Back in September of last year I was lucky enough to get married at home in Cornwall, UK.
Pic courtesy Caballosblancos - a great wedding photographer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caballosblancos/Rather than take the honeymoon immediately, we waited until April of this year so we could combine a Honeymoon USA roadtrip with my now brother in law's wedding. He happened to be marrying one of my wife's best friends. Anyone thinking Cornwall is inbred can stop now.
So we boarded a plane and headed to the Luxor hotel for the first three nights of our trip, and the wedding.
what a crazy hotel, we were on the 27th floor and vertigo was common. We'd been to Vegas before but the I don't think the scale of it will ever fail to impress. The wedding was indoors in poor light so I couldn't get any good polaroids of that, even with 667, so here are some general Vegas ones...
It takes so long to walk up the strip!
Views like this just waiting at one of the many crossings on the way up the strip heading back to the Hotel.
Personally I didn't win anything gambling, well nothing that didn't fall straight back into the Roulette wheel, but the bride was $900 up which was good.
After a whirlwhind 2 days it was time to head off from the group and start the road trip proper. At Las Vegas airport we picked up our softtop Mustang, which looked surprisingly like a budget Toyota Yaris, and headed off into Utah. My introduction to driving in America on the wrong side of the car in an automatic (think go-kart?!) was out the airport into 6 lanes of traffic, quick learning indeed.
We headed a few hours into Utah and arrived at Zion National Park. In hindsight we should have spent more time here, but in the hours we did have we managed to do a couple of lovely hikes in this amazing Canyon.
The next day we were on the road again. In the UK thinking of a 3 hour drive puts me off going anywhere, but in the USA for whatever reason, a 5 hour drive was nothing.
On the way to the next stop we met this friendly pine nut seller, I think he may have slept in his car.
The next stop was Bryce Canyon, and it was one of the highlights, I cannot recommend going enough if you ever get the chance.
The place is mindblowing.
Onwards again after that, backtracking onwads past Vegas and onto Death Valley. This place is incredible too and again go if you can.
The road into Death Valley.
The whole place is a set of crazy desert landscapes, tiny 'towns', sanddunes and heat!
Fancy living here?
After a night at Death Valley we headed on towards Yosemite National Park, with a planned stop at Bakersfield to break the long journey.
No offense to anyone who may like Bakersfield, but after checking into a motel that reminded me of the movie 'Spun'. we decided to cut our losses and head onto Yosemite that evening. The rough guide sold Bakersfield as the second best Country and Western town in the USA, maybe we just missed something.
Luckily for us this turned out well, as although we had to drive 4 more hours, we got to Yosemite a day early and that meant we got one really good day of weather. At Yosemite we did a 7 mile hike, and in the 3 1/2 miles, you climb 1000m, it was hard work, but amazing.
The famous half dome
and Yosemite waterfall
We saw a bear as soon as we arrived and the place is amazing. We also made amateur errors and got caught in a snow storm in shorts.
From Yosemite we headed towards Brookings on the California/Oregon coast. We stopped at a place called Weaverville to break the journey.
One night in a locals bar with a pool table, super cheap drinks and a local pool hero who appeared to have never played pool before led to a classic and memorable night.
Got stopped by highway patrol the next morning for 'weaving' - can't help but think it was ironic bearing in mind where I was.
Arrived at Brookings to meet one of my best friends that I lived with in the USA and at University in Cardiff UK who has since moved to America with his wife. His family had a house on the beach and a brilliant dog called Daisy
Seeing the giant redwoods was amazing and it was lovely to stay in one place for a couple days.
He was meant to be delivering me 1 Bronica S2, 15 packs of 3000b (so much cheaper in the USA than UK), 10 packs of 108 and 3 packs of 690. Unfortunately he somehow forgot it all! So we drove another 5 hours to Eugene, Oregon to visit his house and collect it. I couldn't get the camera to work (my fault) but that's another story... we had a great day exploring the city and night with his friends then headed off to San Francisco to end our trip.
This city is great, we walked across it in all directions over the three days, and loved it all... we did all we wanted to apart from get to Alcatraz, but that was the only thing we missed in the three weeks so can't complain.
There were great cars for the whole trip too!
Overall it was a great trip and this is only a small amount of what we did and the photos I took. Probably about 120 polaroid and a few rolls of 35mm that I am yet to develop.
Thanks to Sean for the advice on some of the places to visit, it defintely made the trip for us heading into Utah.
More shots now and to follow on my flickr page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattchalkysmithIf you have got this far, thank you for reading!
