Well it’s late on a Thursday afternoon and I am sitting in the library of Mount Holy Oak College in Massachusetts. Did I mention that this is an all girls university. I'll get back to why Im up here another time.

Right where were we. Installment Three. - Still the West Coast

After leaving my Uncle in Utah we proceeded to drive across the state of Nevada in a day. This is by no means a short trip and finally after 8 long hours in the car we reached the Californian state line. The interstate we were taking drove up through the Sierra Nevada’s and past all the ski resorts of Lake Tahoe. It was a very scenic drive but as our luck would have it we reached the area right at the end of the weekend, meaning everyone else was also heading our way. So what should have been a quick drive ended up taking a couple of hours, with bumper to bumper traffic, and rude drivers in their hummers. Never mind.

The next day after spending the night in a motel just outside of Sacramento we headed for Yosemite National park. Now when I think of a "National park" I think of trees, native bush, dirt roads and hardly anyone else for miles. Welcome to America. The area we stayed in (Yosemite Valley) had all the conveniences of a small town. We even did our shopping at the local supermarket.

Yosemite has been by far the most beautiful place I have visited so far on our trip. It seems kinda strange to me that we could be camping out in the cold with only two other ppl were stupid enough to be camping in winter, cook over my gas cooker, then pack everything away in our BEAR proof lockers and go over to the cafe (and warmth) to play cards, before heading outside again where we sat around toasting marshmallows, enjoying our campfire.

While there we went on a photography course, saw deer, coyotes, lots of squirrels, and some of the most breath taking scenery in the world. Unfortunately due to the time restrictions of our trip only allowed us to stay the one night before heading for San Francisco. (I am already making plans to stay a week their next time I'm in the states.)

Leaving Yosemite we decided to take the mile walk to see the giant sequoia trees. A mile hike on a track is easy, but one when it’s down hill and snow is not, and by the time we returned to the car the weather had changed from overcast to snow.

Imagine this. We are 6000ft up on a sealed two-lane road with at least an inch on new snow plus more falling. Visibility is maybe 10 metres, and we are in a ford focus front wheel drive with no chains. Needless to say I was more than a little nervous driving, especially when I used the brakes they did not have any effect at all. We made to the park entrance dent free after a considerably long drive down, where a park ranger told us the road had just been closed to all two-wheel drive vehicles. From there we spent the next 5 nights in San Francisco with Katies old NZ flatmate Sarah Ohle. San Francisco (the city) is very cool. It reminds me a lot of Wellington, except for the parking. On any given night it would take 30-45 mins to find a park.

Instead of boring everyone with what we did there day-by-day I thought I'd simply list the highlights.

• Walked the golden gate bridge
• Rode the cable cars
• Went to the museum of modern art.
• Visited North Beach. (The Italian district. A very cool area)
• Hung out in the hippy section (Haight-Ashbury), and drove through the rainbow flag district (Castro)
• Drove the curviest street in the world. (4 times)
• Walked through Muir woods (Californian Redwoods)
• Watched the sunset over the golden gate
• Visited Coin tower.

That brings us to Saturday. After spending the morning eating crepes on Haight-Ashbury we packed our gear and away we went again. Instead of driving back via the main interstate we took the coastal highway (highway 1) with the option of staying a night in the Big Sur area (also very pretty). The drive down the coast was gorgeous. Its a lot like the coast back home. In the end we stayed in a town starting with "San" just outside of Santa Barbara as neither myself nor Katie felt like camping, and we also wanted to drive as close as possible to LA so we could get there for the Super Bowl.

We made it to LA the following day (back to the smog), returned the car without a scratch even though we had put over 4000 miles (6400 km) on the clock in under 20 days, checked into our hotel, and sat down to the Super Bowl before crashing from exhaustion.

So that was the west coast, and on to the East coast we go.

Jared (a.k.a fatti)