Well I finally back in the UK. I had a lovely last day in San Francisco and was very sorry to have to get on a plane and fly to Miami. The flight was ok but by the time I arrived in my hotel in Miami it was really late and I was absolutely knackered. Luckily my flight to London wasn't until the evening so I got a nice long lie in before I had to be at the airport. Miami was as hot and humid as ever even in the middle of the night.

The flight home wasn't as bad as I was expecting as I got 2 seats to myself but still didn't manage to get any sleep. Was very glad that the weather was still pretty good when I got to London. I was worried that I would freeze my tits off when I got off the plane. So now I'm back in Leicester with the family which is lovely and I'll head back to Edinburgh at the end of the week.

I can't believe the four months is over so quickly, next time I'll need to go for longer!! Thanks for reading the blog and for all your comments and emails. As for my next trip......watch this space!!

We are now in San Francisco but on our way here we stopped at Monterey and San Jose. Monterey was a bit of a disappointment as we thought it was going to be an upmarket coastal town but it turned out to be just like Blackpool!! It was full of English people and every corner seemed to have a British pub on it. The really good thing about Monterey though is we got to go out on a boat with a famous Marine Biologist called Nancy Black to do some whale watching. It was fantastic. I was really pleased as I'd missed the whales when I was in Argentina and thought I wouldn't see any at all on this trip. Luckily we managed to see about 5 Humpbacked whales out of the bay and over the canyon which is about 10 000 ft deep. We had a great time but I was so busy looking out for the whales that I didn't get many photos of them.

I liked San Jose but didn't get to see as much of the downtown area as we would have liked as the Grand Prix was in full swing when we arrived. It's a prettier place than Monterey and has nice wide streets and red tiled roof Spanish style houses. Spent a pleasant day wandering around the museums and historic houses and drove on up to San Francisco.

It's lovely here and a lot cooler especially in the evening when it gets quite chilly. We've spent the last two days walking around the city and looking at all the lovely houses, climbing those bloody steep hills and eating in the lovely restaurants. We are staying in the Mark Hopkins Hotel and have great views of the bay from our 15th floor room. There is a well known restaurant at the top of the hotel on the 19th floor called Top of the Mark but of course Andy the wag has dubbed it Top of the Skid Mark!! You can't take him anywhere!! After walking for miles today Sue and I went to Chinatown and had a great hour long foot massage. It was a bit brutal but you knew it was doing you good. After that we were fully revived and ready for a shopping trip. Imagine our horror when we arrived in Union Square only to find that the shops were shut!!!! It was only 7pm, we were devastated and to make matters worse we had just eaten a really crappy meal in Chinatown as we made the mistake of allowing Andy to choose the restaurant.

Well tomorrow is my last day in San Francisco and I'm planning to walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, visit Coit Tower and Japantown and if there's any time left I'm going to try and go shopping again. I leave here on Wednesday and fly to Miami where I stay for one night before flying home. Sue and Andy are going to travel around California for a little longer before heading north to Oregon and Seattle.



Big Sur

One of the whales we saw off Monterey Bay.

So we are finally on the west coast and the weather has even cooled down a little bit for us so it's lovely now, 46C is just too much for me!! We left Las Vegas and drove all the way to San Diego stopping off at Mojave and Joshua Tree Parks. I got to see a couple of coyotes which was great as I think they usually just come out at night. I loved the Joshua trees (see photo's), some people think they are really ugly but for once I agree with the Mormon pioneers who thought they looked very welcoming with their outstretched arms.

We had a couple of nights in San Diego which is a really nice laid back town and then headed up the coast to San Clemente which is a very pretty and very wealthy town with lots of Spanish style red roofed houses. It also has a lovely pier without an amusement arcade, chip shop or fortune teller in sight. We've been driving up the Pacific Highway but haven't managed to see very much as the weirdest sea fog sits just along the coast. I don't know if this is normal for California but you'd be a bit pissed off if you'd spent $10 million on a beach front house in Malibu and couldn't see further than the end of your nose!! Actually we thought Malibu was a bit of a dump and there are much nicer places further up the coast.

Last night we stayed in Santa Barbara which is really lovely. It's a nice size town with lots of lovely bars, restaurants and shops. They are also a lot of tramps which is unusual for a wealthy town as the police normally move them on. We saw two tramps having a bit of a girly fight when we were out for dinner last night. One pushed the other into the bushes demanding his money back and the poor sod that fell in the bushes squealed like a girl!! The next morning we saw them together again and one of them asked Sue for 25C in the most gay voice you ever heard, no wander they were fighting like girls the night before!! Gay tramps!! Only in California!!

Poor old Andy managed to get third degree burns last night when Sue saw a mouse in the street. The poor mouse stopped in it's tracks and then ran straight at Sue, she screamed and jumped about 10 feet in the air, grabbing Andy at the same time. Unfortunately for Andy he was holding Sue's Starbucks coffee cup in his hand and ended up scolding himself with it!! Sue and I were laughing so much we couldn't do anything to help the poor sod.

This morning we walked down to the beach and onto Santa Barbara's pier. There are lots of rules for this pier like no bare feet, no high heels but madly enough they do allow cars onto it. There's even a car park at the end!! How mad are Americans?? This pier wasn't so pretty and we even passed one restaurant which was having it's septic tank emptied at the time, not exactly inviting is it? We visited the Santa Barbara Mision and then drove on up the coast, stopping at Morro Bay for Fish and Chips (which weren't too bad actually) and at Piedras Blancas where a group of Elephant Seals have been living for the last 15 years. There can be up to 7500 of them here at any time which is great as 100 years ago they were nearly extinct.

Well I'm now starting my last week of the trip so there won't be many more posts now. I'm gutted that my trip is nearly over and I really am not ready to come home but my ticket's booked so I'll be back on the 4th August. But before I get home I've still got Carmel, Monterey and San Francisco to see.

I hear you are still having a heatwave at home, bloopdy typical, the summer I go away it's great at home. London even made it onto the California news today when the lights went out in Picadilly Circus. I hope the weather holds out there for a few more weeks so I can enjoy a little bit of it before going back to work.








A lovely Joshua Tree.


















Where the fuck are we then???

Having a dip in the Colorado River.

On the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, a little bit too close to the edge for me!!

Yes we had a couple of days in Las Vegas which was a bit of a shock to the system after spending so many days in the National Parks. The parks were fantastic despite temperatures of up to 45C!! We still managed to to go out hiking everyday, we managed to see Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon (North Rim), Mojave and Joshua Tree. They were all beautiful in their own way but my personal favourites were Arches and Bryce as they had the most dramatic and colourful landscapes. We also got to see loads of animals including two coyotes who ran in front of the car. There are also an amazing amount of plants in the deserts which always surprises me. Sue and I were really struggling with the heat but old Stinky never seems to notice it and doesn't even bother wearing a hat most days. By the last park Sue and I were refusing to get out of the car when Stinky went off on his hikes, we made him leave us in the car with the AC on full blast!! Vegas was great as you never need to go outside and can walk from in air conditioned building to the other. We stayed in the Paris hotel which was really nice and Sue and I managed to get our hair done and have a pedicure which was great and I only lost $40.00 on the roulette table.

We are now in San Diego which is much cooler (about 35C) but it has got very humid which is not the normal weather here. I've just heard on the news that there are more forest fires east of San Diego. We have seen a lot of evidence of this, especially in Joshua Tree National Park. It's so hot and dry at the moment that fires are breaking out everywhere. The US is experiencing a heatwave at the moment and there are electricity outages all the time as everyone is using their air conditioning 24 hours a day. A hospital in California has just had to be evacuated because the AC packed up completely.

Today we had a wander around San Diego. It's a nice city of about 1.4 million people and it has a laid back resort feeling to it. It used to have a big fishing industry but that seems to have disappeared, even the kelp processing factory is moving to Scotland!! Tomorrow we are going to San Diego Zoo which is world famous and has panda's so I'm really looking forward to that. After that we make our way up the west coast to San Francisco from where I will start my trip home, boohoo!!!

Sue and Stinky in Bryce Canyon, Utah.



















The Hoodoo's in Bryce Canyon, Utah.













Canyonlands Park, Utah




















Petroglyphs from about 1400 years ago in Sego Canyon, Utah.












This is the Mormon temple in Utah, the one we weren't allowed into!!













This is the nearest we got to dinosaur bones as the museum we went to in Utah had been shut down two days earlier because it was falling down. I wouldn't mind but they were told back in 1957 to get it repaired!! Talk about slow!!

Well this is turning into a State with lots of surprises. It has some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the ugliest I've ever seen and the Mormons are certainly a weird bunch!!

First of all I'll tell you all about our visit to Salt Lake City. A 10 acre piece of land in the centre of SLC is taken up with Temple Square. This is where the Latter Day Saints have their headquarters and their main temple. We did the usual tours and were quite shocked at how wealthy the church seems to be. Absolutely no expense has been spared on Temple Square, they even have a 21 000 seater auditorium with state of the art comms systems so they can broadcast via TV and internet!! We were dying to see the inside of the temple but you are only allowed in there if you are a Mormon and have been 'prepared'. Being prepared seems to consist of giving 10% of your earnings to the church, volunteering to work in Temple Sq. and generally being a jolly good mormon.

This mad religion is based on the teachings of a poor farmer's son called Joseph Smith in the 1820's. He reckons that God and Jesus appeared to him on a regular basis and gave him revelations. These revelations lead him to some engraved plates with Eygyptian hieroglyphics which he was miraculously able to translate despite having no education. Apparently God told him to start a new church and marry as many women as he could. Surprisingly he did get loads of people to follow him and they eventually set up and ran the largest town in Illinois.

Eventually other God fearing types decided to drive them out of town and this happened several times before they eventually killed Joseph Smith and a few of his cronies. By this time Joseph had made his mate Brigham Young President of the church and Brigham went on to marry 19 women and father 56 children. They also advocated marriage between siblings, the sick bastards!! Anyway eventually about 130 of them ended up in Utah which at the time had not been settled and was still a territory but they again built it up into a large successful area and wanted Utah to become a State and join the Union. The Federal government wouldn't allow it as they disagreed with the Mormon belief of plural marriage. Luckily their living Prophet (and they always have one of these, today's is called Gordon Hinckey!!) told everyone that he had had a revelation from God who told him that they did not need to practice polygamy anymore, how lucky was that?? So that meant Utah could become a State. I have to confess that I didn't realise that the mormons had actually founded the State, I just thought they all lived there because the State laws allowed them to do their thing. SLC is only 40% Mormon but most other towns in Utah are up to 100%. They are not allowed to drink, smoke, have caffeine although the Mormon church has been one of the biggest investors in Coca Cola, hypocritcal or what?

Anyway they haven't practiced plural marriage for over 100 years but it doesn't stop people on the tours asking about it. The way they 'explain' this part of the church's history is to say that God asked Joseph Smith and his mates to "take care of more than one family" !! Like it was something charitable they were doing!! Joseph Smith even adopted two rich orphan girls and married one of them. He was basically a dirty perv and today 12.5 million people from all over the world think he was the first prophet of the church.

Anyway after all that we decided to go out for a swim at Salt Lake. What a mistake that was!! It stinks like fuck and there are loads of horrible bugs. We lasted about half an hour before Sue and I demanded that Andy take us back to the city!!

We then moved on to a place called Moab in South East Utah which is close to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. It is really beautiful here. Arches Park is full of the most dramatic red rocks that tower 100's of feet over you. Natural arches and bridges have formed in the rocks that are up to 270 million years old. The average temperature has been 40C since we got here which is not exactly hiking weather but we have done some. We also did a fantastic trek with a Park Ranger yesterday as it covered parts of the park you cannot go to on your own. The ranger had us rock climbing and treking through the huge fins that are so close together at the bottom you can't actually walk between them you have to do a sort of spiderman movement with both hands on one rock and both feet on another rock, it was great and I managed not to fall or injure myself this time!!

Today we went out on the Colorado River in a jet boat and went off roading in the White Rim Canyon in Canyonlands it was great. I love this part of the State there are so many lovely parks to see and tomorrow we move south to see Bryce and Zion National parks but I think we will be staying in a place called Kanab in Arizona. After that we will be at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we are hoping to go mule treking.

I've now booked my flight home and will be back in the UK next month. I'm hoping the weather will still be good when I get there as I am starting to get used to these heatwave temperatures!!

Yeah I know I'm not supposed to be here but hey I am so there. I left Mexico on the 10th July (sorry I haven't updated anyone for ages) and flew to Miami for a couple of days. I had a great time there although you certainly see some sights on South Beach and Ocean Drive. Men walking around dressed as women or wearing only their underpants seems to be the norm. I then flew to Chicago and spent a fantastic few days there. It's definitely one of my favourite cities in the States and I could very easily live there. I then headed to Denver to meet up with Sue and Andy. We stayed in Denver, moved onto to Boulder and then travelled through the Rocky Mountain National Park which is unbelieveably beautiful, I think it has the most striking landscape I've seen so far on this trip. I'd love to come back sometime and spend a couple of weeks really seeing more of the park.

So now we have moved onto to Utah, in fact we are in Salt Lake City now. We got here tonight and tomorrow we are going to spend the day doing all the Mormon stuff and of course seeing the Lake itself.

I'm planning on coming back in August (this year) as I am going to run out of money very soon and will need to come home and get a job. I am trying really hard not to think about it at the moment!! Anyway I promise that I will do a better job of keeping this blog updated now that I'm back in the States. Hope everyone at home is well, you must all be starting to go on your hols now so have a great time and I'll see you all next month!!