California

We've reached the sea, which means we have drive the entire way across America in 9 weeks. Yes, we are in San Diego, California. We left Arizona yesterday (but will be back there again soon enough) and took the scenic route along the border to Mexico rather than the interstate. What a drive it was, over mountains, down into valleys, through quaint little villages. California seems more like Britain than the rest of America so far. It's so green for a start, with fields full of vegetable crops to drive past. The mountains are green, the trees are bigger and look more like the trees we get at home. With the exception of the odd palm tree and the weather, we could have been forgiven for thinking we were in the country side of Ireland at some points. Every inch of roadside is covered in pretty spring flowers. Why doesnt that happen at home? One strange moment on our drive through CA was driving through a swarm of huge big bottle flies! I've never seen anything like it! Thousands of massive big flies hit the windscreen in two seconds and we had to stop at a gas station to wash off all their remains! The noise they made was something else, and the kids were highly amused by it!

We had no idea where we were heading, only that it was west, and we eventually ended up in San Diego, with no where to stay. San Diego is extremely pretty for a city. As its the weekend all the RV parks were fully booked (and extremely expensive at around $60 a night!) We thought we'd stay in a Wal-Mart car park, as we havent done that yet, only to discover that San Diego county law states that it is illegal to sleep over night in a Wal-Mart car park. The manager said she'd turn a blind eye to us being there, but the security guard started being a pest, knocking on our door every 5 minutes, and asking us to do silly things, like drive around the block every hour so that no one would think we were camping. Honestly, can you imagine waking the kids up every hour to drive around a city block? So we decided at 8pm to just start driving north and see what we found. We drove through streets full of mansions, expensive restaurants and beach side villas. This is obviously where the other half live. We found a few expensive, fully booked RV parks along the way and eventually stumbled across a park in Oceanside that accepts Passport America (when no where else would). Its only $17 a night here so we are staying a few days and letting the kids enjoy the nearby beaches. Below is the map of our route so far, 9 weeks into travel with 11 weeks left to go.

As I've been writing this I've just heard that it's snowing in England! Snow? In April? And here I am bathing in the sunshine, ahhh its a hard life.