Its a year since we flew into LA and started the North American leg of our trip. It has been a fun year and has mostly gone to plan. We've been very happy in Badger - maybe we could have got a better deal overall if we had bought somewhere other than California with cheaper tax, registration and admin, but the hassle factor of trying to move around the country looking and the time it takes to work all this stuff out would probably have ended up costing us as much as we might have saved - and the more time we have spent living and driving around in him the happier we have been with our choice. The suzuki toad is a little gutless at high speeds on the freeway, but its a nice drive and so far on wet and dirt roads its been very sure footed. We bought it for the snow so hopefully it will come into its own in the coming months, not that we are expecting to do much driving as we are in the apartment.
Highlights of the trip so far for me are the Arizona desert, grand canyon and Alaskan glaciers calving into the pacific, and we have crossed a lot of stuff off the bucket list: Hoover dam, death valley, Vegas, cajun cooking, mardi gras, sunsets from Key West, the Valkyrie, Niagara falls, sea otters, the aurora and grizzly and black bears. And the Fairbanks earthquake was a bonus. And of course met friends both new and old...
We've actually covered more ground here than in Oz - 15,000 miles in Badger and slightly further as side trips in toad, and given that we spent a month not moving in each of southern California, Waterloo and Edmonton its still not been a rushed trip. And we expect subsequent years will be slower still.
So far we've had no real problems with borders or visas - both the US and Canada have let us back in following our initial arrivals, so hopefully we can continue as planned moving between the two countries every 6 months for the next 3 years.
We're getting settled in Whistler now for the winter, looking forward to our first proper visit back to the UK next week, and then need to decide what we are doing next spring - east coast or west?
Highlights of the trip so far for me are the Arizona desert, grand canyon and Alaskan glaciers calving into the pacific, and we have crossed a lot of stuff off the bucket list: Hoover dam, death valley, Vegas, cajun cooking, mardi gras, sunsets from Key West, the Valkyrie, Niagara falls, sea otters, the aurora and grizzly and black bears. And the Fairbanks earthquake was a bonus. And of course met friends both new and old...
We've actually covered more ground here than in Oz - 15,000 miles in Badger and slightly further as side trips in toad, and given that we spent a month not moving in each of southern California, Waterloo and Edmonton its still not been a rushed trip. And we expect subsequent years will be slower still.
So far we've had no real problems with borders or visas - both the US and Canada have let us back in following our initial arrivals, so hopefully we can continue as planned moving between the two countries every 6 months for the next 3 years.
We're getting settled in Whistler now for the winter, looking forward to our first proper visit back to the UK next week, and then need to decide what we are doing next spring - east coast or west?
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