Pictures of Macy, our lovable Minivan, a big part of our adventure. {smoothgallery folder=images/gallery/macy/}

Pictures of us paddling on the Merced, Mokeloumne, South Silver and S.F. American rivers and Lake Tahoe. {smoothgallery folder=images/gallery/kayaking/}

Photos from our time in Yosemite National Park {smoothgallery folder=images/gallery/yosemite/}

We've made it to Yosemite – we bypassed San Francisco for now to head into the mountains, meet Simon and Cheryl and get some paddling done. We're going to stick around here for a few days and get lots of paddling done, then probably head north, get some more paddling done, see Lake Tahoe, then loop back around for San Francisco and then return here for a couple of multi-day trips once we've warmed up to style of rivers out here.

Net access is fairly easy to find, but mobile reception isn't & we're planning on being busy on the rivers and in Yosemite for most of this week, so if it all goes quiet, don't worry; we're off having fun.

Since leaving LA, we've had a pretty busy time. We've been down to San Diego and back up the Pacific Coastal Highway which is where we are now.

On the drive down to San Diego, we stopped at the Crystal Cathedral which is a church made of glass and we were lucky enough to hear the massive organ being played.

The highlight so far though has been the San Diego Wild Animal Park where we stayed on their roar and snore thing which meant we got evening guided tours and woke up to the sound of lions roaring and elephants. It was awesome seeing so many animals as well. The rest of San Diego was pretty cool too and soon we were heading up the Pacific Coast.

The Pacific Coastal Highway (PCH) was stunning – it's a little windy road up from LA to San Francisco. We're now in a quaint little place called Carmel, where we're leaving the PCH and heading in land towards Yosemite. We're meeting a couple of friends who have a permit for the Toulomne(sp?) river on Friday so we're going to met up with them and finally get some paddling in. We were looking to do some surfing while driving the PCH, but all the beaches we've seen have warnings on them of “Unexpected life-threatening waves” and said that going into the water would be “unwise” – so we didn't.

Sorry – still no photos, but we've been taking loads, and will probably spend some time uploading them when we get to San Francisco at some point next week.

Hope everyone's having fun at home, let us know what you've been up to. Will update again when we get the chance.

Hello to everyone! Well, this is our first foreign proper blog entry, on what has been our 4th day in LA. Today we bought a map to plot our escape out of the city, though its not been too big and scary.

(for those reading via email, this entry is continued on the blog.)

We're staying at Venice Beach and have been to Santa Monica a couple of times. Santa Monica centre is rather nice, with lots of shops, a funky atmosphere and a great Creperie. It's fab being able to see the beach from our window and there is a lovely cafe opposite for breakfast.

On Thursday we headed over to Hollywood and indulged in a Limosine tour of the area taking in all of the famous landmarks. One of the strangest sights we saw was a man walking along the street wearing a hoodie with a rabbit in the hood.

The last couple of days we spent too many hours exploring the bus system to and from the valley. This is where we met Macy and Morris. Morris helped us find our minivan for the trip, Macy. The area we found Macy was Van Nuys (pronounced Van- Nice!) and she was an orphan – abandoned on the LA streets and towed away. 4 months later she has been lucky enough to be sold to us.

Tonight we're gonna have a cocktail to celebrate our purchase and tomorrow we're going to pick up roof bars and work out where to head paddling.

Hope all is well at home, we will post again soon.

Love,
David and Sharon.