Originally posted from Las Vegas, this update was split into three parts (see New York City #3, and San Francisco, California) for the sake of reducing the loading time due to the images involved…

When we got back, we explored California further, and had a stroll by a wind farm (harnessing electricity from wind turbines) near Mojave which was very interesting. I’d always thought they were quite noisy and that’s why people objected to them - there is no noise at all, and they are quite silent. We think now that it might be the funny shapes on the horizon instead.

We also went to Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park as well. Both of these are absolutely stunning and have to be seen to be appreciated. Yosemite won my award for the most photogenic NP we’ve found so far on the tour - every corner you turned, there was another mist-laden waterfall or snow-capped peak or stand of giant trees. Beautiful beyond description.

The trees of Sequoia NP were enormous, and even though we knew we were going to look at the largest tree (by bulk) in the world, it was still stunning to see it and realise how large it was. The size of it was kind of lost on you until you realised that the limb right up there in the sky was actually larger than any other non-Sequoia tree in the park. One limb larger than any other tree? That’s a bloody big tree!

From there, we cruised up to San Fransisco, being sure to pass through Fairfield on the way to do a free tour of the Jelly Belly jelly bean factory (free samples! yay!) and a free tour of the Anheuser-Busch Budweiser factory (more free samples! yay!). What a town. I tried a honey beer that they make which was absolutely foul, but Di found a lemon flavoured beer that was really tasty.

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001