The start of the TransCon North: LA, Big Sur, Yosemite and San Francisco (California)

Our free day inbetween tours was spent mostly on the public transport getting across LA. It is not fun at all, there is so much traffic its impossible to get anywhere, and it ended up taking us 2 hours to travel from Hollywood to Santa Monica beach, with 4 miles still to walk to Venice Beach. Once again we didnt manage to make it to the beach. But it wasn't all bad....
(photos are taking ages to upload, so none for today but I'll show you when I get home)
I saw the star walk, and most importantly Johnny Depp's star, then we went down to where the hand and footprints are and saw Johnny Depp and Fred Astaire's, amongst others. All the old film starlets have such TINY feet!
After our little visit to Hollywood we went on a star tour round Beverley Hills and the Hollywood Hills. We saw Simon Cowell's house, and lots of other people I haven't heard of, but it was a really good way to see all the expensive looking homes without looking like a burglar.

The next day we met the Transcontinental North group, its far more international than the last group but they're going to take a bit of getting used to. After all the forms had been filled out we set off for Santa Barbara where we finally made it to the beach for a few mins before lunch then continued onwards on Route 1 to Big Sur where we camped for the night in the State Park.
From Big Sur we continued north the next day to Yosemite National Park and the bears. This was our first proper bear camping experience where we had to keep anything with a scent locked in bear proof boxes over night to prevent the bears from breaking into our tents and maybe injuring us when they found us there. It was also cold. Very cold. Minus 2 C cold, with added rain and snow just to make sure were were properly frozen. The next morning everyone woke up to numb feet and in a pretty bad mood, but spending the day cycling on fixed gear bikes along the valley floor cheered us up. Yosemite is beautiful, and at this time of year its full of massive waterfalls that stretch from the top of the mountains to the floor in one fall. The second night in Yosemite was a lot warmer so we managed a bit of a sleep before setting off to San Francisco today.

San Fran is just as hilly as it looks in films. We first drove to Treasure Island, not an island inhabited by pirates, but instead a man made island in San Fran Bay. After lunch we crossed over into San Fran and took a city tour, which included seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. We were pretty lucky as the famous SF fog was absent so we could actually see the full mile and 1/2 of bridge. Randomly, on our city tour, we bumped into Kate T and Simon from the TransCon South tour, they had rented a car and happened to be in SF at the same time as us, so we're meeting up with them tonight which should be fun :)

Hope you're all ok, miss you, but I'll be seeing you soon... just under 5 weeks to go now....

xxxxxxx