Welcome Back! After our month off home in Australia, we're on our way back to the States to finish what we started...

So far we've visited 43 States, which leaves only New Mexico (44), Texas (45), Oklahoma (46), and Arkansas (47) left for us to complete our tour. Unfortunately we miss out on Rhode Island, Kentucky (this was a technical blunder as we were less than 20 miles from the border at one stage!), and Alaska, which would've made 50.

Nevertheless, this time we will be working our way east from California across to Arkansas, before returning back to California to finish up.

On Monday we left Sydney for LA on United Airlines flight UA840, which we both agree was not our best flying experience...but we made it! We arrived into LA around 10am and caught a shuttle to the Wilshire Grand Hotel (LA CBD) where our rental car was waiting. The car we ended up with this time is a Nissan Rogue, which is a neat little Crossover. It lacks some of the features of our Escape, but it is All-Wheel Drive, and has Continuously Variable Transmission, which is awesome - really smooth!

Before we went to meet Will Gile, we cruised back to LAX to meet up with my brother before he flew back to Brisbane (and on to PNG), so that worked out well. Apparently Kristina Malarek was also at LAX around the same time we were there, but we didn't find out til later, so we missed her.

We are at Will's tonight, and will be leaving tomorrow, but we'll be back to stay with him again in about a fortnight's time.