I arrived in LA and American Airlines had not managed to lose my luggage. What a relief. I have heard US airlines are quite good at doing this. Anna was going to be landing in another 5 hours time and so I went and got a hire car and then drove to Venice Beach to the hostel that I had booked for us. Yes I was on a budget and 5 * luxury in LA is expensive. I then went and picked Anna up at the airport and was very happy to see her again. Anna's first comment when she saw the room was, "Nice prison". Well it was not that bad and at least it we did not have to share it and it had an ensuite bathroom. The next day I could not find my passport and realised that I had probably left it in the seat cover on the plane. So I phoned both LA and Denver's "Lost and Found" to see if it had been handed in. It had not. I went back to the airport to see if someone there could help. Everybody was really friendly and helpful, but no passport. So I went onto the internet and checked if there was a British Consulate and luckily there was. But I was going to have to wait until Monday to go and try organise a new passport. We decided to go to Beverly Hills, Belair, etc etc. We bought a star homes map ($20 rip-off) and then drove around looking at various movie star's houses, like Elvis, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitts, Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes, Madonna, Hugh Hefner's playboy mansion (but did not see any bunnies) and a few others. We also had to go and see the Hollywood sign and take a photo of it. We walked down Hollywood Boulevard and took some pictures of the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. To top the evening off we saw Pirates of the Caribbean - Worlds End at one of the amazing theatres on the boulevard. It only finished at 2am. Monday morning I headed off to the consulate and Anna headed to the beach. I got to speak to a really friendly person who said that she would send my application off urgently to San Francisco so that I could collect it when I got there in a week's time. The cost for the new passport and service $350. Well what can one do. I went back and spent the rest of the day on the beach with Anna. That evening I was packing my backpack and found my passport in a place I don't usually put it for safe keeping. What an arse, but a happy one at least. The next morning I phoned the woman at the British Consulate and told her I had found it and she said that it was probably the best outcome for me and that she would cancel my application. The plan was for us to drive up from LA to San Francisco over the next week and stop over where we felt like it. Our first stop along the way was in Morro Bay. It was a cute little town with a small fishing harbour. We stayed in a nice motel which had a huge room, shower etc. The motel also had 2 jacuzzis which we enjoyed. The strange thing though was that every meal we ate Anna seemed to order the best dish and mine was always horrible. This started to become a bit of a joke. Anyway I went out and found some single track in the local area and had a few hours of fun mountain biking. Anna went for a long run. We hired a double kayak and went for a few hours out on the lagoon. We managed to paddle well together. Always a good test for couples. We left Morro Bay and headed further north stopping at some scenic stops along the way like Big Sur. We made our way up to Monterey where we had been told there was a very good aquarium. We found a nice motel and then headed off to see the aquarium. Well, we were not disappointed. It's a wonderful aquarium and very well presented. I saw my first Sun fish which is a huge and strange looking fish. We only got to spend an hour there, but I could have spent much longer. The next day we arranged a horse ride on the beach. We met up with the guide and headed off with just one other person with the guide. Its always amazing to walk and gallop horses on the beach. We managed to see Humpback whales, bald eagles, sea lion (although he was dead) & a cute sea otter. We did get to gallop the horses a little which was great fun. The next drive took us into San Francisco. I looked at the map and decided rather than stay in San Francisco we should rather stay in Marin County. We found an English pub called the Pelican Inn at Muir beach. It was an awesome place but we could only stay for one night. It was within walking distance of the beach and there was some local mountain bike trails. The staff were really friendly and I can definitely recommend it to anyone going that way. The next day we stayed a little further down the way at Stinton beach. Its a small seaside town that gets a lot of weekend visitors from San Francisco. The pubs have a number of live bands that play there day & night. We drove into San Francisco for dinner and got to experience the crazy steep streetsWe eventually made it to Arcata. This was a lovely american town. We were lying on the bed chatting about the Titanic for some strange reason when the whole room started moving. It was wierd and scary. We made our way to the reception and asked what was going on. The receptionist seemed unconcerned and said it was just an earthquake. Well we found out later it measured 5.5 on the Richter scale.