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After driving up and down the correct street several times trying to figure out which house it was, we were glad when the garage door opened and we were waved over. I still can’t get my head around American house numbers, that make no sense whatsoever. Fortunately, Lesley spotted us and we parked up on the drive an introduced ourselves. We also spotted their Vanagon, Bluey and I was surprised to see that it too had a Subaru engine fitted! Lesley invited us in, and soon after

Finally leaving the BLM land just outside of Joshua Tree, we drove onwards towards Borrego Springs. Having recently seen a cool picture of some of the sculptures that are here, we wanted to go and visit it ourselves. A check of Overlander, threw up an RV park in one of the golf resorts here. Normally something I wouldn’t be even slightly interested in going near, this one offered showers, laundry, water and a pool for $10, now that is tempting. Deciding that we wouldn’t be ab

I’d like to say we had a restful night, out there in the desert, but it was not the case. There’s always something, from animals, to people, to transport. This time it was transport, namely trains. Two commercial train lines run through this valley, it wasn’t so bad in the daytime because they didn’t use their horns and the steady chug of a freight train in the distance could almost be considered therapeutic. The night time is different, horns blaring the trains endless drive

That evening, camped up on Craggy Wash, we were able to let Aimee have free reign for the first time in a few days. While she had a great time, we made the most of the lovely sunshine. Not accustomed to wearing t-shirt in January, it was something to be enjoyed. As it grew a bit colder, we were about to head inside when a couple from Canada walked past and we inevitably got chatting. As had happened many times over the weekend when we mentioned our future travel plans, they l

It was a fair drive to Salton Sea, which had been recommended to us by the guys we met at the Drivers Wanted VW Club in LA. It sounded pretty interesting though, a former lakeside resort that had been popular up until the mid 1950’s was now mostly abandoned. However, it all started to go wrong when the salinity in the lake rose to a point where it killed all the fish and by the looks of it most other living things. The resort was abandoned and now is a semi ghost town, with a

As we headed back out of San Francisco, I found us a potential camping spot that was a fair size parking area on the junction of some minor on the outskirts of town. As it was right on the outskirts, I didn’t anticipate it being so busy, and it was in a good location for our whale watching tour in the morning. It must have been a shortcut to get somewhere as the traffic that started coming through from around 5am was pretty much constant. It was also raining, and our whale wa

Our first morning in the city, we decided to drive San Fran’s 49 mile scenic drive route. My mum had found this in the guidebook and it was supposed to take you around a fairly comprehensive tour of the city, as you followed the signs. Sounds straightforward enough. My mum handed me the map and I became route navigator. Sounds straightforward enough, just follow the signs or map. The problem here was apparent immediately, when there was a distinct lack of signs. This left me

The next few days mainly involved driving. My parents had to be in San Francisco for the 4th of January, giving us two days to work our way across there. We left that morning from Sequoia valley, climbing an incredibly steep mountain pass as we began around a 4 hour drive west. This is one of the only times since installing the new cooling system that I thought our engine might overheat. Climbing steadily for mile and miles of hairpins, then engine was definitely working. Alt

Vegas was really just a pit stop on the way to Death Valley, which was where we were headed this morning. It was a fairly long drive to our next stop off which was in Beatty to the north east. We planned to drive a scenic route down the old Spanish trail and up through Badwater Basin V. It was also New Year’s Eve. Yesterday we had been to a carwash and cleaned Ruby, as driving through all the salty and snowy mountains road she was actually disgusting. I felt slightly embarras

I awoke to the scraping and beeping of a snowplough as it systematically cleared the hotel car park at around 4am. Lying there, not wanting to put my earplugs in and try to sleep in case I missed a phone call, I waited for 5am to arrive. With no call, I texted my dad who said they couldn’t get through again. Sleep didn’t look like it was on the cards anymore so we made our way inside for a hot drink and to discuss a plan of action. When we eventually go through, the advice wa

We broke up the two hour drive to Vegas by stopping off at Walmart to do the Christmas food shop. Leaving the generator running while we went inside should give the batteries enough charge to get us the last hour into Las Vegas itself. We managed to get most things we wanted, and decided to head into another shop once we had got there, wanting to get the drive done so we would be there with plenty of time. Having arrived and made the 600 miles journey without a drive belt, I

We fancied doing a decent walk, and managing to have strategically positioned Lee’s phone the previous night we had got enough signal to look at some walks in the area. We wanted to do Angel’s Landing which is one of the most popular trails in the park, a 5.4 mile hike with over 500m of elevation gain. We packed up and headed down into the park to find the start of the walk, it took us a while to figure out that Zion operates a shuttle bus system that takes you up the canyon

We were preparing to drive around to the Four Corners Monument that morning, when a car pulled up. Not sure of what to expect, Lee went to speak to the bloke who got out of his car. He tried to tell us that it was $10 to park here for the night, and then gave up and went away when we said that there were no signs saying that there was any fee. This was much like the morning we awoke at near Shiprock and someone turned up and asked us for petrol money as we were camped. I thin

Having finished up with visiting Bandalier, we were headed to Taos. It was not a long drive, but one with impressive scenery. Rounding a bend in the road, we were suddenly faced with the Rio Grande Gorge, cutting a great swathe through the plains. The endless road stretched for miles ahead of us into the mountains and it was pretty damn cold. Arriving in Taos, we encountered clearly gritted roads for the first time and the night time temperature was estimated to drop to aroun

For once, we were on the road at a reasonable time and this meant we could get Aimee sorted. She was due a vaccine and we needed to make sure we got all he vaccines on time so that we can get her a passport in place for Canada. We also wanted to get her microchipped. We headed to an animal hospital, and got her booked in for 2.30pm. With some time to kill, we went to do some boring necessities, washing, shopping and van tidying. Having got ourselves fairly sorted, we headed b

We awoke to our third morning in a city car park, quite ready to get back on the road again and stay somewhere quieter. Ian had recommended we visit Copper Breaks State Park as we headed west and in Fort Worth we were around 3 hours away. We were also in need of showers, water and somewhere to charge our batteries, so a campsite definitely had its selling points at this stage. We arrived at the park and the friendly people inside set us up with a campsite for the night at $26

We had the choice between two routes, leaving Slidell. Either head north towards Natchez and Dallas, or heading more directly west towards San Antonio. After much deliberation, we decided to head towards Natchez, a lot of people had recommended going here and apparently the visitor centre had a place to camp for free. It was around a 3 hour drive from Jeff and Shannon’s house and we set off around mid-afternoon. Sure enough there was places to stay at the visitor centre which

It was the Wednesday evening before thanksgiving when we arrived at Jeff’s house. The fire was already blazing in the chiminea in their back garden, when we arrived with a bag of slightly soggy clothes asking to use the tumble dryer. Shannon showed us around and to the all important dryer, and also the where the keg of Yuengling was that Jeff had bought. With our clothes drying we sat around the fire outside enjoying a beer and catching up. We also met Paul and his wife Chris

After blagging a free night camping at the state park, we wanted to head into see New Orleans. We met Brian at the VW meet, and as he lived in New Orleans, he had offered us some free, secure parking outside his apartment which sounded great. We started off packing up in the morning at a leisurely pace. I had a shower which I shared with a small green frog, while Lee started packing up the van. We pottered around, in no great rush until someone drove past with an official loo

Today was a day I was pretty excited about. From the day we bought our van nearly 5 years ago, the sliding door has been a constant source of aggravation. When we initially purchased Ruby, it wouldn't even open. After much persuasion and dropping it on the floor, we managed to get it to slide a bit. Since then it has operated badly but passably. It's never been possible for us to shut it from the inside of the van which is very annoying, especially in bad weather. When we met