California continued

After leaving Bakersfield we headed to Joshua Tree National Park. A pretty awesome sight of huge boulders of stone and prickly looking Joshua trees that seem almost like they belong to another world, awaited us.

We stayed there a couple of nights doing some nice walks and looking at the San Andreas Fault where the next huge earthquake is sure to hit. In fact, on our drive through some incredibly barren land to reach Joshua Tree there was an earthquake in the region which reached 5.2 on the Richter scale. Whilst there we also checked out the very pretty Chula cactus garden.

Next we headed to Las Vegas, with mixed expectations, but I don't think anything can quite prepare you for it.

We stayed in an RV park about a 20 minute bus ride from the strip and were quite glad to escape the craziness happening on the streets there day in day out. It's surreal, people do actually just sit at the slot machines all day eating and drinking, they even have gambling whilst sitting at the bars. We even saw an old lady fully hooked up with some kind of breathing device playing the slots. The darkened windows in all of the casinos also meant you couldn't tell what time of day it was. The strangest thing for us was the smoking indoors and the drinking on the streets. It appears that everybody goes there to seriously let their hair down, and they walk around with yard glasses filled with cocktails all day long. We found that strolling around without entering the casinos was impossible as you were constantly directed into the casinos.

We did have the best beef burger we've ever tasted there, after a 1.5 hour walk along the strip (it really is that big) we had a Kobe beef burger in the Mandalay hotel and it was well worth the walk. Whilst there we also headed to the Hoover dam.

After four days there we were well and truly Vegased-out and decided to head for Death Valley for a reality check. The roads leading there were unbelievable; 20 miles of road heading straight into the mountains with mirages just about everywhere we turned. Staying in Death Valley was an experience, the landscape was fascinating; sand dunes, strange rock formations etc.

That night we were a little scared as our RV rocked back and forth in an almighty sandstorm. The following day we headed out of the sandstorm and into lush vegetation and rain, California really is one of the most landscape diverse places we've ever been to. Driving through the Lake Isabella area was spectacular, and after the van survived near break failure on the relentlessly steep roads we made it back to Bakersfield.

From there we headed to Sequoia National Park, which again was totally different to anything else we had seen in California. We stayed on a beautiful reservoir chatting to the local ranger and getting some good camping tips for the coast. We saw General Sherman, the oldest tree in the world; he was spectacular.

General Sherman

In fact the Sequoia trees were absolutely breathtakingly huge and beautiful with their red bark and fearsome resistance to fire. We were pretty high up by this point so had hit snow, which started to give us pangs of desire to go skiing again. Oh well, you can't have it all.

Next we headed to the coast to meet up with mum and Nick, something I had been looking forward to for a long time. We spent the next week with them cruising along the coastline from Monterey to San Diego. We went Whale watching in Monterey and saw some pretty cool Risso dolphins as well as a grey whale, and loads of highly entertaining sea lions.

The next day we managed to time our arrival in a place called Lugana Seca perfectly to see the Sea Otter Classic mountain bike event, Marc even managed to demo a bike for free so was pretty happy. Lots of bbqs and wine was consumed over the next few days as we headed through Carmel (a Stepford wives type place) and down the Big Sur coastal road via Morro Bay and towards Santa Barbara. We stayed in a cute place called Carpenteria and went for a really good meal; ribs to die for. Heading south we then stayed in Ventura for a couple of nights. Ventura is one of my favorite places in California so far, it's a surf town with a really nice friendly vibe to it. Marc bought a surfboard, and the four of us hired tandems and ate fish and chips on the beach.

Sunbathing Elephant Seals

The happy boy and his surboard












Next we headed through the metropolis that is LA, stopping for a Mexican breakfast along the way, and headed just South of San Diego (we were virtually in Mexico by this point). We stayed for a couple of days, doing some wine tasting in a surreal Western themed town called Julian where we also had the most divine apple pie/crumble; it's famous for it, so it had to be done!

Nick had already finished his....

A spot of shopping in the Gas Lamp area of San Diego followed. After numerous bbq's, copious amounts of wine and rum, and a number of cigars had been consumed we bid our goodbyes as mum and Nick headed back to San Francisco.