After spending a few days in Los Angeles we worked our way up the west coast from LA to San Francisco with a break at Morro Bay for an overnight stop. Along the way we were able to take in Santa Barbara and Solvang, which is a unique town with a strong Danish influence. From Morro Bay we moved on to San Francisco with stops in San Simeon and Monterey to check out their famous aquarium.

After a couple of days in San Francisco we spent a day in the absolutely beautiful Yosemite Valley before moving on to Fresno for an overnight stay before the next leg of our journey to Las Vegas. The two national parks we visited on our way to Vegas, Yosemite and Death Valley, are a must for any visit to this region of the US. After leaving Vegas, and none too soon, we headed into Arizona for an overnight stay in Flagstaff, using this as our base for our visit to the Grand Canyon National Park, another outstanding NP in the US. Along the way we stopped at a rather unique rest stop in White Hills AZ offering the option of using their shooting range, with a wide selection of firearms including machine guns, while you wait for your burger. As South Africans we found this quite alarming. A visit to the Hoover Dam was included in this leg of our journey as well.

From Flagstaff our route took us through Williams, Bearizona and Route 66, to Lake Havasu City on the banks of the lake with the same name. This is apparently a water sport haven but with little else to do we left early the next day for San Diego via Palm Springs. After a night in San Diego we returned to Los Angeles for a flight to Seattle and the next part of our holiday in Alaska.