More Travels

I know I'm supposed to be writing a blog about writing but I started with our recent travels so I'd better finish them off before getting down to writing business ... or maybe I'm just delaying the writing business!

After we left Palm Springs our road trip took us via Lake Havasu City to the Grand Canyon. I've seen hundreds of photos of the Grand Canyon from many vantage points but none prepare you for the sheer awesomeness of this landscape!

We then had a little fun on Route 66 in and around Williams AZ before heading to Las Vegas ... not our sort of place at all. Obviously for different people it is highly attractive but for us it was a monument to excess. On the other hand, Hoover Dam was a monument to industry and ingenuity and well worth the visit!

From Las Vegas we headed west through Death Valley to Lone Pine at the foot of Mt Whitney. We traveled through Death Valley on the day of the Badwater Ultramarathon. This is a 135-mile race from Badwater in Death Valley (elev. 282 feet below sea level) to Whitney Portals on Mt. Whitney (elev. 8360 feet). These runners must be mad. They had all finished by the time we reached Lone Pine – well, the ones who were going to finish standing – and there were still a lot of runners and support crew out and about that evening.

Not too many miles up the 395 we stopped again in Bishop and I discovered where Los Angeles gets it water. Apparently the Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power controls much of the Owens River and surrounding areas and has piped the water to Los Angeles via aqueduct since 1913.

After we left Bishop we headed up to Tioga Pass and into Yosemite National Park. More spectacular scenery, both through the pass and in the valley! The only downside were the crowds ... we were there on  a weekend and through the valley the traffic simply crawled.

From Yosemite it was a short haul to Sausalito to catch up with friends from Hawaii before we all headed to Napa for 10 days of wine tasting and fine food while staying at the Reid Family Vineyard. Many of the wines of the Napa Valley are too big for my palate. I prefer the wines of Sonoma and especially the pinots of Russian River, however many of the Napa wines are worthy examples of zin and cabernet from a hot climate. If you'd like to read about some of the wines we tried and vineyards we visited you can check them out at my husbands wine blog.

But I can't put it off any longer. I'll have to start writing about writing.

Travels and Writing

After spending a month on a road trip around the western US I'm now back home in Sydney and ready to get on with writing and publishing books.

The road trip hadn't been planned. The original plan was to visit our son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren in Los Angeles for a few weeks,  however our son landed a contract in Sydney for six months beginning at the time we were planning to head to the US ... so we went anyway.

We stayed in Los Angeles long enough to attend a performance by the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl – a truly wonderful experience – then borrowed our son's vehicle and headed east. I have to use the word "vehicle" because it is in fact a rather large truck. A huge truck by Australian standards but only a medium sized US truck ... but a monster to fill at the gas station!

Our first stop was Palm Springs - that oasis in the desert. Where do they get their water from? I never found the answer to that question. Joshua Tree National Park is a spectacular landscape with its distinctive rock formations and vegetation ... Not just the Joshua trees but also the chollas and other desert plants. I'd been through JTNP previously but was just as awed on this second visit.