Warming up for Vegas in RENO

We crossed the state border from California to Nevada to get to our next destination - Reno.  Reno is the most populous Nevada city outside of Las Vegas and is a high desert valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevada.  It is know as "The Biggest Little City in the World" as it is famous for casinos and is the birthplace of the gaming corporation Harrah's.

We checked into the Grand Sierra Hotel - a huge casino hotel.  We had dinner in the 50-lane bowling arcade and had a go on a few slots.

We drove into Reno town centre and had a walk around.

Me and Mart went for a $5 steak lunch in one of the casinos and Ray and Sheila walked around the park.

In the afternoon we played a few games of bowling in our hotel.

And we went back into Reno town in the evening for another $5 meal - this time a 2lb burrito!!



4 nights in San Fran

After our continental breakfast at the hotel (which consisted of toast, jam and hard boiled eggs!) we had to drop Ray's hire car off near Union Square so once we had done that we walked in the Square and bought a 3 day pass on the City Sightseeing open top bus tour.  We did the Downtown Route and then stopped for lunch at a subway, and then did Golden Gate park route in the afternoon. 

The next day we went to the pier to get our tickets for Alcatraz but were then sent somewhere else to get them, when we finally picked them up our boat was not until 15:55 so we decided to get the bus tour over the golden gate bridge to Sausalito.

It was a bit windy and cold on the open top bus over the bridge...!

We wealked around Sausalito and sat near the harbour having lunch.  It is a really nice place and very expensive to buy property here.

We got the tour bus back to San Fran and got off at Fishermans Wharf where we saw the resident seals and then got the boat over to Alcatraz where we had a headset tour.

The prison has been made famous because of the fact that it is on an island on its own and was therefore meant to be escape-proof, it also housed some famous inmates such as Al Capone and George 'machine-gun' Kelly.

Records indicate that 36 prisoners were involved in various escapte attempts.  Two inmates actually successfully made it off the island but were quickly captured. Seven inmates were shot and killed trying to escape. Two drowned and 5 inmates have been unaccounted for presumed drowned, although other rumours suggest they are in Mexico! The most famous escape was that of Frank Morris and the Anglin Brothers. All three were successful in swimming off Alcatraz, but all three are believed to have drowned.

We walked back to the Wharf where we stopped for fish and chips for dinner.

We were up early today to get the first bus tour over to Muir Woods, so we had to travel over the Golden Gate Bridge again. Once we got to the woods we walked one of the trails and looked at all the large Redwood trees.

This was what I was most looking forward to when we planned to come to San Fran, I couldn't wait to see the giant Redwoods and see how they compare to the cotton trees growing on Ta Prohm temple in Cambodia.  The Coast Redwood is the tallest tree species in the world, and those in the Muir Woods average 600 to 800 years old. Some of the park’s redwoods are over 1,000 years old and as tall as a 25-story building.   Personally I thought the Cambodian trees were slightly more impressive simply because of the crazy routes they have, but the redwoods were certainly very tall!

The park was very impressive and we enjoyed walking the trails.  We got the bus back over the bridge and walked around the different piers at Fishermans Wharf.  One of them had really old antique games in so we had a look and played a few games.

We then had a look at the street trams and a few street stalls.  In the evening we went out to a diner for dinner and walked back to the hotel - it was pretty cold today!

Our last morning in San Fran so we went to pick up our rental car - a Ford Taurus this time, it had to have a big enough boot to get all our luggage in together!

We then picked our bags up from the hotel and set off to the Golden Gate Bridge.  We dropped Sheila and Ray off at the start so they could walk across it and we picked them up the other end. 

We then set off for mini-vegas - RENO!!!



Highway 1 here we come...

So after we had crammed our new purchases in our bags and the car we set off for highway one north towards San Francisco.  Our first stop was in Santa Barbara to see one of the largest fig trees in the world, my (Su's) mum and dad had stopped here 30 years ago on their tour of California...

The start of the drive was foggy and cloudy but it soon brightened up and we took the roof down. The drive was amazing - a fabulous coastal drive that took you on windy roads overlooking the sea. We stopped for petrol and to see the elephant seals.

We passed Santa Cruz and headed on to San Francisco.  We were late arriving so dropped the car off at the airport instead of the office near our hotel as that was now closed, so once we said goodbye to our lovely hire car we got the shuttle to our hotel where we met Martin's parents Ray and Sheila who were going to be joining us for the next 2 weeks.

After we checked in to the Mariner Inn at Fishermans Wharf and had a quick catch-up we took Ray's rental car down the worlds windiest road and found somewhere for dinner and planned the next few days of our stay in San Fran.

South to San Diego

(Our other blog ran out of memory - hence the new blog set up!)

So we packed our back packs again (which are pretty big by now!) and got the tube to Union Square where we picked up the FlyAway bus to LAX where we picked up our hire car. 

Seeing as the weather should be nice and we will be driving Highway 1 we decided to treat ourselves...

We had been hoping for a mustang, but wasn't too disappointed with a brand new chevrolet camaro!



So we hit the road, heading south towards San Diego just stopping at Wendy's for lunch.  We checked into our motel and started planning the next few days.

We only have one full day in San Diego and had been told the best attraction to see there is the USS Midway - an old war shop that has been made into a museum including restored war planes and helicopters.  We got the tram the couple of stops to the pier, we thought it might be a little interesting, but when we got there we both loved it.  We took a stereo tour, and could not believe how big this ship was!

The USS Midway was an aircraft carrier for the US and the first to be commissioned after the end of World War II.  She was active in the Vietnam War and in Operation Desert Storm.  When she was completed in 1945, she was the first US warship that was unable to use the Panama Canal due to her size.

Even though this ship is huge some of the sailors beds look very cramped to us!

It is amazing that this is all inside one ship!

And even more on the top deck... currently holding around 25 restored war aircrafts overall...

It was like a floating town - everything you need is here, a post office, a dentist, doctors/hospital room etc.  We spent the best part of the day here and were really glad we came to see it.

We took the tram back to our hotel and drove around the local area.

We left San Diego bright and early heading back towards LA.  We bypassed LA though and stopped at Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park, you all know we love a theme park and the Six Flags have the biggest rollercoasters - this is not a kiddie theme park!

There were hardly any Q's so we got on all rides and some twice, we did about 12 rides that day and were feeling it by the end of the day!

We drove to Camarillo and checked in to our motel, we popped out to the supermarket to get some food.

We decided we had to do some shopping whilst in the USA so we went to an outlet today which was next to our hotel.  This outlet was ridiculously huge and we spent the whole day there and a lot of money!  We stayed in the same area but changed motels and then tried to fit all our new purchases into our bags!  Thank goodness we have a car now!