So we stocked up on gallons of water and supplies and started our journey into the desert.Now one of our favourite films is "Into The Wild" - the haunting true story of Christopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp chasing his dreams across the North American continent - and one of the areas he spent a lot of time in was the desert around Salton Sea close to the Mexican border.So it seemed right to head in that direction.We didn't see anyone for hours...

Our 2nd stop in LA on this trip, only with more time than our previous ever-so-flash stopover back in March.Having got a taster for American rollercoasters in Santa Cruz, we decided to make a day of it at Six Flags Magic Mountain - pure chav Americana.Loved feeling like a kid again running from ride to ride, getting soaked on the log flume and screaming our lungs out on rides named 'Goliath' and suchlike. However, I've decided that the new fancy rides which throw...

Time to cruise down the Californian coast on Highway 1.First up was beach volleyball, rickety wooden rollercoasters and noisy sea lions in Santa Cruz.Next was Monterey Bay with the most amazing aquarium complete with kelp forests, slimy rays and evil jellyfish.As we parked Frank up outside, we noticed that all the other cars surrounding him looked a bit swank.Now this wasn't that unusual - we love the Frankster but he's not exactly a looker - but there was someth...

Ah World Cup time.As timing would have it, we were in the States for the England v USA match.We were making our way towards San Francisco so decided to break our journey in the college town of Berkeley thinking that we would be able to find a good bar with a mix of people from all parts who knew they were watching 'football' not 'soccer'.Well, we did find a bar but sadly there was no mix of people - only frat boys chanting 'U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A' over and over agai...

Into California... And an interesting first night in the state... We drove from Oregon through miles and miles of the Redwoods Forests - huuuuuuuuge trees which would make even the Atkinson family feel like midgets. One tree was so big, it had a hole cut through it so you could drive your car through it. Ant made friends with a talking giant and also made friends with a biker who we bumped into again at some traffic lights later that day. A bit of traffic light c...