California - The Golden State
Our hostel in LA was smack bang in the middle of Hollywood, but not up
to much unfortunately (bring back Hwy 808). As we only had a day we
took a magical bus ride (Danielle is actually obsessed, this was the
second time she'd done this particular one!) around Hollywood, Beverly Hills etc. Despite having the binoculars out on 'Beckham watch' we didn't
see him anywhere (probably because he was in the UK at time!). We hopped
off at The Farmers Market and a beautiful outdoor mall, all decorated
for Christmas - very odd 30 deg heat!
The day FINALLY (James was getting very very excited at this point)
arrived to pick up the RV - another eventful journey on LA's public
transport meant we were an hour late! The RV was in reasonable nick
considering it was 7yrs old, and James tells me it felt like driving a 40ft truck! It was also soooooo rattley we couldn't hear ourselves think! We immediately hit the road on highway one to santa barbara, which was
beautiful. Our first night was spent parked up at the pismo beach rv park, and was rather cold as there were no hook ups and our rv didn't have a generator! But was free as we left at 0730 in the morning (James woke early and decided to start driving!).
We drove up highway 1, through the Big Sur, stopping for a couple of
beautiful overnight parking locations such as Walmart in Marina and Park
and Ride in San Francisco! Haha! San Francisco is a beautiful city. We did some shopping for 'comfy RV clothing' at Abercrombie (namely Tracky bottoms and sweatshirts!), queued for ages and took the rather crammed tram to Fisherman's Wharf where we took a $10 boat ride around the Bay to Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge - which was HILARIOUS as it was so foggy that we were under the bridge and couldn't see it for toffees! Well worth it! It was fre-fre-freezing as well! Back in the RV we had a gourmet meal of half burnt half uncooked pizza!
From SF we drove to Yosemite National Park where we treated ourselves
to a full RV hook-up (getting to know thew lingo!) which meant we had
heating! We actually stayed just outside of the park in Groveland - went
for a run in the forest (are you proud of me mummy?!), did some sit ups
and looked out for bears! The following day we drove into the park
proper, stayed with 100s of other RVers in a campground and set out on the search for bears! It was really dry so no waterfalls to speak of, it
WAS beautiful, although not the most beautiful place we've been to. No
bears spotted either, but the Ansel Adams gallery made up for that (for
me anyway!). Luckily the Hwy 120 which is usually closed due to snow at this time of year, was open so we were able to drive the whole way through the park. Had slight smokey brake syndrome on the way down the mountains - we had to stop for a carrot break until they cooled down!
We stopped at the gorgeous Mono Lake, which I remember going to with my
rents a few years ago - a very odd place, reminded us of Bolivia
actually!
The small town of Bishop was our next, and last, RV stop as it decided
to conk out on us - the guy at the Ford dealership said it sounded like
the transmission had gone and would need replacing!!!! Typically it
was Thanksgiving the next day so it wouldn't have been fixed for a few
days - we could either wait around in sleepyville or pick up a car for
free in Las Vegas, we chose the latter and picked up a hire car to drive
ALL the way (5hrs through mountains and desert) to LV and then all the
way back as the car company wouldn't hire one way!! What a day that
was! Needless to say we were both knackered and very disappointed to have
to leave the RV that we had grown to love like a child!
Thanksgiving was spent packing up our little ford Focus (OMG we have already accumulated so much stuff!), driving 40miles to Mamouth to drop off the car and getting to Death Valley. DV was so beautiful, I had a major paddy (tears and all) because I couldn't capture it on camera and my tripods broken! The moutains were such a weird colour - red, yellow, blue! Incredible! Of course we didn't book a hotel so poor James had to drive to Vegas that night too...but that's another state, so you'll have to wait for the next installment for that story!
