Recalculating...

When one gets set to embark on a long journey - especially in another country - it is customary for one to check one's route.

Oh dear.

Before we came, things we had booked included Vegas and Yosemite - in that order. So we would drive from the former to the latter. Many of the roads in the mountains shut around winter because of the snow and icy conditions, one of which is the road that goes into the east side of Yosemite park. I knew this.

So when we were in Vegas we knew we had a night to fill in between Sin City and Yosemite so we looked at the route up the eastern side of the state, and found a nice little city called Bishop in Inyo County that we could stop off at on the way.

It was about a five-hour drive from Vegas but we had all day, so that was fine. And the next day we'd just have a two-hour journey into the park.

Oh no we wouldn't. As we were fast approaching Bishop, I decided to look at the not-very-detailed map in my Rough Guide. Crap. That road that I knew was shut? That's the very road we were heading for. Double crap. We hastily stopped at a McDonald's to use its trusty WiFi and consult Google Maps. More crap. Even more roads were closed. It would take us eight hours to drive north, then west across the Sierra Nevada mountains and then south to enter Yosemite from the west side.

It's really annoying when the satnav announces she is "recalculating"; if only she had recalculated for us this time.

In the end, it turned out to be a great day. Our motel was characterful and had cable so we (I) could see Kate's dress and some live coverage of the latter part of the wedding.

We also managed to go via Mono Lake, an incredible sight with its calcium towers (tufa) coming out of the lake. I didn't think we'd get to see this. Bonus.

The drive across the Sierra Nevada was kind of hairy, in that we had to drive through avalanche areas and that the snow drifts up the side of the road were about 12-feet high. And, rather disconcertingly, that there were big sticks that lined the sides of the road of about the same height, presumably so you could tell where the road is when the snow is that high. Yikes. I didn't take very many pictures through here for fear of Adam crashing (for no reason, apart from that I have a heightened sense of danger!). This is a pic when we were through the scariest part.

A mere hour or so after coming out of the mountains were in the greenest of valleys (which FYI was ripe for the car game horse: see a horse, shout 'horse', win a point; see a horse box, shout 'horse box' win three of your opponents' points - I won).

We left Bishop at 8am and arrived at Yosemite, richer with even more sights, at about 7pm. This was our home for three nights.

Gifted

So today was my last day at work for nine weeks. Very strange... in a very good way! The weather was feeling my holiday vibe: the sun had its shiniest hat on, it was a balmy 18 degrees and we left for office at 4pm. Hello, shandy o'clock.

What made the day even nicer was an unexpected gift from my good friend Ed.

Yus! Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures On America's Two-Lane Highways. Most excellent present and a book I've had on my Amazon Wish List for an age but never got around to ordering. So many (full colour!) pages of road trip awesomeness...

So, thanks Edster!

Flag me up

Meet our map.

It's been with me through a couple of house moves, quietly waiting to be un-rolled and admired on the wall. When we last moved in September, the trip was becoming more of a reality (my three-month sabbatical form was inches away from my Editor's signature and Adam was getting ready to give his notice) and we now had wall space big enough to do the map justice.

After a couple of trips to Hobby Craft for some card/foam backing, duct tape and straws later, the map was erected and ready to be flagged. So many flags. Flags in New York, Boston, Niagra Falls (ooh, maybe a couple in Canada); flags in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Allie!), Chicago; one for Nashville, Tennessee (hello Dollywood); flags in Austin and Houston, Texas, and while I'm there why not a flag or two near Dallas; flags all over California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and aaalll the way up to Portland, Oregon.

I love the flags. But turns out each flag represented a vast amount of our savings. Ouch. Bad flags. So as the calculator came out, so did the flags. Out comes Boston, out comes New York, out comes Niagra. Ann Arbor? Chicago? Staying. California: them flags ain't moving. Utah, Nevada, Arizona: no movement there. Tennessee had to give, as did Texas (the country music lover in me cried a little). Portland? Perhaps... but we'll take it out for now; we need another to cram into California. And we're now down from three months to six weeks.

So, with the mean old budget calculated, the flags remained in Chicago, Ann Arbor, California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. Not too shabby. And a six-week holiday is not to be sniffed at. That's one and a half magazine cycles for me, and approximately 256 hours of agency photographing for the boy. That's a lot of holiday.

We love you, flags. Bring it on.

The sporks

This is where it all started.

If you go travelling, or away for any stretch of time, then you're going to need a spork. Right? Apparently, they "bring a bit of civilisation to the wild and a bit of wild to civilsation".

I'm pretty sure I bought them for the latter reason.

Nevertheless, these sporks were the first thing I got for our trip. Before we'd decided that we could actually do this trip (get time off work, afford it... the usual trip-threatening obstacles).

These sporks brought hope to our pipe dream.

Fork and spoon (and a knife - sporkife?). All in one. The trip's on.

Footnote: the packaging says "comes in civilised colours". I think we'll probably look like overgrown babies eating from our orange (mine) and green (his) plastic sporks, but eat from them we will.