We headed up to Melrose Avenue and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for a night out. A great night was had by all and we all ended up back at the Orbit hostel until 5 in the morning.

The bars on Sunset Boulevard were mainly grungy rock type - not our cup of tea but good none the less.

Have a look at the piccies...

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Part 2

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Jonny and Carla kindly sorted us out tickets for Universal Studios - cheers guys!

So, whilst in LA, we headed up there. We both had a great day and saw some amazing special effects and shows.
We took a tour of the Back Lot, where they still film TV shows and films, and they were filming the sequel to 'Meet the Parents' - 'Meet the Fockers'. Sadly, we didn't see Ben Stiller or anyone from the set.

Here's the pictures - Part 1 and Part 2.

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After our drive down Highway 1, we ended up in Santa Monica. We stayed at the HI hostel and planned to stay here for 2 weeks, so we could sort the van out and get it sold.

Met some great people whilst we've been here and had a great time seeing all the sights.

Here's the pictures...

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Just thought we'd add a few more piccies, whilst we're waiting for our flight at LAX. (Thanks to Air China's wireless connection!).

We drove down Highway 1 (aka Big Sur) from San Francisco to Santa Monica. We did it over 2 days and had a night in Santa Barbara along the way.

Fantastic scenery and it was a great drive along the Pacific Ocean.

(Click on 'Read More' for the pix)

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We didn't book the tickets for Alcatraz enough in advance, so we had a take a combined city tour and Alcatraz excursion. Cost us an extra $30 each, but it was the only way we'd see Alcatraz.

We both had visions of this dark and mysterious island in the middle of choppy waters. It's not! It was a really nice day and Alcatraz looked like a holiday island. It's only a mile from the Pier, so you can pretty much see right over to it on a clear day. I'd imagine, if it was a dark and dingy day it may look a bit more spooky.

Here's the pictures...

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We took a cable car through San Francisco. I managed to make a couple of little movies on the camera.

You can download them here :-

Movie 1 - 3 Mb / 10 seconds.

Movie 2 - 8.2 Mb / 29 seconds.

Movie 3 - 15 Mb / 54 seconds.

There's also a few pictures here from the cable car ride and of Ghiradelli Square.

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San Francisco - Part 2

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Sunday 11th July

We'd booked the HI Fishermans Wharf to stay at, whilst we were in San Francisco. Great hostel!
Ideally located for Fishermans Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge and in a very safe residential area.
They also have free WiFi internet, which made me go out and buy a laptop!

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From Rachel, Nevada are next stop would be San Francisco. It's quite a drive, so we had a night in Lee Vining next to Mono Lake and then took the 66 mile scenic Tioga Pass through the beautiful Yosemite National Park.
At 9945 feet, Tioga Pass is California's highest road and you see some spectacular scenery. Not for the faint hearted as there are sheer cliff drops and hair pin corners. It certainly tested my driving skills!
I'd love to drive through on a Harley or a nice sports car. The van did really well and I was glad of the 5.7 V8 engine, to get us up some of them hills.

Tioga Pass is only open on average, for 5 months of the year, due to the weather up there. Snow and ice closes the road during late Autumn (Fall), Winter and early Spring.

Here's the pictures...

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[ Friday 9th July ]

From Las Vegas, we went to Hoover Dam. You can't imagine that 70 years ago it was built and it was completed a year ahead of schedule!
It was and still is one of the greatest engineering projects in the world.

It's 700 feet from the foundation at the bottom, to the road on the crest of the dam. That's some drop!

Take a peek at the pictures...

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100 miles north of Las Vegas, is the tiny place of Rachel. Located in the middle of an arid desert and next to the US Military facility of Groom Lake, also known as 'Area 51'.
As we headed down Route 375, the "Extraterrestrial Highway", tumbleweeds and 'dust devils' crossed our path every now and again on our way into Rachel.

Rachel has a population of 67, at the last count. You can imagine our tiny it looks in the middle of the desert!

We stayed at the famous Little A' Le' Inn, which featured in one of Louis Thereoux's Weird Weekends. There's a cafe, souvenir shop and bar here, as well trailers to rent for the night. We actually stayed in 'Trailer 51', which was the one Louis stayed in!

Click on the 'Read More' link.

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Part 2 of the Las Vegas pictures.


Part 2

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Monday 5th July - Friday 9th July

Today should've been spent in bed. Instead, a 3 hour drive to Las Vegas in 110 degree heat!
Finally made it Las Vegas and found our hotel - New York, New York - across from MGM Grand on the Strip.
Fantastic hotel, with gorgeous rooms and great facilities.

Forget the hotel!!! Where's the casino? After freshening up, we headed down to the casino. After about 10 minutes on a slot, I'd won $80 (£35)! Winner! This is gonna be a good week in Vegas, me thinks.
Needless to say, the whole lot and probably more went back into the bloody things.

We decided to head out onto the Strip and see if my luck would work in other casinos. Nope, it didn't.

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We were thinking of staying in Flagstaff for the 4th of July weekend, but decided to head over to Lake Havasu City instead, as it's closer to Las Vegas which was our next port of call.

Lake Havasu is famous for the London Bridge. Yeah, there's a London Bridge in the middle of the Arizona desert!
Millionaire chainsaw salesman, Robert McCullough, bought the bridge of London council in the 60's for $2.5 million. He had it shipped across from London, piece by piece. Each of the bricks are numbered, so they could put it back together easier. You can actually see the numbers!!

It was over 100 degrees every day there, with no breeze to call you down at all. This was the hottest we'd been since our trip started.

Our RV park, Havasu Falls, had a pool so we stayed in that most of the time to stay cool.

Sunday was July 4th, so we headed into the town and had a gorgeous meal at The London Arms Pub.

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From Flagstaff, we took a day trip down to Sedona. Sedona, is a beautiful place with spectacular red rock formations.

Driving down Highway 89 into Sedona, you take some serious hairpins and downhill runs through canyons, along Oak Creek and you see some amazing scenery.
The route has been voted one of America's most scenic drives.

Here's the pictures...

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We decided to push the boat out and take an hour trip in a plane over the Grand Canyon. We got a good deal with Air Grand Canyon and drove up to the Grand Canyon airport at Tusayan. The trip up to the airport was excellent as we drove through Coconino National Forest.

We were flying in a small Cessna plane, which seated 4 as well the pilot. Our pilot, Bo, was great and really friendly.

It was a very bumpy flight to start off with, due to the winds. About 20 minutes into the flight, Joo was reaching for the sickbag! The plane was really bobbing about in the winds.
To be honest, I wasn't feeling too good afterwards either.

Grand Canyon was fantastic and to get the full scale of it, you really need to see it from above. We had a great, albeit nauseous time!

Here's the pictures....

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Just outside of Flagstaff on Interstate 40, a meteor travelling at 40,000 miles per hour, crashed into the earth 50,000 years ago. (I don't think the I-40 was there then.)
It made a pretty big hole in the ground - 550 feet deep and 2.5 mile in circumference!

The hole is actually privately owned by the Barringer family and they have added a visitors center and museum. There is however, an astronomical entrance fee of $12. Quite a lot to see a whole in the ground!
If you are in the area, it is worth a visit though, to see the Meteor Crater.

Here's the pictures...

PS. Lee did actually brush his hair that day, it was just extremely windy up there.

(Joo, it needs cutting! You're not on a year off from cutting mine!)

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From Santa Rosa, we did a loop through Las Vegas (the other one in New Mexico), Santa Fe and then down into Albuquerque. Between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, we were driving through a really bad storm. Luckily, by the time we got to the RV park in Albuquerque, it had passed.
We woke the next day, to find out there was a tornado that had touched down and took a few roofs off, just 30 minutes after we'd passed it!! Very lucky indeed!

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Part 2 of the Santa Rosa pictures. Yep.... more cars!!

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Next stop - Santa Rosa, New Mexico

This is home to the Route 66 Auto Museum and what a museum it is! Full of old american classic cars and signs from yesteryear.
Ran by Bozo Cordova, his collection of cars is outstanding!

Another Route 66 landmark is Joseph's Club Cafe, which closed in 1991. The building is no longer there, but the legend of the 'Fat Man' lives on at Joseph's Bar and Grill.

Santa Rosa is also home to the 'Blue Hole'. It's 81 feet and has a stable temperature of 61 degrees F.
The water itself is a deep, clear blue, with visibility up to 80 feet and is a mecca for divers who go to train.

There's loads of pictures from the museum, so I've spilt them into 2 pages.

Here's the first and here's the second.

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Still heading west on old Route 66, we stayed the night in Tucumcari, New Mexico at the famous Blue Swallow Motel.

Serving wearing travellers since the 1930's, the motel is the only continuosly operated motel on the old 'Mother Road'.
Recently restored to its former neon glory, the rooms are charming and they also have their own little garage complete with vintage road signs.

There's not much else in Tucumcari other than the local museum.

Here's the pictures...

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Heading west on old Route 66, we stopped in Adrian (Texas) for lunch at the Midpoint Cafe. So called, as it's exactly midpoint between Chicago and Los Angeles. 1,139 miles from Chicago and 1,139 miles to Los Angeles!

Here's the pictures...

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Cadillac Ranch, located just outside of Amarillo, was the brainchild of Stanley Marsh 3 (the third) in 1974.
Stanley Marsh made is fortune from helium and the he ten graffiti-covered cadillacs are half-buried, nose-down, facing west "at the same angle as the Cheops' pyramids."

It's a very bizarre thing to have in a corner of a field. People are allowed in the field 24/7 and are encouraged to spraypaint the cars as much as they like.
We forgot our paint on this occasion.

Here's the pictures...

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Apparently, if you're driving down Route 66 into Amarillo, a visit to the Big Texan is a must. So we did!

The 'Big Texan' is home to world famous 'free' 72oz steak. It's free, so long as you can it, as well as a baked potato, salad and shrimp cocktail within an hour. Oh, and everyone in the restaurant watches while you eat.
30,000 people have tried to eat it and only 4,800 have eaten it since 1960! I wimped out and had the girly 16oz steak. Definately, the best steak I have ever had.

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The Panhandle Plains Historic Museum was excellent. It's the largest history museum in Texas and had over 3 million artifacts! We'd had enough by about the 1 million mark!

Here's the pictures, mainly of things that interested us.

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From Roswell we headed up to Canyon in Texas. Driving through utter nothingness for miles, passing the occasional 'nodding donkey' oil pump and the odd cow.

We went to Palo Duro Canyon, the Canyon is 120 miles long, as much as 20 miles wide, and has a maximum depth of more than 800 feet. Second to the the Grand Canyon as being the biggest.

We decided to stay the night down in the bottom of the canyon. It was a bit out in the sticks, but we decided to brave it just for one night.

Once we'd got parked up, we went for a short walk to see more of the canyon. Christ! There were bugs and critters of all varieties scooting about.

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From Roswell, we went down to Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains which are close to the Texas/New Mexico border.

Carlsbad Cavern is a huge cave system. One of the larger chambers near the surface once collapsed and formed a spectacular entrance. This doline is the natural entrance to the system, and it is the place of the Natural Entrance Tour, which we took.

The cave has enormous chambers, huge formations, rare speleothems and thousands of bats.
The bats leave the cave in the early sunset to feed on insects. As they have natural sonar, they can see in the dark. We just have to keep eating carrots!
Unfortunately, we didn't stay long enough to see the flight, but apparently it is an amazing spectacle.

Take a peek at the pix...

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We ventured up to Roswell, New Mexico to see whether we could spot any aliens or UFO's.
Roswell, is a strange place and they are extremely proud of their UFO and alien past. Check out the picture of the local Wal-Mart!

Roswell is famous for what is known as the 'Roswell Incident'. In the summer of 1947, there were a number ......

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Just north of San Angelo, is a place called Bradshaw. We just had to go and pay a visit!

We actually ended up missing it, as it was tiny. When we finally found it, it was an old main street, most of it boarded up, a shooting range and a massive graveyard. Maybe they aren't that good at the shooting range?
Aah well, at least we got some piccies.

We stopped off in Ballinger and had some lunch on the way back to San Angelo.

Take a peek at the pix...

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From San Antonio, we headed over to San Angelo and stayed at the Spring Creek RV park.

Nice location, right next to Lake Nasworthy. Joo had a swim in the lake and we also rented a waterbike thing.

We had a BBQ pit, so we had burgers and steaks every night sat by the lake, washed down with plenty of cold beers. Lovely!

Here's the pictures...

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After Bev and Chuck's, we started our road trip and the first port of call was San Antonio, Texas.

We took a river boat ride and also went to the Alamo.

Here's the pictures...

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From Bev and Chuck's we took a day trip down to the beach at Galveston and a ferry ride over to Bolivar Island.

Really nice place and it was a gorgeous day. We think we saw a dolphin on the ferry ride over, but it's hard to tell.

Here's the pictures...

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Part 2 of the Houston sightseeing pix.....

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We all jumped in the Chevy Suburban and headed out on a sightseeing trip around Houston.

First up was the USS Texas battleship, then the San Jacinto monument. From there we headed to the headquarters of NASA, then around downtown Houston, then for a Mexican meal.... and finally finishing off the day with a photoshoot and of course some well earned beers!!!

As usual, click the 'Read More...' link below for all the pictures. Click on the smaller image, to see the 'big picture'.

I've divided the pictures over 2 pages. The first is here and the second is here.

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Julie was invited to Sara's wedding shower. A wedding shower in the US, is basically a 'formal' sort of hen night. The bride gets 'showered' with gifts.

In true Texas style, Sara wears a white cowboy hat!!

Have a butchers at the piccies...

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Me, Julie and Laura went down to Bev and Chuck's in Channelview, Texas.

Here's the pictures from our trip down there, through Oklahoma and Northern Texas.

We all had a great time with them and they looked us after real good.
They took us round all the sights of Houston. Julie also went to Sara's wedding shower, which was great!
I 'helped' Chuck and Josh wire up a plug in their closet. I say 'helped', I pretty much just passed the screwdriver and kept Linux the cat entertained so he wouldn't get frazzled!!

Thanks again to Bev, Chuck, Sara, Josh and Erin for a great time!

Click on 'Read More' for the pictures....

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After spending 10 days at Tim and Carolyn's house, we headed south to Houston to spend time with Bev and Chuck. We had a great time with them and the family, and they showed us around the sights in Houston.

After that, we headed west to San Antonio and saw the Alamo.....

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Pictures from Tim, Carolyn and Laura's house - 6

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Pictures from Tim, Carolyn and Laura's house - 5

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Pictures from Tim, Carolyn and Laura's house - 4

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Pictures from Tim, Carolyn and Laura's house - 2

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Here's some pictures of our van.

It's a 1994 5.7 litre V8 Chevrolet G20 Van with a Glaval Gladiator hitop conversion.
It has 7 seats, 3 of which convert into a double bed, TV, DVD player and the all important air con!

We've got about 2500 miles to do in this over the next 7 weeks.

Our journey will take us down to Dallas and Houston and then west to Amarillo, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, San Franciso and finally Los Angeles.

That's what you call a road trip!

( Click on the 'Read More...' link to see the pictures. )

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Pictures from Tim, Carolyn and Laura's house - 2

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We've spent the last 10 days at Tim, Carolyn and Laura's house in Everton, Missouri.

Really nice place and it is really out in the sticks. Coyotes, armadillos, bats, snakes - you name it, they're all here!

It's been great to see them and spend time with them all.

Anyway, have a butchers at the first lot of the pictures.

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Pictures of Chicago - Part 3

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Pictures of Chicago - Part 2

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From Washington, we took the overnight train (Capitol Limited) over to Chicago, the 'Windy City'.

We splashed out and stayed in a hotel this time. A wedding anniversary treat! Nice to have a bath (we have been showering, I hasten to add!).

We had 4 days in Chicago and had a great time. Didn't get up too much though, I think all the sightseeing over the last 7 weeks has caught up with us.

Enjoy the pictures....

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Pictures from Washington, DC.

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These are pictures from Washington, DC. We spent 3 days and had a great time. Plenty of museums and things to see.

We also had our first wedding anniversary here and had a slap up meal in a very swanky restaurant!

Click on 'Read More' for the pictures...

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Pictures of New York - Part 8

These are the last ones! Phew!!

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Pictures of New York - Part 7

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Part 6

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Pictures of New York - Part 5

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Part 4


On board USS Intrepid....

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Part 3

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Part 2

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After 4 weeks in Canada, NYC was our first place to visit in the US.

There's loads of pictures, so grab a coffee and get comfy. I've divided them up into 8 parts, so they're a little quicker loading.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

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Here's some our planned, must see attractions in America :-

• Empire State Building - New York


• Statue of Liberty - New York


• Alcatraz Prison - San Francisco


• Grand Canyon


• Area 51 (Groom Lake, Nevada)


• Hoover Dam


• White House - Washington DC


• Picnic in Central Park


• St. Louis Arch

And much much more!

If there's anything, you think we should definitely make time to see, please let us know.