Vegas

Vegas was awesome! We stayed off the strip at a nice hotel and with a $7 24 hour bus pass getting to and from the strip was easy.

We spent our first afternoon sightseeing and we managed to get cheap tickets for two Cirque du Soliel shows. We went and saw Mystere and Zumanity.

Our second day was spent sightseeing and enjoying $15 (32 Oz) slushies - yum!

On our last day we went to the Grand Canyon. It was a ten hour round trip and although the view was stunning I'm not entirely sure it was worth it. However, I am glad that I did it. From Vegas it's straight to Anaheim where we spend two days at Disneyland.

Big Sur

The Big Sur was the final driving leg of our trip. We hiked the Big Sur National park and spent the night in Santa Maria. We then got up early and headed into L/A. After checking into our hostel we only had a few hours to spend in Los Angeles so we caught the new Batman film. Next stop Vegas!

We

Monterey Bay and Carmel

Monterey Bay was only a short drive from Santa Cruz. After checking into our hotel we went down to Cannery Row for breakfast. Lucky we only ordered two as the portions were huge and it was enough to feed four of us.

After that we checked out the Moneterey Bay Aquarium. I'm a huge fan of aquarium's and I really liked this one. They had quite a few shows to choose from. Our favourite was feeding time in the open sea. They had this giant tank with 18,000 (I kid you not) silver mackeral - think Find Nemo. They feed them and it was amazing to watch them swarm around the food and avoid the other fish/predators in the tank.

In the afternoon we went kyaking in the bay. It was a lot of fun as we were able to watch the sea lions and otters on the rocks surrounding the wharves. There were also a few curious sea otters that came up near the kayaks.

On our next day in Monterey Bay we drove over to Carmel and hiked the Point Lobos National Park.

San Francisco Day 2 and Santa Cruz

Yesterday we did a tour through the Napa Wine Valley. The tour stopped at three wineries and we tasted some lovely wines. I fell in love with a Dolcino Red which was the first sweet red that I had ever tried. I also found an ingenious wine opener that lets you reseal the bottle which is perfect for me as Paul doesn't drink wine.

For our last day in San Francisco we walked around Golden Gate park and spent the afternoon shopping. We saw some really cool houses on our walk around the city.

Today we got up early and headed out to San Francisco airport to pick up our rental car. From there it was a short drive to Santa Cruz. We spent the morning wandering the board walk which had an amusement park along the beach. We didn't go on any rides as we are saving that for Universal Studios and Disneyland. We then did a short walk along cliff drive and watched the local surfers and sea lions. Tomorrow we are off to Monterey Bay and Carmel for two days.

Avenue of the Giants and a long drive down the coast

Our first stop today was Avenue of the Giants, which was an hour south of Eureka. This is another national park that is famous for its giant redwoods.

We did a short hike and saw a tree that had previously held the record for being the largest tree in the world until it was knocked down by another tree. We took photo's in front of the base and as you can see it is massive.

After this we got on the road around 9.30am and spent the rest of the day driving. Normally this would be a long and tiring drive but it was absolutely beautiful so the time passed quickly. Some parts of the drive were a little nerve wracking as there was some tight curves and sections of the road where you drive on a cliff with no guard rails.