19 Days, 4900 Miles, 11 States, 8 National Parks & a Tornado Warning

And the USA road trip part of our travels is over… What an amazing few weeks it’s been! In the 19 days we had the car, we clocked up almost 5,000 miles and more impressively 0 speeding, parking fines or crashes – good job Kyle!

After California it was onto Vegas baby! I had been to Vegas about 8 years ago with my family so I was looking forward to visiting again and taking advantage of true Vegas now I’m of age. As much as we were excited, we were almost just as nervous…. about our gambling tendencies in the big city. Our gambling wins once paid for us to go on a ski holiday! As tempting as it would have been to blow our daily budget in a couple of hours minutes, we were well behaved. We actually came out about $100 on top. I say we, but it was Kyle that did the winning to cover my overall losses!

It was a flying visit in Vegas as we only had 2 nights there. The weather let us down and we didn’t get the ‘lazing by a pool’ hotness that there was before and after our stay (this seems to be a reoccurring theme with the weather – read on), but we had a great few days.

Busy taking photos instead of navigating

View from the room

My winnings

Another win for Kyle

Best fountains in the world

California Dreaming

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!

Alcatraz in the distance

San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge

Sunset at Fishermans Wharf

Fishermans Wharf

Alcatraz

San Fran skyline from the boat

In the hole

San Fran Giants vs San Diego Padres

First baseball game

Mrs Doubtfire’s House

USA Road Trip Plan

With just over 4 months togo until we depart to Canada, we’ve got most things sorted for the first part of our adventure. Our jobs are pretty much sorted now, as we’ve decided to go through The Working Holiday Club. Accommodation in Whistler is included with this, so we just need to book flights once we get our start dates. Then just travel insurance and we’re good to go (I think…). With that all almost sorted, we can now start to plan our USA road trip (woohoo!)

The rough plan so far is:

1 – San Francisco – LA & California – Spend a few days there to chill out a little after a working ski season in Whistler

2 – Grand Canyon – Couldn’t go all this way and not see it

3 – Vegas Baby – A week or so to drink, gamble, relax and generally enjoy Vegas related things!

4 – Mount Rushmore – Another site we’ve got to see. Probably will be a brief visit through

5- Chicago – A few days to explore the city

6 – Michigan / Detroit – I have family there so will hopefully spend a week or so there

7 – New York, New York – A few days to enjoy the food, explore the city and hopefully catch a few sport games

8 – Washington DC – A day there before moving on just to enjoy the touristy things

9 – Toronto – I’m aware this isn’t USA, but going to hop back over the border to visit Toronto for a few days