Honeymoon number two

After taking about three months to get our visas for the UK sorted we winged our way to the USA. Flew into LAX on the Monday and hired a car to drive straight to Vegas. Stayed there for three nights checking out all the decadance including a couple of lions in the middle of the MGM Grand. Also went to see a Cirque du Soleil show at Treasure Island. The highlight of the trip was winning $30 on the craps table despite not having a clue how the game works! Also won $7 on blackjack. Spent our winnings on a couple of ridiculously expensive glasses of port. Ah well, fun times anyway.

---

Drove from there up to Mammoth Lakes, which is on the Eastern side of Yosemite National Park. Had a couple of days up there with some beautiful countryside. There was still some snow left from the winter and we were quite high up, so despite some beautiful weather it hadn't melted yet. Good fun skiing around on it. Lucy found a bear and a cub. It's a bit of a shame that the taxidermist had found them first.

---

From there we drove through Yosemite National Park, which is just stunning - heaps of warnings for bears and cages for you to store your food in to protect it from them.

El Capitan and the Half Dome were very impressive, as was just the sheer scale of the place.

I climbed El Capitan. Well, 10 feet of it. As we were driving through the Park we had to brake hard while driving through to avoid running over a wolf! Pretty cool, though I was gutted we didn't see any bears.

---

Two nights in Fairfield, which we used as a base to visit Napa Valley and sample a few wines and check out one of the three Old Faithful geyers.

---

Down to San Francisco where we (I) took a bazillion photos of Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz.


Alcatraz was pretty cool, Lucy's companion Penny is here waiting for the ferry all on her lonesome. I was surprised how cold it was out on the island when it was nice on the mainland. I can imagine how it must have been a miserable place to spend your time. In fact there has been an escape from Alcatraz. Someone got to the water but he was never seen again so they assume he drowned as the water is very cold with swift tides.

There is an old submarine at Fisherman's Wharf from WWII that is just amazing. You can get into all the nooks and crannies and see how life really was for them. In a word, cramped! Lucy's doing her impression of a periscope.

There was a random platoon of sea lions on the docks at Fisherman's Wharf. Apparently after the earthquake in the 80s they just showed up on the docks. The law is such that they can't be touched, so they've just taken over that part of the docks.

---

Drove down to LA via a little place called San Simeon which supported the local tourist attraction, Hearst Castle which is a massive estate built by the newspaper magnate William Hearst - he was the inspiration for Citizen Kane.

Checked out Santa Monica, which I was very impressed by. The beach is huge and it was amazing how clean it was. They take good care of it. We also saw the Baywatch style lifeguards and towers, as well as a few bronzed bodies. Nice shopping area too. Didn't see anyone famous though unfortunately.

Went to Universal Studios for the day which was a lot of fun. The best part was the Mummy ride, which is a roller coaster indoors, completely dark and very scary. Heaps of fun.
Got to take a photo with Bart and Homer as we were leaving, which was cool. Had the living daylights scared out of us in the Haunted House, that was very well done.

Then finally we spent six hours at the airport waiting to fly to London. Flew Virgin Atlantic. Eh.