USA Roadtrip- San Francisco

So some of you may have heard about this hostel we stayed at in San Francisco... How it had free beer every night? (from 9.30pm) What I didn't mention was that it was seriously filthy...  I put it as the 2nd worst place we have stayed at after a really dodgy one in Peru.... Anyway we wandered around to the piers, checked out the city walked up one of those hills and couldn't be bothered to go to Alcatraz- just like Maitland jail but on an island right?

USA Roadtrip- the Oregon Coast

We continued to have crazy weather but we decided to take the very scenic route anyway... some of the more memorable moments included Sam getting pulled over by a super trooper for speeding... but the guy must have realised that we had no idea that speed zones apparently go from 55 to 45 to 35 all within a mile or so when you come into towns in Oregon.... we drove out to the coast on THE craziest road, it was pretty much one lane and our GPS couldn't keep up with the turns... other than that we saw some weird things including zebras and a giant statue of a lumberjack and a bullock....

The great USA road trip begins!

So we spent a week in Whistler, Canada skiing/snowboarding and catching up with our friend "Bek" from the "Hunter Valley"... It was a really cute little village perfectly set up for snow sports EXCEPT FOR THE FACT IT WAS TOO COLD FOR SNOW!!! Yeah we timed our stay perfectly for a couple of days of powder then we got heart-breaking, bone-chilling, eye-watering cold weather, on the last day we went up the mountain it was -25 degrees celcius.... my eyes literally froze to my contact lenses, and I gave up and went home for a warm spa bath instead (actually jug of beer with Becky)! Brave Sammy stayed up for a couple more hours and managed to get frostbite on his cheeks and nose....

We arrived in Seattle for their snowstormy weather- the city was in chaos and thousands of people were without power for days because all the snow that we should have got in Whistler decided to go to northern USA instead.... so our first couple of days of the road trip were a lot of wet weather, and crazy road conditions, including flood waters, landslides and fallen trees.... so we didn't last long in Washington and Oregon before high-tailing it down to sunny California...

View from our balcony in Whistler

The bridge of DOOM which we should never have gone over...
we got lost, there were land slides, there were like 4 different roads that had trees fallen down on them... ahhhh... first day of the road trip what do you expect right?!

Philly cheese steaks

So we went to Philadelphia to hang out with our friend Mark, whom we met in Patagonia, waaaaay back in October! Its a really old city, and extremely prevalent in American history, what with the Liberty Bell, Constitution and Declaration of Independence... It was full of gorgeous old buildings and museums, and of course is home of the Philly Cheese Steak- which Sam was taught MUST be ordered from Jim's on South Street WIT WIZ.... We went and saw an NBA game which was really fun, especially because the Philly 76ers won woohoo....