Oh the weather outside is...lovely!

We got up early today, as I couldn’t contain my excitement about checking into the Millennium Baltimore Hotel for Christmas! Our one true extravagance during our round the world break, I couldn’t wait to see the Christmas tree at the hotel and our hotel room (as lovely as hostel rooms are and sleeping in a van, it is nice to have a bit of comfort now and again!).
Apparently the hotel has been used in lots of films including Ghostbusters (where you first see slimmer) and Vertigo and has housed at some point, celebrities including JFK and The Beatles (apparently the Beatles were flown to the hotel’s roof by helicopter and they stayed there for a few days, in secret).
We checked into the hotel early afternoon and then headed out for the day in downtown LA.

Really looking forward to catching up with our families on Skype tomorrow morning (hope all my little nieces are still up by the time we get to speak!) and then it’s off down to the Biltmore’s restaurant for a semi-traditional Christmas dinner (it’s going to be strange spending Christmas in the sunshine and warmth. Not to make you too jealous, but it’s 23 degrees at the moment!) I’m not sure if I can get away with wearing my elf hat in this establishment, but I will give it try!
Happy Christmas everyone and in the words of Tiny Tim - god bless us, everyone!

The Pacific Highway

Really enjoyed San Francisco and the Hostel we stayed at in Fort Mason. It was definitely the best one we’ve stayed in so far - it had a mini cinema onsite as well as a cheap cafe and huge lounge. The staff were all really friendly too...including the very loud, but funny, Chinese laundry lady.

We left just after breakfast on Thursday morning. On our way out of San Francisco, we drove up to the idyllic Twin Peaks part of town, to get some views of the city on a sunny December’s morning.

The drive back to LA along the Pacific Highway was beautiful. Amazing beaches round every corner and vista points for stopping and taking pics/stretching your legs every half mile...it meant we filled up the memory on our camera within a couple of hours.

Our final stop on Thursday was the Big Sur State Park, where we stopped off for a little walk along a secluded beach (equipped with its own waterfall!).

We had hopes of camping on the beach, but once we arrived we realised there was no way of getting our camper down there, so we set up camp a mile down the road. It was one of the nicest spots camping spots during our road trip, with good views of the pacific (and within ears distance of a very loud barking seal – bliss!).

Got up early on Friday morning to get a good start on the last six hours drive to LA – it was such a nice feeling making breaky in the warm sunshine for a change and not battling with extremely frosty temperatures of the mountains.

Main highlight during our drive home was stopping off at Malibu beach. Huge beach, which really makes you wish you could surf and had a spare few million kicking around to buy one of the amazing houses on the shoreline. 

Got back to LA early evening after clocking up over 2,388 miles on our wee RV overall. After saying goodbye to our camper, we checked into a cheap hostel for the night.

San Francisco

Had a fantastic time in San Francisco. Beautiful city, with some of the most amazingly ornate apartments and houses. It really is the hilly city, which makes for some fantastic views of the bay and city...but it is an uphill struggle during your walk home or anywhere for that matter!
The marina, just a stone’s throw from our hostel, had a great vibe. So many restaurants, bars and shops, it was probably our favourite part of the city. We had some lovely cold beers in the sunshine of the marina on our last day.

On the marina pub crawl

We only really had time for one main attraction so we opted for Alcatraz. Really glad we did, it was a beautiful day which made for fantastic city views and ferry ride and the tour was great. I was slightly disappointed, that tour guide “Vicky” (see “So I Married an Axe Murderer” film) was not on hand to give us the unofficial Alcatraz tour, but apart from that it was a great day out.

In the patrol yard on Alcatraz

Loved our time here, we would definitely come back and visit some of the other main attractions, like Golden Gate Park. At the minute, it’s probably our favourite city so far.
After our waffles and coffee tomorrow morning, we head start the last leg of road trip – the drive back to LA via the Pacific Highway.

Yosemite

Headed over to Yosemite Valley this morning. We quickly discovered during the short drive that we would need to start layering up again, as we headed up over 9000 ft!
A lot of the park was closed due to the icy and snowy conditions but we managed to take in some good sights during our drive, as well as stopping for a bit of amateur ice skating on the frozen lake – we weren’t the only ones skidding around in trainers, but we all felt a bit daft when a local chap skated past, doing all sorts of fancy ice skating tricks!

The drive through Yosemite National Park is a through road. What a great drive to work that would be...although, i’m not sure if you would have to pay the $20 dollars entrance fee each time. That would be annoying.
We then headed along the very twisty roads to our next stop – San Francisco. Beautiful drive through countryside’s of orchards and small farms. It was funny seeing a different backdrop, we got so used to the mountains and desert!
After sitting in a bit of a rush hour traffic jam, we eventually crossed the huge Bay Bridge and arrived in San Francisco early evening.
 

We quickly discovered that San Fran was not the best city for parking (and especially not for a camper!) so we decided to check into a cheap-ish hostel on the beautiful, San Fran Bay Fort Mason.

One night in Big Pine

Woke up to a fresh covering of snow this morning. Luckily our little RV seems to handle the snowy and icy roads well. We packed up early and headed back to Mount Charleston Lodge for breakfast. There’s a ski slope just a few miles past the lodge, so most of the hotel guests were all dressed up ready for a day on the slopes (we felt a little envious!). As it was still early, the road down from the mountain was still pretty snowy, we past a few snow ploughs on the way (both going in the other direction!). We saw a couple of cars that had skidded off of the road on our way down. We were very thankful for our hardy little RV!

Once we were off the mountain the weather changed dramatically – it was beautiful sunshine and clear tarmac roads the rest of the way.

Past a few interesting places today, including area 51, the signs on the interstate read “This road is patrolled by aircraft”, although we didn’t see any, we did see a very suspicious black car speeding down the one road leading into the desert. I don’t care what you say; something very odd is going on there! We’ve past fields on cacti all day but still not seen a stereotypical cartoon cactus.

Big day of driving, we covered about 300 miles and decided to rest for the night in a small town called Big Pine. After the last few nights of minus temperatures, it’s funny to actually be staying in a place where you don’t need to wear base layers, hats and gloves just to top up the van with gas! 

We went out for the night in the small town...there’s only one bar in town Rosi’s Cocktail Lounge, Steak and Spaghetti Restaurant. So we headed there for a bite to eat and a few drinks. 

Tomorrow morning, we head to Yosemite.