This is the end

Back to work today.
The End.

Tijuana - a Mexican adventure

It took us just 10 minutes to drive to the Mexican border from San Diego, and after parking up, took another 15 on a bus to get to Avenida Revolucion in downtown Tijuana. After a couple of hours dodging the tat sellers, it took 2 hours to return to the USA, and this was even with the bus bypassing the several mile long queue of traffic on the highway. The USA is definitely a difficult place to get into from Mexico.


Tijuana itself was an odd place. It is hard to say whether we saw much of the 'real' Mexico, as it appeared to be a city devoted to trying to sell junk of all sorts to American day-trippers. It was actually quite waring having to step past salesmen every 10 yards or so, selling everything from hand-crafted artifacts to cheapy t-shirts to prescription drugs. To make the whole experience seem more authentically Mexican, we had a couple of burritos for lunch washed down with the obligatory margueritas! Aye Chihuahua!

Driving the Pacific Coast Highway

We made it out of SF alive, and headed south on the famous Highway 1 - the Pacific Coast Highway. We did the spectacular drive over three days, firstly stopping in Monterey, and exploring the Monterey peninsula. The second day was definitely the highlight with the amazing section of the coastal drive at Big Sur, where the road was empty and the scenery beautiful.


The second overnight stop was at San Luis Obispo, which was quite a lively, happening little place. From there the drive was slightly less interesting, and it then became truly stressful as we hit the overcrowded Los Angeles freeways. We abandoned any half plans of stopping in LA and kept going south, all the way to San Diego.

Bear spotting in Yosemite

We stayed in Sonora after crossing the mountains, and the next day headed for Yosemite - the best known of all the National Parks. After being in the deepest wildernesses of America for the previous week, it came as a bit of a shock to find ourselves among so many other people. It seemed to be the most commercialised of the parks - certainly the most visited - so despite its undoubted beauty it had a bit less appeal to us. It was only when we got up high above the valley, up at Glacier Point, that we really appreciated the scenery.

Laura's opinion of the place really perked up when she spotted a wild bear in the forest. I never saw it so I didn't believe her until some other people confirmed they'd seen it too!

Here's Laura on top of the world ...

Crossing the Mountains - Over the Sonora Pass

From Bodie, we crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains towards the more populated part of California. The original plan was to cross the Tioga pass into Yosemite but we were suprised to discover that it was still closed due to snow! We took the next pass north, detouring several hundred miles, and even then the Sonora pass only opened last week. There was still some 10 feet of snow at the top of the pass - although we realised this was not so suprising when the road climbed up over the 9,000 foot mark. We actually felt breathless at the altitude!

Utah - Bryce and Zion

After the Grand Canyon, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Utah. Yes, Utah! All we previously knew about the state was that it was highly religious, populated by Mormons and booze was hard to come by - but our guide book said that it had some of the most beautiful scenery in the whole country, so we thought we'd check it out. Things didn't start to well when we arrived in St George on the Sunday evening of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, to find everything closed. Thank God for Chinese immigration to these parts! Next to the Chinese, we were suprised to find a bar, named "The One And Only", but we didn't risk hanging out with the loons and desperados there!

The next day we went to Bryce Canyon National Park, which was one of the most amazing places we've ever been. Bizarre rock formations rise up out of the ground in all sorts of shapes and sizes. We hiked down into the canyon to get a closer look, and had the strange experience of a walk with the easy downhill part at the start, and the struggle uphill at the end. On the way back from Bryce, we travelled through Zion National Park, which we wished we had more time to see. Huge cliffs overlooked the winding road - yet more spectacular scenery. In fact, everywhere throughout Utah the scenery was breathtaking. We'd definitely come back - as soon as they change their liquor laws!