San Diego

San Diego is a lovely city - we had 2 days here. We got in late, having spent the day in Universal Studios outside LA, and wonder of wonders the staff in the hotel had left a bottle of sparkling wine in our bedroom! A nice treat, and the only "honeymoon" treat we had during the trip.



San Diego was 2 things to us really, given that we only had 1 day there - USS Midway, an aircraft carrier museum similar to the USS Intrepid in New York; and Seaworld, one of the highlights of the trip. There was some walking about in between both of those, and the seafront was lovely, but I just for some reason didn't take many pictures. So you'll have to be happy with some pictures of airplanes;

The A6 Intruder;


The F4 Corsair;


And these mammals.;

A dolphin at the petting area of Seaword;


Orcas, mid back-flip.


After that we had a nice wander around town, in the Gaslamp district (possibly the most atmospheric and busy part of any of the cities we'd visited) before heading back to the hotel and preparing for the 6 hour journey to Las Vegas, Nevada....

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles was our 3rd last stop after Santa Barbara, and we spent 2 nights here near Rodeo Drive. It really is a sprawl, cars everywhere, and clogged up freeways running through the city. We drove in at about 3:30 pm or so and it was the first time I experienced stop-start traffic on the trip. Still, thanks to our satnav system we got to the hotel happy enough and got settled in. Hotel/valet parking, by the way, can be expensive ($20-$30 a night) so if you're planning a trip this might be something to keep in mind.

Of course we went for a walk around to get our bearings, up towards Rodeo Drive. Yes, my wallet was nervous but when we got there it relaxed as it didn't have anything to worry about :P



The full day in between we took a hoponhopoff bus tour, which took us around most of the sights and we were happy to see most of them from the bus. We did get off at a couple of locations including a car museum (which had some great exhibits including a supercar area and cars from film/tv)





Some thoughtful people had also put up a sign - but I think I'll report it as false advertising.




We also decamped from the bus at Hollywood Boulevard, where we saw all of the pavement stars you could see (that gets boring!)



 and the Chinese Theatre, where I realised I have bigger feet than Bruce Willis. Oh, and this sign.



We then switched buses and got down to Santa Monica beach, where there's a nice pier and a sunset (every evening!).



On the way to San Diego we hit the flower market and Universal Studios (a great day out!)

Yosemite National Park, California

After San Francisco, we drove south toward Monterey for lunch, before heading east to Yosemite National Park.


View Larger Map

Monterey is a nice coastal town, in a similar way to Dun Laoghaire, with a Fisherman's Wharf (pier with shops on) and a yachting harbour. We only stayed long enough for a sandwich above the waves, before we were chased east by some serious looking weather.

We crossed big country on some small roads, passing nut and fruit plantations, and as we headed up into the hills, some meadow.


As we drew closer to our lodge (Tenaya Lodge, near Fish Camp, just outside the park) we stopped in Oakhurst for a quick hamburger - this was our first Carls Jr, and what a burger! Best fast food type burger I've had, hands down. Anyway, I was glad we had this snack. As the road snaked its way up towards Fish Camp, reasonably steep drop-offs protected only by trees on the downhill side, the amount of snow and ice still around markedly increased.

Was I nervous? Well, I was hoping we weren't driving into somewhere that we'd be unable to drive out of 3 days later because of snow, and there was more ice on the road than I expected, so it was a little tense. We got up without snow chains, thankfully!

And Tenaya lodge is a lovely spot to arrive at, with braziers burning outside the front door, and a huge lobby inside. We got our keys to our apartment, and made our way there. Some of the snow had stuck.



So that was nice - about 0 degrees in the evening, dropping as it got later. There was a nice electric fire in the room though, so it was pretty cosy. We had been following the news a little bit on our trip, and were wary that that US Federal Government were potentially closing down because of a stalemate over budget. With that in mind, and assured the Park would be open on Saturday anyway, we booked 2 seats on a bus tour.

Boy was I glad! I could enjoy the scenery, I wasn't driving, and there was plenty of snow and ice on the roads so the rangers were sticky on having snow chains fitted (we of course in a rental car, didn't have such things!). We had a nice day touring all the spots in the park, stopping for the occasional photo op,

El Capitan.

and picnic lunch in the valley floor (by Yosemite falls, but more on that later). A couple of snow showers fell just to upset the nerves (were we being snowed in!!!!!???) but other than that the sun shone all day.



The park is stunning. The scenery, the rocks, the mountains are just amazing, and really very imposing.



You could spend weeks in here photographing the place, it's hard to get a bad one (though I managed, I can assure you!) Sometimes disappointing because there is nothing to give you scale, but these are just a couple of the photographs. More to be shared later!




There are a few more images at my pix.ie album, here.

San Francisco, Parte the Seconde.

I has returned, as you can see. I brung with me some more photos that you may or may not be interested in seeing. That said, if you've got this far, well done and I hope you enjoy them!



So the Golden Gate bridge we saw, well, we had to - I wanted to. It's brilliant, elegant in form and orange in colour. Well, International Orange, to be precise. We walked about halfway out, and then came back, had some nice views of SF and the bay too!




And it's worth noting that while the Golden Gate has it's own police, the California Highway Patrol (or CHiPs as I like to call them) still drop in from time to time. I love the gold and blue helmets! They're on BMW R-1200 (I think) bikes now, not the classic Kawasakis, but it's still great to see em.



I mentioned in my earlier post that the cables for the cable car system are all run from the same location. Credit to my disorganisation and poor blog post planning, I kept that photo for today! You can see the main power and gear units in the foreground, and the cables run over the big pulleys. In the background you might see the tension pulleys which move further away as the cable stretches, these keep the cables nice and tight for the grips on the cars.



That brings me to the end of today's few photos - there are more at the album on pix.ie if you're interested!

Next might be the transit to Yosemite....

Loving being back.....

Not.

We're back (that's wife and I, now) from our holiday (read honeymoon). We were in California, which was lovely, and Nevada, which was also lovely, and Arizona (but just for a minute) as well as New Jersey (well, the airport....). So we're still tired and jetlagged!

I have downloaded my photos. Some culling needs to be done prior to presentation (probably in batches).

In brief - San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas. Highlights included Yosemite's natural (and snowy) beauty, the performing animals at Seaworld, the USS Midway aircraft carrier and Las Vegas' car hire desk. Who had a convertible Ford Mustang for rent for a brilliant day at Hoover Dam and Red Rock Canyon.

So I might have whetted your appetite for details and photos? Stay tuned for I hope to say more soon!

(As an aside, I am, having not taken photos since Thursday, considering deciding to stop my photo a day project. All I've learned from it is that I should have my camera with me as much as possible - there was some real rubbish being taken just for the sake of it. A theme is needed for a project like that.)

I want to post....

But can't quite think of anything important enough to post about. Oh, does anybody know how this voting in America works? I'll go and check and bring back what I learn.

20 mins later: I'm still confused, Wikipedia hasn't cleared it up for me. I'll give it five more minutes to see if I can find something useful.

Getting there. Found some info here and here about the primary system. It appears, and yes it does seem mad, that each state decides on a Republican and Democratic candidate - by different means. Some states have a caucus [kaw-kuss] where party members meet to decide who the state's preferred candidate is, whilst other states appear to have an election (madness!) called a primary, which makes a little more sense.

Some states have a limited electorate for these primaries where only registered party members can cast a ballot. What makes it even more odd, is that there are different rules for the Republican and Democrat parties!

So, what's happening now is that states local political parties are choosing their preferred candidate, and the results of all the caucuses and primaries will be gathered together later in the year to decide on the candidates. I think. Then there's an election, isn't there? More on that later.

Please correct me if I'm wrong - I need to watch more West Wing to be sure!