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Steve Holcroft
Steve, Lea, Brett + Beaulea's World Tour

America

Saturday - 1 Feb 2003
Los Angeles , LA - U. S. A.


Map

Wow, such a big place and such little money left! Our journey is coming to an end soon, so we have cut the USA down to match our budget, so 3 weeks or so will have to do ! We had originally scheduled 3 months!

Still, none of us have been to the west coast before, so it's all-new.




Home Sweet Home

After 1 night in an airport hotel in LA, we met Jill, Gary and Victoria outside the RV hire place where we picked up our accommodation and transport for the next 3 weeks.

Being the first ever left-hand drive vehicle I've ever driven (I didn't tell anyone that until we got safely parked), it was quite an experience guiding a 32 foot Winnebago down the Los Angeles freeway to Disneyland during the rush hour! It's 9 feet wide, so not a lot of room for error!

The "Slideout" on the Left hand side came in extremely handy - it just made the interior so much more 'liveable'. People could walk past each other without falling over themselves.

We gave the kids the main bedroom, so that all their junk (sorry, toys) would be confined to one place - in theory. The adults had the other two beds, one of which I can honestly say is a real squash for anyone over 5' tall!

We used a company called Moturis who have their own website, but www.adventuretouring.com got it for us cheaper. The service was good, but not excellent. I guess you get what you pay for. I would use them again but be very careful about storing luggage - see below.



Rv'in in the USA

This is big business in the States, as you can imagine. I've no idea how much these things cost, but I bet it isn't peanuts - and there are thousands of them around. We travelled around California in Winter, and most places were almost full. You would have to book ahead in summer. The only trouble with this is, you don't get to see what a site is like before you get there. While most sites we stayed at were fine, one wasn't. I think it was called The Big Bear park, somewhere near a place called Modesto (where George Lucas comes from) and sounded OK in our guide book. We arrived at night and found a disused theme park in a terrible state of repair, and toilet blocks you would only use in a dire emergency.

This brings me to the other main factor of RVing - cost. For the 7 of us, it was economical to hire an RV as it provided transport and accommodation for us all, without having to unpack and repack our bags at all. However, the RV sites are not cheap. They start at $20-30, for two people, but that rises sharply with each person, and we paid around $50 per night which added dramatically to our costs. I had expected maybe $20 in total, as in New Zealand, most sites cost about 10 pounds a night. Most sites were "OK" - clean and functional, but did not cater well for children.

Something you must also bear in mind when camping in California - or, in fact, any coastal area - is that there is probably going to be a railway nearby, and it will be near your site! This isn't a cynical view. Think about it. Coastal areas are often mountainous and as such, any railway will have to be by the coast, as it can't go over the hills. So, it will usually be not far from the main highway - as will your campsite, to make it "easy to reach" from the main roads. Also, the cheapest land to buy to build an RV site on is highly likely to be right near the railway, where nobody else would want to live, right?

This means that virtually every night in a RV in California will be punctuated by the "Ding,Ding,Ding" of the level crossings, as Casey Jones hauls his load to San Francisco!

Don't let this put you off though. Motorhomes in the USA are in a different class and the 7 of us were very comfortable. There are large motorhomes in Europe, but I can't imagine that they are practical on our tiny roads. America's roads are big but, surprisingly, they spend no money at all on maintenance and were, by far, the worst surfaces in the 16 countries we travelled through - and that includes China, Thailand etc. You can easily appreciate why American cars have always had soft suspension!

WARNING: An unfortunate PostScript to our RV experience was that, at the last RV park, in Las Vegas, we opened the locker where we had stored our (emptied) bags on the first day, to find that 3 out of the 4 had been burned beyond use by either the cooker or the heater. Moturis, the hirers, said it was the fault of the manufacturer but, of course, Winnebago said the opposite! They also revealed that they sell all their RVs to hire companies with absolutely NO WARRANTY whatsoever - thereby cutting off any comeback!! Clever.

So, after several snotty emails, it is in the hands of Moturis's manager, who has been very polite and positive, but I am still waiting for compensation. I pointed out that I am only asking for in the region of $300 to replace the bags, and that if I managed to dissuade even one customer from using their company, they would surely lose much more than that. We shall see...




Disneyland

Main destination in LA. Not usually my cup of tea necause I can't stand queueing! I can therefore recommend coming here on a weekday in winter! It was almost empty. I reckon the longest wait we had was 10 minutes or so and we went on almost everything. There are 2 parts - the 2nd being the "California Adventure" park which has the wilder rides, which we did on the 2nd day. Well worth the trip. Kids loved it.

Our American friends Jo and Dan got us some (very!) cheap tickets too! I asked Jo to post them to our hotel at LA airport, but they missed us by a day, so I had to go back. Now, as I say, they were extremely good value (thanks again Jo!), so I couldn't afford not to go for them, but I didn't want to drive the RV across the city again, draggin everyone with me. So I decided to go on my own on public transport - nice idea.

Southern LA on public transport. On my own. In shorts. Did my best to not look like a tourist and hide the fear inside that I would get hopelessly lost. "Hey, I'm a traveller, I know where I'm going"! The journey back to the airport hotel took 4 hours on 3 buses, 2 trains and 2 more shuttle buses. The journey back only took 3 hours - I was a tough LA street-traveller by then and had sussed out the quicker route! This time I took 2 shuttle buses, 1 train and 1 bus.

By the time I knocked on the door of the RV at 9:30pm, everyone was trying to hide the fact that they were frantically worrying where the hell I was! Missing in LA for nearly 8 hours on a trip I thought would take about 4! Still, the whole journey only cost $6.70! I'd gone out in shorts and the thinnest T-shirt I own, and it had gone dark at 6pm and I was stood outside or on trains/buses etc. On the way out, it was warm stood waiting for buses and cold on them. On the way back, I was freezing waiting and much warmer actually on the bus! And I had to walk the last mile from where the bus dropped off.

All this with a FedEx parcel under my arm. God knows what everyone thought I was doing - lost my van or something I expect!



Santa Barbara

Drove thru Malibu, stopping for a day to see Hollywood and then headed fro Santa Barbara where Jo and Dan live.

We met Jo and Dan at the Opera in Verona (see "Italy" !) and they said we must come and stay. Now I know that most travellers are very genuine when they say that, and Jo and Dan looked after us very well, apart from providing cut-price Disney tickets! They took the kids in and gave them a place to play, and gave us a break and someone else to talk to for a couple of days. We all really enjoyed it and hope to meet up with them again someday - maybe in the North of England!

Santa Barbara is a nice town. More relaxed than the LA metropolis we'd just come from obviously, quite historical to with it's Spanish mission and courthouse.




San Francisco

Next major stop. We knew we didn't have much time here. We'd been a bit ambitious with what we wanted to do in 3 weeks, but managed to find an RV park right next to the 49'ers ground. Dived straight onto a shuttle bus into the city and a ferry out to Alcatraz and took an audio tour around the famous prison.

It's a bit smaller than I expected, but very cold and efficient in what it was built to do. Nobody is known to have escaped from Alcatraz. Many died or were captured trying and a handful just 'disappeared'.

Took a ride on the famous trolleys up and down the hilly streets and did a bit of shopping (Valentine's Day looming of course!)




Las Vegas

We came here via Yosemite, but that was a bit of a non-event I'm afraid due to our bad timing and stuff. We did get to see a fair bit of the outer edged of the park and the ride in was extremely 'interesting'. Jill preferred the roller coaster at Disneyland.

And she hated that.

So, we arrived in Las Vegas and stayed at an RV park at Circus Circus hotel, right on the main strip. Went out for a walk that evening and saw all the lights and various shows outside the hotels - impressive.

What surprises me about the place is that it only looks half finished! I guess when there is so much money about, they can afford to be constantly knocking down and rebuilding bigger and better. The hotels are the most impressive themed things you'll ever see.

There's a curfew in place here. To keep the kids off the streets, so we'll have to take turns baby sitting. Our turn tonight.

TTFN 18/2/03

PS. Plenty photos to come, but the Internet places are few and far between and very expensive!




Sweet Home Chicago

Well, if we were looking for contrasting weather, we sure got it here! We had deliberately followed the summer around the globe. Actually, I should say 'warm weather' because it was winter in California, but still 60-70 Farenheit! Anyway, after succesfully staying at or above that temperature for 8 months, we met Ron (ex-Nepal 2000) at the airport in 0 Farenheit, about -12C I think.

We had not come prepared, so Ron kindly lent us half his wardrobe so that we could wander out the next day. The Chicago Art Institute is very well stocked and includes many Impressionist pictures by Monet et al.

We found our way to an outdoor Ice-Skating rink where the kids (especially Brett) entertained us for a while, before we headed up to Ron's office on the 43rd of 80 floors!

RJ Grunt's was the venue for our evening meal, as it was for most of Chicago's Police force! Safe place to eat then! Great burgers and something called "Temperature Soup" - they charge in Cents whatever the temperature of Lake Michigan was at 11am that morning! Manchester could do something similar!

Next day, we went out with Ron's friend Zak, who is an official Chicago "Greeter" and gave us a whirlwind tour of some of the historic buildings and churches in the city, so we saw a lot more than we otherwise might in such a short space of time.

We would all recommend a trip to Chicago (excellent shopping on Michigan Ave.) and would like to go back when the weather doesn't prevent us from wandering around!



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