This is a kind or retrospective journal entry, as we have just completed a month overland road trip between los angeles and sanfrancisco, taking in utah, nevada and arizona as well as california. Due to extremely expensive public internet charges we could not update the journal as we went along....so maybe a month late but better late than never as they say.....
Arrived safely and very jetlagged into L.A after flying accross the international date line from Fiji, we flew 10hrs and arrived about 9hrs before we took off on the same day.....how bizarre..
Spent 3 days in L.A recovering from the jetlag and seeing some of the city.

Here is a short summary of some of the highlights for us over the last month in the u.s.a.

California

City tour of los angeles- took a really good city tour with one of the local companies and ended up with a driver all to ourselves showing us the sites of L.A such as the hollwood bowl, bellair, beverlyhills, hollywood itself, walf of fame, kodak and chinese theatres, rodeo drive, stars homes etc.
Whilst in L.A we also took in Universal studios and six flags magic mountain. Apoint to note about universal...its a goog 6 yrs since I visited the florida park and to be honest many of the attractions are exactly the same and havent changed or been udated. The new revenge of the mummy ride is quite good but ridiculously quick, over in about 30 seconds, which doesnt really justify standing in a queue for an hour. 6 flags was really good, rides were awsome and they have a great deal right now with 2 for one tickets if you buy a can of coke!.
We found L.A to be a bit disappointing, the traffic is pretty awful, its abit of a concrete nightmare. We also visited santa monica and venice beach. Venice beach was also not what we imagined, kind of very rundowm looking and a bit on the rough side. The famous muscle beach was devoid of muscle when we were there, just a small outdoor gym really....
Next we drove down to sandiego and spent a few days over the 4th of july celebrations, we spent a couple of days chilling on imperial beach.

The 4th of july fireworks over sandiego harbour were excellant.
After sandiego we travelled up through the desert to Plam springs where it was 118 degrees !
From Plam springs we travelled into Arizona and onto the grand canyon. It was really impressive and just as we imagined it. Our photos dont really do it justice..

We spent most of time around the south rim of the crater before driving onto the town of Page and Lake Powell/Glen Canyon.
The glen canyon dam itself is awsome

We found out while we are there that its actually bigger(wider and with more total concrete mass but slightly less tall) than the more famous hoover dam. Its very impressive and very quiet(unlike the tourist hell of the hoover dam.....dont go there!...
We took a boat trip on lake powell which took us into some of the narrow canyons and gorges, the best of which was antelope canyon

It was excellant to be able to jump in the water of lake powell to escape the heat.
Next we crossed into utah

First stop was the bizzare and interesting Bryce Canyon. Kris went on a hike down to the canyon floor, to get some better pictures... (this one is called Thor's Hammer)

Next it was onto the Zion National Park, which is just awesome in the contrast between the dramatic canyon walls and valley floor

Next stop was Lake Mead and the famous Hoover Dam. Although impressive as a dam, you will be stuck in a massive car queue to get there, be forced to pay 5 bucks to park your car and then you have to pay another 10 bucks to go on the tour, which is the only way to properly see the dam! - our advice is go the Glen Canyon - it's bigger, free and there's hardly anyone there!

Then it was onto Vegas - this is one awesome, impressive, tacky and totally thrilling city. The strip is like an adult version of Disneyland with the major casino's built as a theme - this one is called New York New York and as you can see the hotel even has a roller coaster running outside and through the hotel building!

Our other favourite was the new Venetian which actually has a canal through the middle where you can get a private ride on a condola with an operatic singer! the roof of the building is painted like the sky, so that even when it's 100f+ outside you forget you're in the middle of a desert...

We stayed in the Harrah's casino, which is just about to buy Caesars Palace to become the worlds lagest gaming casino... it was a great location right in the middle of the strip close to all the attractions. As well as checking out all the casino's, we had to see a Vegas show - there is a great half price ticket company called Tix4Tonight which we got tickets for the Star Trek exhibition (where else can you get beamed aboard the star ship Enterprise and attacked by the Borg!)

and then onto La Cage which was a really impressive female impresionist's show.
We took a trip up the Vegas Eiffel Tower at sunset for some amasing views across the city

We stayed 5 days which is just about as long as you need/can handle - our last stop was at the Stratosphere tower which is 1149 feet tall. As well as impressive views, there are 3 extreme rides at the top - a roller coaster that runs round the top of the viewing platform (we both did this)

then the Big Shot which fires you 160 feet straight up the tower's antenna

and the new Xscream which fires you over the edge of the top and dangles/throws you around whilst 1100+ feet above the pavement! (Kris obviously had to do both of these...)

From vegas we headed up through Death Valley

Once again the temperatures were up around the 120 degree mark...so hot..the wind is like someone opening an over door!..Back into California we went and we drove up towards Mammoth Lakes

we stayed for a couple of nights in this area and wandered around some of the trails...
We also stopped at the very strange Mono Lake

just before we headed for Yosemite.....
We spent a couple of days in Yosemite, it was a really beautiful and dramatic place.

The views of the mountains and rivers were stunning...

We went up to one of the highest view point in the park- Glacier point which gives great view of the famous halfdome mountain

It really is a place of outstanding natural beauty that you could spend an awfully long time in.
After Yosemite we headed up towards Lake Tahoe where we spent a few days. This is also a very beautiful area. South lake tahoe itself is a bit of a tourist trap but its easy to get out of town and enjoy the area. One of the nicest bays was Emerald bay..

Theres a new gondala in Tahoe which takes visitors up to mount heavenly but it costs over 20 bucks per person for a short ride up the mountain!, they've also built a brand new "heavenly village"at south lake tahoe which is still to be completed but its geared very much towards very upmarket skiiers and package tourists.
Next we travelled down to Sacramento where we stayed for a couple of days. It was a quite interesting town with a "wild west" old town area.

While we were there sacramento were holding their annual bridge to bridge jet boat racing weekend . It was cool to see these million dollar jet boats racing along the river.

After sacramento we drove down to the Nappa valley and spent some time wine tasting in the wineries.
Here's Kris proudly clutching his bottle of plonk from the Nappa winery.

After Nappa we spent a couple of days around the mill valley /Saucilito area just north of sanfrancisco.It was here that we had to say goodbye to the sunshine as the sanfrancisco coastal areas appear to mostly encasses in mist and fog over much of the summer...its a bizarre phenomenum indeed , within a matter of a few miles or so the temperature drops 30-40 degrees and all of a sudden its cloudy..
This is how the golden gate bridge often looks in the summer.

San Francisco
We spent 10 days in the bay area, which was plenty of time to see the sights. Obviously we had to visit Alcatraz... we chose the night time visit, which gave the island/prision a much different atmosphere...
We also took in the sights from Coit Tower, visited the legendary Castro area, took a long stroll along the waterfront/Embacardero, took a ride on the famous street cable cars and chilled out in Delores Park. We spent 4 days staying with our friends Nina & Marcus, before getting a great 50 bucks a night bargin on Priceline.com in the center of town. The weather wasn't too great for most of our time as the bay area suffers from a lot of cloud and fog drawn in from the ocean by the heat of the inland desert - however we had a great couple of days at the end, which enabled us to top up our tans before heading off to New York!
Our overall impression of San Fran, is that it is a very interesting & liberal city with a lot of beautiful wooden houses and diverse architectures - however the city's liberal nature also has it's downside...it has a massive issue with the number of homeless people (who live there lives out of shopping trolleys) and also with a large number of plan and simply mad folk! every day we encountered the strange/mad and sometimes dangerous individuals that roam the street. They ranged from Kung Fu fighters walking down the street battling invisible opponants to people shouting and argueing with themselves. It realy is quite sad to see so many people who obviously need help, but don't seem to be getting any - apparently it would infringe their civil rights if they were removed from the streets!