USA roadtrip recap - Part 5

Death Valley National Park, CA - Leaving Las Vegas, we headed back into the desert. We headed to Death Valley NP which has the highest temperatures in the States. On the day we were there it was a cool 43 degrees. The maximum recorded temperature was 57 degrees back in 1913.



We made our way through Death Valley, its sand storms and exhaustive heat and headed north through the Sierra Nevada passing Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48.

Yosemite National Park, CA - After experiencing the heat in Death Valley the next day was the opposite in Yosemite NP. It was windy and about 5 degrees at its highest point of 9000+ feet. There was also vegetation, something that is in short supply in Death Valley. Yosemite was very pretty with its huge granite cliffs and conifer forests.



San Francisco, CA - We then got to San Fran late at night. The hotel we booked on the internet was overbooked so we had to head out of town before finding somewhere to stay. To stay in San Fran is very expensive compared with everywhere else we had been staying. The next day we booked in the cheapest place we could which was the YMCA in an area called Tenderloin. Tenderloin is like the ghetto of SF and we were smack bang in the middle. As soon as we got outside our hostel there were drunks, druggies, prostitutes and every other kind of useless bum you could think of. It was a little daunting to say the least. We even saw some bums about to have a dust up over a half can of beer.



On the Saturday night we had some drinks in our room and at 12am headed out on the town. We were out until everything was shut down at 1:30am and the cops kicked everyone off the street so it wasn't such a good night out. We walked the Golden Gate Bridge and had a short walk around part of the bay before we headed north as we only had 3 days left 'til our visas expired.

Redwood National Park, CA - Through the wine growing region of California we headed up the coast to the Redwood NP to see the tallest trees in the world. On the way up we went to a redwood that you could drive through but the van was a little too big so we had to watch other people drive through. In the Redwood NP we went for a couple of walks through the huge forest and saw some wild elk before we continued the rest of our drive towards Canada.



Oregon and Washington - With only 2 days left on our US visas we were in a dash to get to the border so didn't see or do much in these states other than drive. We successfully made it to the border on the afternoon of 19th September (the last day of our visas) and Tim and Jess got work visas for Canada for the ski season. We then made it to Vancouver to stay with a Kiwi couple living here.