Well things have certainly changed since April. After hanging out in Whistler for a week Darryl, John, Ange and myself headed over to Vancouver Island. We dropped Ange in Victoria and the boys and I headed up to Tofino. Tofino was a great little spot! We soaked up some sun, took a boat ride to Hot Springs Cove and broke in the tent on it's first time camping. The weather was absolutely stunning, although still quite cool at night. The scenery was jaw dropping and I took 100's of photos before eventually arriving back in Victoria.
After Vancouver Island the boys and I began our 5 week road trip around the western side of the USA. I'll do a small recap on the more major points we visited on our way..........
We crossed the Canadian/USA border in Vancouver and headed down to Seattle. A day was spent in Seattle exploring the famous Pike's Market on the waterfront, walking along the piers and through the streets of downtown Seattle. I managed to find a swine statue to sit on hehe.
From Seattle we headed north west to the Olympic Peninsula. We were discovered some great camping spots, a few waterfalls, a wee bit of snow and for all the girls..... I went to the home of Twilight!! Forks... also passing though Port Angeles and La Push. Strangely enough I was just reading the 2nd twilight book at the time and was most excited to know I was in the home of Twilight. We stayed in the worst motel in Forks too....mmm...the toilet seat was a big cushion thing... weird!!!!
Upon leaving the Olympic Peninsula we carried on down south.... straight through the state of Oregon (boring as)... and eventually got to the Napa Valley. Napa Valley is a beautiful area where they grow lots of wine and delicious fresh food. Yum yum !! From Napa Valley we headed down to San Francisco and experienced all the touristy things San Fran has to offer: Golden Gate Bridge, Pier 39, Alcatraz (cool place to explore), the exploratorium... ohhh and the library to find some free internet hehe.
From San Fran we headed to my most favourite place in the USA.... Yosemite National Park. This place was sooooooo awesome. We camped for 3 days....did lots of exploring and a massive hike up to the top of Yosemite Falls. The hike took 6 hours to complete! I drank 3 litres of water, near suffered heat exhausion and killed most of the muscles in my legs but the view was out of this world overlooking the mountains and canyons. I think my favourite part was getting a photo of me hanging off the side of the cliff...ahahaha... much to the disgust of most of my friends and family.
From Yosemite we headed to the big city of Los Angeles and camped in Malibu just outside of LA for $10 each a nite...bargain!! Camping included an amazing view, dolphins swimming
past and a horde load of noisey kids that I wanted to shoot. We spent 2 days at Disneyland, explored Hollywood - which was the biggest disappointment of all... what a boring dirty hole that place is, went for a cruise through Beverly Hills and wrestled with the cars on the highways doing near on 140kms an hour everywhere!! Exit LA......Hello Vegas!!
Viva..... Las Vegas!! I had 3 heavenly nights of a motel room to myself. No boys!!! yay!!!!! The only negative - it was like 50 degress outside..... OMG HOT AS!!! I only spent $20 on pokies and spent the majority of my time exploring all the awesome hotels/casinos on 'the strip'. Vegas is an amazing place, both day and night. John and I also went and saw 'KA' - Cirque du Soleil's latest show in the
MGM Grand. WOW....awesome stuff.
After 3 nights of my own bedroom/bathroom - goodbye luxury.... we headed through Hoover Dam and found the awe inspiring Grand Canyon. The Grand canyon is a strange place to visit...... the scale of how massive it is makes it very hard to believe what your seeing through your own eyes is real. It truly is one of the 7 wonders of the world.
After a tiresome long few weeks we arrived at our final touristy area - Yellowstone National Park. It was very cool here... with some snow still on the ground. The days were warm but the nights very cold. I had to apply a load more layers to keep warm hehe. Not like Vegas! The park was divided into 5 different areas - waterfalls, canyons, geothermal areas, mud pools! A lot of it reminded me of Rotorua... minus the stink. There were deer and buffalo everywhere.... the buffalo even came and camped with us one night..... below are photos of our welcoming party, old faithful geyser and some of the terraced geothermal area.
So that was for the most part our trip.... the short version! :) We then returned back to Vancouver Island where we caught up with Ange on the strawberry fields for a few days before I left everyone and returned back to NZ for two weeks to get my Irish working visa!! Yes I know.... i'm constantly changing my mind as to where I want to be....hahaha.
So i'm now in the UK for a few weeks sorting my next adventure over in Ireland and catching up with a few friends. Summer in Ireland should be awesome.... loads of tourist things to visit, alcohol to be drunk and sexy accents to listen to...!!!!
Ciao for now....... xoxoxo
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