Happy to hear you successfully avoided the worst of I 5 and made it to multiple redwoods sites including Avenue of the Giants, Yosemite, Ulyess S Grant and back to LA in one piece whilst successfully not getting trapped in either traffic nor the tar pits.
Happy Trails. Appreciate you buying me a couple of pints in Seattle and it was enjoyable going out with you and needs coffee for Ethiopian food. Roo crossing key pin is treasured by one of the Chinettes. Cheers mate.
21:00 Sydney EST drop.hook.spin
That’s it folks. PT is safely ensconced in his usual abode. Touchdown was almost 12 hours ago. A much faster transit than expected as strong prevailing tail winds meant the hour departure delay for a plane change was more than caught up and we landed ahead of schedule.
Just after take-off I was looking through the inflight options and checked the flight status which showed the LAX-SYD journey was 7,500 miles. I completed 12,000. Saw a lot more out the window, too.
Sorta missed Sunday 6th August. We look off from LAX on Sat 5th and after 15 hours in the air landed in SYD on Mon 7th.
The flight path took us over land about Coffs Harbour. Every returning Aussie will tell you that when the faint whiff of eucalyptus starts to waft through the aircon you really know you are home.
There is a lot of debriefing to do. Need to diarise the blog notes. A lot of images to sort, grade and file. A terabyte of dashcam footage to edit and collate. Will take a while. A good summer chore.
I guess that’s a sign off.
Kind regards
PT
Heh. I’ve flown from Toronto to Perth, via Honolulu and Sydney, and I always left on a Friday. Saturday was maybe twenty minutes aloft after leaving Honolulu. After that, it was Sunday, thanks to the international date line. Don’t blink, you might miss Saturday.
On the other hand, I’d leave Perth early on a Monday morning (like 0030 hours), and end up back in Toronto at about 1600 or so on Monday. Again, thanks to the date line. But yeah, North America to Australia is one helluva time change.
Never mind that. I must say, that I really enjoyed your travelogue, and your exploration of the United States. I do regret that we could not make a second trip into Canada for you happen (your Cardston, Alberta, suggestion for coffee), but that will happen next time. Recall that I mentioned that now, you have to do Canada coast-to-coast. We will meet then.
Glad to know that you are home safely. Get some rest–that North American/Australia jet lag can be difficult. I speak from experience.
Spoons
That’s a very back-of-the-head thing, isn’t it? ‘This place does (or doesn’t) smell like home.’
Glad that you’ve been welcomed safely back with all the right scents, and sense. Come visit us again!
Welcome home, @penultima_thule ! I’ve enjoyed reading your diary of your trip, and had a great time with you over dinner and Guinnesses while you were passing through Chicago.
It’s been a fun read, and glad you got to see so much of what you wanted, I’ve lost track of trips where I was, in the words of Top Gear “Ambitious but Rubbish” and only saw 1/3 to 1/2 of my intended spots, due to fatigue, timing or what have you.
And next time, you can swing through Colorado Springs and try our many beers and see Garden of the Gods. I won’t say the Springs is the best place for it’s people, but Pike’s Peak and the other natural features are absolutely worth a look.
There’s a lot of eucalyptus in SoCal, too. That smell returns me to my elementary school (on the border between Culver City and Los Angeles) where there were (are?) five or six trees outside the kindergarten. It is a very evocative smell.
Eucalyptus reminds me of my hippie sister. Strange how smells can evoke memories.
Refueled for the first time in AUS after my return:
AUD/L = 2.25
USD/L = 1.47
USD/USG = 5.55
US Trip average
USD/USG = 3.83
Highest price paid (Seattle)
USD/USG = 5.40
Significant difference is that I refueled here with 95oct while in the US it was exclusively 87oct. Makes for rather expensive petrol in the PNW!
Other logistic issue which was recently quantified was toll charges.
I elected not to have a EZToll card or equivalent which would have attracted a daily charge.
In fact, I only incurred $80 in tolls plus $50 in admin fees for the 5 days I was on toll roads The Willow Grove plaza on the I-276 zapped me $27.60 and the Goethals Bridge was $16.00. So it turned out a good decision.
Not so significant, actually. In fact, it may not have been any difference at all.
There are 2 different scales for measuring octane.
And of course, America uses the wrong one. 
Images are taken with a Canon 90D with 55-250mm, 18-55mm or a 50mm lens or
iPhone 11 16.5 or Samsung A03s or
(rarely) Uniden DashCam footage
I was trying to capture what I saw and hence infrequently played with the aperture, ISO and shutter settings. These are “look at that, click” holiday snaps.
As to the selected contents, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that the 6-hour drive from say Albuquerque to Abilene “merits” the same number of images as a 20min helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. However, I have threshed, winnowed and sieved the collection vigorously down to about 5-6 per day. Perhaps more of the quirkier rather than the well composed.
The timing of the tour was mid-summer, there was nowt but hot, sunny days and so the cameras constantly battled against glare and reflection, blown sand strips colour from images like a red/brown filter and “across the top” the smoke haze from the Canadian wildfires.
Day02 Los Angeles to Boulder City
https://i.ibb.co/6ghv81W/IMG-4215s.jpg
Thank you for that, enlightened I’m sure.
Meanwhile the image posting is proving more complicated than I expected. Will endeavour to persist later.
Thanks for posting all this (and I gather more to come) – I’ve only had time to look at a few, but will come back and look at more as I get time.
(dashcams only)
https://i.ibb.co/1LF34RG/DC03.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/Hd1Nhh9/DC02.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/G0ST5S9/DC01.jpg
