Ok, so it's several months later and we're home, but I'm determined to finish this journal off. If no one ever reads it but me and my mum that's alright, but I want to do it so I can read it when I'm old and grey and can't believe/remember that I ever travelled the world!

The time we had on Anna Maria Island was lovely, it was great to catch up with the guys from home, and to see some familiar faces! The weather we had there was pretty much the best we experienced during our whole time in the States and it meant we could spend a bit of time on the beach. Anna Maria is a lovely place, the beach is beautiful, with pristine white sand and turquoise sea, so Kristie and Scott couldn't have chosen a better location for their wedding and for the 'unit' to have a bit of a holiday!

Much drinking was of course the order of the day at the local bar, 'Bortell's'. The first night we rocked up, it was one of those horrible 'everyone in the place falls silent and turns to look at the foreign interlopers' moments, and the barmaid could barely bring herself to speak to us, but I find in these situations if you buy loads of drinks and crisps you somehow win them over. Strange that, eh? Nat and Elliot discovered the Greatest Hits of Mr Kenny Rogers on the jukebox and everyone was happy...the makings of a perfect night - crisps, drinks and the tunes of Kenny Rogers, what more could you ask?! Anyway, the night ended with a pretty much fully-clothed early morning dip in the (very warm) ocean...so, not unlike a night out in Cardiff(!)

My lovely god-daughter (18 months old and not yet fully versed in the agonies of the full blown hangover) woke me up at 6.25 the following morning approximately 2 and a half hours after I'd got into bed, so unfortunately I wasn't eased as gently into the day as I would've wished, but fortunately we enjoyed another day of sun, sea and relaxation, so it wasn't too much of a hardship!

The day of the wedding was another sunny one, though the ceremony wasn't until late in the afternoon to make the most of the lovely light on the beach. 20 minutes before it was all due to kick off, I had a minor crisis with the dress I had carried in my rucksack for the previous 2 months when I put it on and the zip broke (all to do with bad luck and nothing to do with the humongous American portions, honest!) Thankfully Miss Welsford saved the day and produced a wedding outfit for me, so all was not lost. The wedding was brilliantly organised so that everything was perfect - the Americans know how to put on a good celebration! Kristie the bride looked absolutely beautiful and Scott - her now husband - looked very handsome. The party finished with everyone making an arch of sparklers for them to walk beneath (a bit hazardous if you ask me, but presumably made for amazing photos!) A few of us retired to our recently adopted local for a couple of afterparty drinks, and the happy couple retired to their honeymoon suite complete with heart-shaped jacuzzi!

The afterparty drinks took an interesting turn when a couple of the boys got involved in some sort of pool competition with 3 locals/rednecks. It all got very heated when it came to deciding who owed whom what (and whether they had been playing for money in the first place!) and I really did think that of all the people we could've been picking fights with, the local NRA members didn't seem the most sensible option, but you live you learn! Thankfully 3am came and my new best mate the barmaid (I think maybe she worked on commission) tried (without much success) to chuck us all out. She was probably very grateful when the world's least busy policeman arrived (fully armed) and helped remove us...The shocking thing about America (or perhaps not the shocking thing, but one of them...) is the blase attitude they have about drink driving. The redneck who was driving was absolutely bladdered, but the policeman quite happily ushered him into his Ford F350 (officially the most ridiculously oversized car on the planet - air pollution, air schmollution, eh?!) and simply followed him home - there to deal with things if/when he drove straight into the sea I guess!

The following day everyone was a little bit fragile, but gathered at Kristie and Scott's rented beachouse for a BBQ. It would've been lovely but for the incoming hurricane...they must've been so relieved that they'd got married 24 hours earlier! Emily and I said our goodbyes, popped by the internet cafe to try and book some accommodation for our first couple of nights in Fiji and headed for Tampa airport to fly back to Los Angeles - the city where we had started our coast to coast roadtrip.

The drive to the airport was uneventful and when we got there we found the place to return our beloved car quite easily too. The guy who we returned it to thankfully didn't hand me a file full of speeding tickets (more by luck than judgement - we very rarely actually knew the speed limit) and didn't notice that I had almost ripped the front bumper off the stupidly high pavement in the car park of Hearst Castle! He did notice however that we had done just under 7000 miles in 2 months, which he seemed to find fairly remarkable - which I guess it was! x