Holiday Slideshow : San Francisco

The last stop on out US adventure was San Francisco.  San Fran has a special place in my travel memories - it was the first American city I ever visited, and what a wonderful introduction to America it was!  I have fond memories of warm days spent wandering up and down hills, lazily admiring the gorgeous 'Painted Ladies', eating delicious chewy crust pizza, smelling the sea salt in the air and just generally picturing myself becoming a local.  

And this visit was really more of the same.  We ate great food, held our noses while laughing at the antics of the Pier 39 sea lions, caught a cable car up a ridiculously steep hill, admired the city from the top of Coit Tower and watched the mist roll over the city.  

We also visited Alcatraz where I took roughly half a million photos, which was actually quite restrained considering...

Holiday Slideshow : Death Valley

These pics were taken at Zabriskie Point, in Death Valley.  Pretty amazing huh?  Death Valley is pretty amazing actually - apparently it's one of the hottest, driest, lowest places on earth (I was pretty glad we were there in the cool season, I imagine it would be almost unbearable in Summer).  There's peaks and troughs and giant salt plains; there's sand and stone of all colours and mighty, ferocious winds.  And apparently some scenes from the original Star Wars were filmed there.  Awesome.

With all these wonderful natural patterns around me, I couldn't resist taking a few black and white shots. I think Death Valley looks pretty great sans colour, don't you?

Holiday Slideshow : Mammoth to Death Valley

I'm back in Seoul and loving sorting out our US holiday photos - it was a seriously great trip, with lots and lots of good things packed in.  So, let the holiday slide show begin!

After our ice skating skiing in Mammoth we picked up our hire car (a giant leather-lined boat of a thing that the hire car guy called a 'pimp-mobile'!) and had a most amazing drive through to Death Valley (during which we were listening to our US road trip playlist, of course!).  

For most of the drive we had the misty Sierra Nevada on one side, and the arid White/Inyo Mountains on the other, with unbelievably vast lengths of straight road stretching out in front of us.  It was some of the most spectacular, wondrous scenery that I've ever had the pleasure of seeing - other worldly and oh so majestic.

Hello!  How are you?  We are all jet lagged but well and happy and full to the brim with mac 'n' cheese and Reese's peanut butter cups.  At the moment we are in the stunningly beautiful Mammoth Lakes, California.  It's been lovely - blue skies, gorgeous views, the scent of pine in the air. 

I've realised that it's a bit tricky to ski with a DSLR hanging off your shoulder, so I'm afraid all I've got are a handful of iPhone Instagram-ed pics that in no way do justice to the sweeping majesty of it all. Especially as most of them are snapped in a haphazard, super fast manner so I can get my ski gloves back on before losing a finger to frost bite...

I've also realised there's an upside to jet lag.  Because it means all the non sleeping people get to sit up in the wee hours, and talk and laugh and watch TV - namely Animal Planet (I can highly recommend Gator Boys for late night viewing) and ridiculous tele-marketing ads (I think all of us now secretly want a RoboStir).

Anyway, Mammoth is amazing.  Fantastic food, fabulous facilities, friendly folk (too many effs, maybe?). This winter has been a bit mild, so there's not a great deal of snow.  We've spent a lot of time skating over rock hard ice instead of skiing (and panicking about snapping a leg in half due to the hard and fast snow conditions, though I have a feeling I'm the only one panicking...).  They're predicting one of the first big snow storms of the season to hit in the next day or so - just in time for our drive to Death Valley!  Oh weather, you fickle thing you!