Los Angeles, the start of the adventure

This post is backfill for historical purposes, a straight copy of the newsletter that was sent out to our mailing list, hence no pictures.

Hi everyone,

For the few of you who may not know our plans, we are back on the road again - though things have changed somewhat. Having been back in Jersey since early November and knowing that our house was going to be rented for another year, we decided to test the water and put our motorhome on the market. We had planned to go back to Europe this year if there were no takers but it sold in the New Year and so our options were thrown wide open, and we decided to explore The United States.

An overnight trip to London followed to apply for our tourist visa's at the US Embassy which all went to plan, except that when our passports were returned in the mail, both visa's were stuck into one passport. Anyone who has ever tried to call a US Embassy will understand what a struggle it was to get this rectified, but it was eventually sorted, and we left Jersey on 27th March for Los Angeles on the Californian west coast.

We were fortunate to fly on an Airbus A380 with British Airways - and despite being in economy seats we were on the top deck and had a great flight over, and with US Immigration giving us a full year stay on our arrival without any problem. Our first full day in L.A. we walked along Redondo and Hermosa beach fronts and got a little sunburnt in the brilliant weather, though we soon found that walking just isn't practical in this huge sprawling city and so we hired a small car for a few days to really explore. We've driven on the Pacific Coast Highway 1 as far North as Oxnard and Malibu, south to Laguna and San Clemente, and many stops in between such as Santa Monica pier and Venice beach too. We've also been up in the Hollywood Hills, to the Griffith Observatory and right up to Mount Wilson at 5710 feet above sea level, on a great driving road where the air temperature was barely above freezing. Today we have just returned from a bus tour of Hollywood where among other things we saw the Hollywood walk of fame, Sunset Boulevard and caught a glimpse into some of the homes of the rich and famous who live here.

Tomorrow we are picking up a pre-booked Harley Davidson Electra Glide for a classic six day motorcycle road trip around Southern California, before we head inland to Phoenix, Arizona to see some of the natural beauty of this great land. We might not have regular internet access next week whilst we're on the bike so we'll try to put some pictures up on Facebook next week after the Harley trip.

Until next time,

Craig and Sel.xx