USA 2002 - An Introduction & Overview

PLESE NOTE - these pages are still under construction.

In the summer of 2000 we travelled to San Francisco were Angela attended a statistics conference at the University of Berkeley. We were in San Francisco for a week before we were joined by friends Dave, Jon & Sarah to embark on a 2 week tour of California, Nevada and Arizona.

The pictures used were taken by Alistair, Angela & Dave using
cameras of differing quality - apologies if some of the photos are a
bit dark or blurry

We started and finished our trip in San Francisco which was a fantastic city and we really didn't have enough time to see all that we wanted to see. We did manage to visit most of the tourist attractions including the Golden Gate Bridge and Pier 39 and we also shopped till we dropped!

After picking up Dave and Sarah from the airport, and meeting Jon on the underground, we headed off across the desert to Yosemite National Park which as you can see from the picture offered stunning views of the valley. We met up with Jon's parents and walked up Glacier point before cooling off in the river - oh, and Ang chased a big Bear!

Leaving the snow capped peaks of Yosemite in the morning we arrived at Death Valley in the evening with temperatures nearly reaching 50C! We only stayed one night but saw plenty of the local wildlife including kangaroo rats, snakes & scorpions!

The next day we travelled through the desert and drove through Las Vegas on the way to Lake Mead. Although we didn't stop in Las Vegas (apart from the out of town shopping centre!), we took plenty of pictures of the weird and wonderful hotels.

Lake Mead was an amazing site - a huge blue lake in the middle of the dry desert. We stayed for a night and went swimming while David tried his hand on jet ski.

From Lake Mead we travelled along the side of the lake to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Using the Kaibab Forest as our base there were spectacular views of the famous canyon - which Jon nearly fell in!!

The longest day of our trip was when we drove from the north of the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley and then back to Flag Staff, south of the Grand Canyon - although it was definately worth it. You may recognise the scenery from many of the old Westerns which feature a lot of the "monuments".

Staying at Flagstaff was a great base which allowed us to visit the surrounding area of volcanoes, meteor craters and more canyons!

Between Flagstaff and Los Angeles we stopped off at Joshua Tree National Park. And, you guessed it - there were lots of Joshua trees!

The final stretch of our trip was between Los Angeles and San Francisco. We drove up Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway which was very scenic, and even camped on the beach!

I suppose the best bit for most of us was the variety of wildlife that we saw. From Bears, cayotes and sharks to the small things like snakes, humming birds and kangaroo rats!