We woke up in Beatty, Nevada, knowing that we were headed back into Death Valley that day. The Rough Guide had suggested a couple of things that we decided we would do and that night we were going to actually stay in the valley, as I had called the number in our hostel listings and discovered that the hostel had been bought by a lady called Cynthia who was in the process of turning it into a proper hotel for real people, as opposed to backpackers. She had said th...

Death Valley...what to say? It's really quite warm. And like a desert. And the roads really do stretch out in front of you completely straight as if they're never going to end. And they look like they have puddles of water on them, until you reach them and then they disappear. And any towns in Death Valley aren't really towns, just a motel and a gift shop. And all the motels in Death Valley are full, so that you end up driving with a quarter of a tank...

Merced was the insignificant little place we based ourselves in, in order to visit Yosemite National park. We found ourselves in another Motel 6 (this one apparently filled with truck drivers.) We settled ourselves in with the TV and decided to get up relatively early in the morning to make our way to the park. We were extremely lucky with the weather. I actually put shorts on! We weren't aware at that stage that because of the roads in the park, if the weat...

As you can see from the title of this journal entry, after Yosemite we found ourselves in some pretty 'off the beaten track' type places...I bet none of you can remember me reeling off the places I was going to be visiting as "LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakhurst, Lee Vining...Las Vegas, Death Valley blah blah blah", can you? We were so naive! I think we really thought we were going to only stay in places we'd heard of the whole time!...

We headed for Fort Mason in San Francisco, which is the site of an old military base and hospital. They have a hostel there now in one of the old barracksy type buildings. It is at the bay end of the city and we'd decided to base ourselves there for a couple of days, so that we could go and visit Alcatraz, see the Golden Gate Bridge and all that malarky. That evening we ate at an Italian place on Pier 39 (where you could still hear the sea lions honking...the...