With an early flight out of Invercargill we had an early start to get on the road. We left home at 5:55am and headed down to pick up Matthew. We got to the airport at 7:15am to find the fog was too thick and our plane couldn't land. Eventually they cancelled our first flight, but we managed to get booked onto the next flight. 10:25am came and it was time to board... again the fog was too thick for the plane to come in and we were delayed 30 minutes. So after a reschedule of connecting flights and a long wait in Invercargill airport, we got on the plane and headed to Christchurch. We had a quick stop in Christchurch to grab some lunch before we headed on the next plane to Auckland. Due to the original flights being changed it was going to be pushed for time to make the international flight to San Francisco. We landed in domestic and quickly headed off to the international terminal, and through customs where we were all pulled over for different things but were all fine. We then carried on our way to the gate when we heard over the loud speaker that our flight was ready to depart. With a wee panic we all ran as fast as we could to the gate, and made it just at the last minute.

The plane wasn't very full and the flight attendants were lovely and allowed us to move seats so we had plenty of room. The flight was good and everyone managed to get at least a little bit of sleep.

We arrived into San Fransisco nice and early in the morning. Made it through customs and picked up our bags. We had a quick stop for some coffee and a snack before we headed for Nicole. We headed out of the airport on the train and made our way to the rental car company where we collected our car... a Cheve Suburban, it was massive! And it came with wifi! We packed up the truck and headed out of San Francisco. We had a stop along the road at an American diner for breakfast, where we got to experience the American diner life - just like in the movies! We carried on the road and made our way up to Oregon to Nicole. We had a few quick stops on the road before we had contact with Chrissy and decided that we would head to the school and surprise Nicole at her basketball training!

We made it to Klamath Falls where we met Chrissy and made our way to Bonanza school where we met up with Nicole! Was awesome to see her again and everyone was very excited. After the catch up we made our way out to Bly where Nicole lives and where we are staying. The roads were a bit bad as it was snowing and Nicole thought we were driving too slow but we made it! We settled in to the grandparents house and checked out Nicole's house and got settled in and met everyone. We had a lovely home cooked dinner, and then spent the night talking and drinking. We were happy to have finally made it!