Mountains, Bears, Deserts and Vineyards.

As most of you will know, Cazzie and I have been planning a 7 month trip to Canada and America and it’s my pleasure to tell you all that it’s now sorted.

We leave for Vancouver on Monday 5th October, flying with BA from Heathrow. As we will no doubt be arriving in Canada very drunk, we have decided that it’s probably best to pick the RV up the next day.

Here’s our RV and internal view. It comes equipped with hot shower, flushing toilet, full kitchen and double bed!

We then have a rough plan to follow the blue flags on this map.

I couldn’t get names on this map, but you get the idea!!

We start in Vancouver and the highlights are Banff,Jasper, Calgary, Yellowstone, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Phoenix and right back up through California taking in San Diego, Los Angeles, Yosemite and San Fran (not forgetting the Napa Valley for some wine tasting) before driving back to Canada through Portland and Seattle. If we were just to visit all these blue dots we would cover over 6,500 miles, but we have our Lonely Planet guide to take us off the beaten track if we so desire!! We do have to be careful of bears who have such a keen sense of smell that we need to lock our food up in bear-proof containers in the RV parks!!

We have the RV for 56 nights so we should be able to cover all these places. I have taken Andy’s lead and splashed out on an SLR camera to capture all the stunning views I am reading about.

After the 56 nights are up, we arrive in Whistler on the 1st December until 29th April for the 2009 / 2010 ski season, which includes the 2010 Winter Olympics. I don’t think we could have picked a better in time to be there. We have used the same company that my two friends, Foe and Easty, for our accommodation – SeasonIT.

A view of our house and our outside hot tub.

This place is fab. 300 metres from the Blackcomb slope and 10 mins walk from Longhorns. Perfect!

So that’s the plan. I fully intend to post blogs from where we have been as most of these RV parks have wifi as well as supermarkets, spas and laundromats. I also fully intend to perfect skiing this year as well as snowboarding!

Lots of love

Stuoobs

xxx

Their Nation's Captial

The next stage of our USA trip took us to Washington DC. The flight from Boston was a short one, but Cazzie still managed to get a good hour's sleep in!

We arrived mid afternoon and decided it would be a good idea to take the subway to our hotel. This seemed like a flawless plan until it was time to get off the subway and walk the "very short distance" to our hotel. After about 30 mins of dragging our ever increasing in weight suitcases around in a very large circle while the temperate got warmer and out clothes wetter, we decided it was time to give in and ask directions. It seemed that we have been doing laps of our hotel!

The hotel was lovely and we managed to check in with no problems. After a quick shower we headed out to have a little wander around while trying not to go and see any of the numerous sights that we had planned to do for the next 2 days. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and a coffee before it was time to meet with Don and Glenna, a couple of my parents friends who live near Washington. We had about 30 mins to kill after getting ready so we popped across the road for a quick drink and this is where we saw that there had been a massive crash on the Subway on the line we were on about 4 hours ago with a few dead and 100's injured! I guess it wouldn't be the same if we visited a country without there being some form of disaster!

The meal with Don and Glenna was lovely. They took us to a suburb of Washington called GeorgeTown where we had Italian, share stories about all our various holidays and future plans, and Don picked up the tab - result! They dropped us back at our hotel just before midnight.

The plan for the next day was to take the hopefully open subway to Union Station which is sort of like Grand Central Station but in DC. This is where we would pick up our tickets for the open top bus tour. The ticket we got was valid for 48 hours and we were delighted it was as there was so much to see and do!

I could detail every single sight we saw, but I think that would even bore me, but there were some real highlights which included Capitol Hill, The White House, The Mall, The Monument, The FBI building and The American History Museum, but there were 2 places that stood out for me, The World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The WW2 Memorial was completed in 2004 (in fact, all the historical building we saw looked like they had just been completed in the last 5 years!), and was there to show all the states that took place during the war. At either end of the monument were the two oceans - Pacific and Atlantic with a fountain in the middle. The whole thing was terrific.













Then there was Arlington National Cemetery. I'm going to be honest with you, I didn't really know what this place was all about and the only reason we went there was because it was on the bus route, but I' so glad we did. This is the place where members of the Armed Forces, members of their family and pretty much anyone else connected to a war that the US has been involved in are buried. It receives 4 million visitors a year. I'm not really sure how to describe it. It's 420 acres and I could not even start to guess how may are buried here. It seems as well that any soldier that died while they were actually serving in the forces got one type of headstone and anyone else who used to be a part of the forces got a choice. This is what got me I think.























This was just one view of one area from one direction. And further more, all these headstone and lined up not just horizontally and vertically, but diagonally too. It was stunning, precise, clean and perfectly maintained. There are other nationalities here too including Korean and Japanese.

President JFK is also buried here, and is one of only 2 Presidents to have that honour. We felt like we were stalking him!

Again, I could go on abut what else is here, but if you are interested, follow this link.

That pretty much brings us to our final night in Washington where we headed back to GeorgeTown for dinner and a drink. After an OK meal we found a piano bar - winner. We got right on it despite that fact that the piano dude was awful!! We decided to go for a wander to see if we could find another bar that tickled our fancy, but being America, a lot of that bars are in hotel and restaurants, so we ended up back in the piano bar. In true style, we finished the night sat round the piano, singling very loudly and telling the guy how great he was!

Overall Washington is a great place. You get to visit all the places you see on the telly and there are some lovely areas to shop, eat and drink as well as lots of suburbs, huge parks, endless fountains and monuments. It's well worth spending 3 days here as there is loads to do!

All the pics can be found here.

One funny stories from DC. We knew that Barak Obama was in the White House when we visited it and he was conducting an interview with Good Morning America. Everytime Cazzie saw a black man she asked me "Is that him???"

Now it's off to Philadelphia!!

Lots of love

Stuoobs

xxx

The three week USA trip begins

Howdy all,

I write this from the Philadelphia lounge of the very good people at US airways. This is the airline that compensated us for booting 7 of us off their flight from Manchester to San Francisco last year and putting us all on a better flight and upgraded us to first class flight. No wonder all the airlines are losing money. I have used these vouchers to fund a three week trip around the States. I have 4 hours to kill here, and due to the fact that I am picking a car up in 7 hours, I am unable to get smashed, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to do my first blog of the trip!

The past week has been fun. Cazzie, as a surprise early birthday present to me, bought tickets to see We Will Rock You, the musical based on the music from Queen, at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. I have always wanted to go and see this, but envisaged I would have to go to London or Vegas to do so. My parents saw the show in Vegas and said it was brilliant.

I really had no idea what it was about, but needless to say, it was fantastic. Great music, funny and a good, albeit bizarre storyline. I can highly recommend going to see it, but it has sadly come to the end of it's run in Manchester, so London or Vegas it will have to be!!! I think one of the surprise highlights of the show was the performance from Curly Watts!! The whole thing was excellent and we both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.


So we await our transfer to Dallas or the Big D as it is commonly referred to. Only have 2 full days here as and we are trying to cram a lot of stuff in. We want to visit a ranch (perhaps Southfork from the hit US show Dallas), go see the 6th Floor Museum to find out about President John F. Kennedy's assassination that took place in Dallas on the 22nd November 1963, eat and drink at the Big D's numerous bars and head West towards Fort Worth, where the strap line is "Cowboys and Culture".

Before I finish I would just like to compare the meals Cazzie and I had on the plane. Guess which one I was served with??










See you in Dallas!!

Lots of Love

Stuoobs

x

A very quick start

Hello everybody.

Well, this is my first attempt at a blog. Not sure how it's going to pan out, whether I keep it up or if anyone will actually read it, but I guess it's meant to be a reminder of where I go and what I do from now on. I had Andy to do this for me for the past couple of years and I just hope that my memory is as good as Andy's and that it doesn't get affected by the alcohol so I can give an accurate description.

Cazzie and I have been back in the UK from Tignes for just over a month now and it's been fairly busy with weekends away, BBQ's, Girls Aloud and Engagement parties.


Here is our Tignes Compilation Video




It took about 2 weeks for Caroline to move all her stuff into mine. There were 1000's of shoes, clothes, beauty products and handbags. I was amazed when I asked Cazzie why she had so many handbags and she told me that she had Summer ones and Winter ones. I have no idea what the difference is. Does one keep you warmer?? Is one air conditioned? I guess only women will know why. As all you blokes out there will know, all you need is 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of shoes, 4 tops, one shirt and one bottle to take in the shower.



We have just over a week left in the UK before we heard out on our next little adventure. Thanks to the good people at US Airways who decided that they didn't have a large enough plane to fly us to the Foden's wedding last year, and having then managed to get us all on a larger plane flying first class with United Airways, they still found it in their hearts to give us all $400 worth of vouchers to fly with US anytime in the next 12 months. Cazzie and I have decided to take full advantage of this and we are embarking on a 6 city tour of the USA, starting at Dallas, moving onto Houston and Vegas, where Paulie and Karen will be joining us. We leave Vegas for Boston, Washington and Philadelphia. We will be away from a total of 21 days and the flights are costing us £200. Winner winner chicken dinner!


My intention is to update you after each of these cities, but we will see what happens.


I will no doubt be adding little gadgets and gizmos to this page showing pictures and videos of where I've been. The beauty of this is that I will have Andy to ask if I get stuck.

TTFN

Stuoobs

x