were there we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, visited Alcatraz, went to the Golden Gate park, spent time at Fishermans Wharf, went to a baseball game for a bargain of £4 each and saw the house of a childhood hero of mine – Mrs Doubtfire!
We picked up our hire car in San Fran which we will have for three weeks. I’m not actually going to be driving it as I’m under 25 they were charging $25 a day extra which the budget wouldn’t stretch too. So Kyle is the designated driver for our road trip – sorry dear! The car is one of these fancy ones with air conditioning, electric windows and fully functioning doors – it’s luxury compared to what we’re used to (and it’s not bright yellow!)
The bat mobile!
From San Fran it was a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to LA. We made the scenic stops that had been recommended – Santa Cruz, Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur and then we made an overnight stay in a random beach town.
It turned out our overnight stop (San Simone) was just by a beach where Elephant Seals hang out. I’ll admit it didn’t sound too exciting but it was amazing. There were literally hundreds of seals for miles on the beach…
Our next quick stop enroute was Morro Bay, which we didn’t know but there was a huge car show going on that day. The next overnight stop we made was in another beach town called Ventura – again not planned so just stayed at the cheapest available motel, which is working out pretty well.
The next day we headed to Hollywood for a flying visit, before making a stop at Newport beach (The O.C fans will understand why we had to go there!)
San Diego was the next planned stop we had for a couple of days. I say planned, we haven’t booked accommodation in advance but we ended up at our cheapest motel yet and it was by far the best – wifi that actually works, clean room & a free breakfast (we’re still living off the muffins we took…)
Thanks California, we had a blast! Next up – Las Vegas, Gran Canyon then a drive through Utah & Wyoming to visit some of the national parks.
Our Big Fat North America Travel Adventure! 
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