After leaving the stunning Kings Canyon National Park and the Sequoia Natuonal Forest we headed to San Francisco.

The temperature had thankfully dropped to about 25* in Kings Canyon as we were so high up in th Sierras, we stayed in a little log cabin in the woods, went to listen to rangers talk about bears and saw some of the oldest and largest trees in the world.

After Kings Canyon we stopped at Yosemite, we stayed on a little small holding with horses, goats, chickens ducks, cats and dogs. Henna and Arlo had their first go at milking a goat. Yosemite (like all of the American wilderness) is incredibly beautiful. We got up early to avoid the heat and hiked up the John Muir and Misty Trails, two majestic waterfalls and incredible scenery.

 

Our little road trip to the coast saw us land in San Francisco, the temp dropped to around 20* – I had to put me fleece on!

We stayed in a fantastic Air BnB in Alameda (an island/ suburb half an hour from downtown) -it was very expensive but it was way cheaper than staying anywhere near downtown. San Francisco is not a cheap place to visit. The owners lent us their bikes – I am soooo looking forward to riding again, I didn’t realise how much I would miss it and how much my body needs/ relies on it. We’ve not been able to hire bikes nearly half as much as we planned to.

We left the car at home as driving / parking / sitting in highway traffic is a big no no, so the bus worked just fine for us. We visited the Aquarium and Exploratorium, a kids interactive science/ engineering museum…we ticked it off the ‘homeschooling’ box. We also went on a boat ride round Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate Bridge. We had a lovely time with our (now ) friends Paul and Jamie who live in SF…big thanks to my bestie Lee for putting us in touch with his big bro.

Cable cars, museums, street art, tourists, Haight & Ashbury, Chinatown, hill walking, Lombard Street – all done and dusted.

We all found SF quite exhausting, maybe we weren’t ready for a big city stop so soon after being in the wilderness. It was the first time we found the public transport hard to fathom too, so this didn’t help.

We were all glad to leave the city and head north along the coast to Arcata. We had planned to camp in the garden of a friend of a friend of ours but we were greeted with such warmth and generosity that this plan changed.

The beautiful Carla is a sister/ friend of our good friend Rachel who said “You must visit Carla on your trip, she’s amazing” she wasn’t wrong.

Carla has been building a new house on her 3 acre Redwoods Forest for the last 3 years, it’s very nearly finished, she hasn’t moved in yet but has running water and a toilet (no poos though!). To our amazement she had thrown a bed in with a duvet and said we could sleep inside the house! This filled our hearts with joy, the house was astonishingly beautiful and she herself hadn’t even slept there yet – we were honoured. We did have to dig a whole in the woods to have a poo though, but you know us – just like being home! Thank you Carla (and Rachel, again).

In Arcata we all learned to skateboard – something both kids are great at already

 

Our next stop was Florence, a nice little town on the Oregon coast with amazing sand dunes. We had booked an AirBnB and as always we were excited to see what our next home would bring. Well, if you like 7 dogs (including their piss and shit everywhere) a house full of kids comatose in front of the telly (owner claimed she was a ‘childminder’ – poor kids) and voices like fog horns, then this place was for you…it wasn’t for us. We left a night early and opted to camp at Crater Lake National Park instead.

Crater Lake is stunning, a collapsed volcano in the Oregon mountains that has filled with the clearest blue and cleanest water ever. These Americans really know how to do a National Park – more from John on that later.

 

 

Next stop was Portland, I was particularly looking forward to Portland as my good friend Rochelle grew up there – and she’s pretty cool. Rochelle and her home town didn’t disappoint us. It was full of friendly, bohemian, relaxed and nice people. We met with the lovely Hap who is Rochelle’s brother, that was also a pleasure. Thank you RD!

 

We’ve stayed in about 20 different AirBnB ‘s up to now but this one was the best so far. Our home for the four nights was in Reed, a nice neighbourhood not too far from downtown. The owners were artists and the house was spectacular, comfortable and had a swimming pool, even better than that, the familyb were away in holiday so we had the place to ourselves.

 

A new place usually means more Edventuring for us – but I’ve learned I don’t sleep well on a camping mat so I was pretty exhausted from the previous night at Crater Lake, in fact we were all tired and needed to rest so we spent the first few days not exploring Portland but chilling at ‘home’ by the pool and cooking nice food, catching up with journals and emailing – Facetiming peeps at home. When we did finally venture out we went to a street party called Last Thursdays and to the biggest bookshop in the world called Powells. Our poor children haven’t been allowed any REAL books in the last 8 months ( they’re too heavy and bulky to carry) so going to Powells and buying a real book each was a real treat.  Portland is a place we’d like to come back to as we feel there was so much more to see.

 

The last time John and I were in USA was 15 years ago and the time we’ve noticed a huge increase in the amount of homeless people here, there’s a lot of ‘have nots’ and people in poverty. It’s not just the big cities like San Fran and Portland, it’s in the small towns too like Eureka and Florence.

Our 6 week USA road trip is coming to an end as we’re in Seattle for the next few days, our AirBnb is a bit of a pokey basement but it’s ok. We’ve dropped our beloved Ford Edge (with the air conditioned seats) off and we’re on public transport, we get the train the Vancouver on Wednesday 1st August. Only 5 more weeks to go – and no, we’re not ready to come home yet.  We’ll, me John and Arlo aren’t, Henna was, she’s been missing home and school and she’s been struggling to communicate this with us, instead she’s been grumpy – until we could get to the bottom of it, she’s better now – we’ve (John) has had a chat with her and we’re back on top form. In fact, she’s in 7th heaven at the mo as our pokey basement has an old fashioned typewriter – she’s writing stories on it and they’re wonderful.

Come on Canadians!!!! Show us what’ya got.