San Francisco – Monterey – San Simeon – Los Angeles – Williams – Tuba City – Bryce Canyon NP – Zion NP – Las Vegas – Death Valley NP – Sonora – Yosemite NP – San Francisco – Sonoma – Ukiah - Clam Beach – Gold Beach – Charleston – Siuslaw National Forest – Garibaldi – Portland – The Dalles – Seaquest State Park – Lake Quinault – Forks – Port Angeles – Port Townsend – Seattle – Vancouver – Victoria – Nanaimo – Ucluelet – Tofino – Mission – Osoyoos – Kamloops – Lake Louise - West Calgary – High River – Calgary – Halifax – Whycocomagh – Meat Cove – Port Hastings – Montague – St Peters Bay – Charlottetown – Five Islands – Saint John – Millinocket – Bar Harbor – Crawford Notch State Park – New London – Boston – Taughannock State Park - Toronto
We completed our 3 month tour of North America about 3 months ago now so I’ve been a bit slow with this, but finally here are my awards for the US and Canadian leg of the trip.
Food Highlights
· In stark comparison to South and Central America there were a lot of food highlights in North America and I’ve come home with a long list of dishes that I’m looking forward to recreating, such as pulled pork, peanut butter cheesecake, whoopies, seafood chowder, pecan buns, blue cheese dressing and many more yummy delights!
· Food moments worthy of specific mention:
- Chris in Seattle fed Le Roux and I extraordinarily well during our 3 nights at his place. We were treated to veal cheeks sous vide, roasted pork belly, Hungarian woolly pig fat, fresh crab and many more superb things. Chris’ kitchen is a bit like a science lab and his dedication to producing the most amazing dishes far out strips mine, with meals that take days to prepare being common place in his repertoire. I’d highly recommend a visit to Chris’ place if you’re ever in Seattle.
- Lot 30 in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island produced the best meal we’ve eaten in our whole 10 months away. The rib eye steak and the pork belly were incredible and the melting chocolate pudding was perfect. All washed down with some very tasty red wine, followed by some dessert wine. It was a fabulous evening, topped off by the chunky discount our waiter gave us as we were poor backpackers!
- The seafood buffet at the Indian Casino near Ukiah in California was surprisingly tasty and excellent value. It was the best Dungeness Crab we had and the sugarless cheesecake for dessert was so light and tasty - thank you Matt & Laura for taking us there.
- A final mention goes to the abalone that Matt & Laura sourced for us. I’d never had it before and boy was it a treat. It was quite funny preparing such a rare and gourmet treat in a rustic campsite, but it was definitely worth all the effort of slicing and tenderising as it was so soft we could cut it with our plastic spoons. I’d love to have it again, but I’m not sure where I’ll be able to get hold of any as diving for it is banned in most places due to over fishing.
Food Lowlights
· Laughably, one of our food lowlights is a dish I whipped up in our motel room in Sonora – pesto pasta with vegetables. Personally I blame the jar of pesto as I just don’t understand how you can make tasteless pesto given basil is such a pungent herb. However, this food company had, and although not unpleasant, the dinner literally tasted of nothing and was purely fuel in the end. Sorry Le Roux.
· On the tasteless theme, we encountered quite a few icecreams with fabulous sounding flavours that just didn’t deliver. If you’d done a blind tasting you would be hard pushed to identify what flavour they were. Very disappointing given my love of good quality icecream.
· PEI wine has to be mentioned here as it was terrible. The LP book mentioned the winery in respect of its fruit wines, but tactfully didn’t mention the proper wines. Some of the worst red and white wine I’ve ever had the misfortune to try. The fruit wine was interesting and different and fun to try, but not good enough to warrant buying any at the end of the tasting.
· Root beer is the final thing on my list as I honestly can’t abide the stuff. It tastes like TCP and is very unpleasant. Why on earth people drink the stuff is beyond me, although Le Roux seemed to quite like it!
Best Seafood Chowder
· We tried a lot of different chowders as we travelled up the Pacific Coast from California to Vancouver, and down the East Coast from Nova Scotia to Boston. All were different and most were delicious, and I’m now itching to make my own version having decided on my favourite features. Not too much potato and not too big chunks, a rich soup but not too thick and plenty of chunks of seafood or fish. I’ll let you know when I’ve perfected it! As to my favourite of those we tried, I think it was the lobster chowder in Murray Harbour on Prince Edward Island. My only regret is that I had to share the one cup we ordered with Le Roux!
Worst Coffee
· On this trip we have visited coffee plantations, seen how coffee factories operate, been taught how to make a decent coffee and drunk a fair bit of the black stuff. Some has been great, some ok and other cups downright awful (Brazil is right up there on the awful front!). We have even visited the home of coffee shops – Seattle. However, the award for the worst coffee in North America goes to the Canadian institution, Tim Horton’s (specifically in Nova Scotia), where I can safely say I forced down the worst cappuccino of my life – some flavoured nightmare that didn’t even have foam! Not to be repeated.
Best City
This was an easy one to decide, as I fell in love with San Francisco. San Francisco has it all with its fantastic sea side location and temperate climate, along with fabulous shopping, lots of great restaurants and heaps of cultural activities. It is also fantastically positioned to take advantage of the beautiful Californian coastline both north and south of the city, as well as being just a few hours drive from ski resorts and Yosemite National Park. What more can I say, other than I hope I’ll get to visit the city again in the not too distant future! Simon and Colette – I’m so jealous that you have moved there and I’d love to be your house guest again. Boston came a close 2nd, with all the history and fabulous architecture in the city, but the weather let it down – it rained a lot while we were staying with Chris and Jess! Las Vegas also deserves a mention as it is most definitely unique. I loved the city because it does tacky and over the top so very, very well. The attention to detail is incredible and you can’t help but be impressed by the replica Eiffel Tower or the fabulous Bellagio Fountains. We loved the 48 hours that we spent in Vegas, but were completely exhausted by the end as the city truly never sleeps!
Worst Town
Port Hastings can only be described as a hole. We only stopped here for the night as we couldn’t face driving for any longer that day, but I kind of wish we’d struggled on a bit further as it was such a charmless place with lots of awful motels. We struggled to find somewhere that wasn’t completely ramshackle and disgusting or ridiculously expensive. On our 6th enquiry we finally found a price and a place we could stomach and we settled in for the night, before leaving pretty promptly in the morning.
Disappointing Moments
· One particularly disappointing moment happened in our first week in North America. We were travelling south from San Fran on our way to LA via Route 1 (aka the Pacific Coast Highway). One of the highlights on this route is Big Sur, supposedly the most picturesque part of the California coastline. However, we didn’t get to see it as there had just been a number of landslides due to heavy rain and Big Sur was completely cut-off. We got down as far as Carmel, but then had to divert in land and travel south on the 101 before rejoining the coast at Cambria. I can’t believe we had to miss out the best bit of the coastline - I’ll have to go back!
· Another major disappointment was the weather while we were in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Although we were able to drive along the coast road all the way around the Cape, we could barely see anything as there was thick fog most of the time. Given we’d gone there for the views, we had to cut short our time there as it became pointless!
· The final disappointment was the fact that we couldn’t find a rodeo event that coincided with our time in any place. We narrowly missed the mother of all rodeos, the Calgary Stampede, and we were completely gutted. I’ll be going back to stay with Cheryl and Mike in Calgary one July for sure!
Best Manmade Sight
This award has to go to Las Vegas. An oasis in the middle of the dessert, this city is fabulous! There is nothing natural about this place - pretty much everything is fake, but it is all done so well that you can’t help but love it.
Best Natural Wonder
I’m torn over this one and so I’ve opted for joint winners: The Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon. Different landscapes but both very impressive. The scale of the Grand Canyon most definitely wows – we spent 30 mins flying over just part of it! Bryce Canyon has the unusual red hoodoos in its amphitheatre which are stunning. Both were made all the prettier by a dusting of snow.
Best Campsite
I’ve got a short list of three great campsites:
· Five Islands, Nova Scotia – a beautiful setting right on the coast at the top of the cliffs with unsurprisingly 5 islands in the bay.
· Zion National Park, Utah – We set up our tent in some woodland in the shadow of the soaring gorge walls.
· Lake Quinault, Washington – a deserted campsite right on the edge of Lake Quinault. We just about got to appreciate the lovely view across the lake before the rain clouds came in!
Favourite National Park
We visited quite a few National Parks so we definitely got our money’s worth out of our annual pass. A hard decision as I was really impressed by all of the National Parks we went to but I think on balance by favourite was Zion as it was so pretty, the sun shone and we did two amazing hikes – Angel’s Landing and Observation Point. We also met quite a few friendly people in the campsite which topped off a great few days.
Funniest Animal Moment
· I thought about the dive bombing jays that were after my fry up one morning, but then decided that the clam and raccoon incident was the winner. After we’d retired to our tent for the night a cheeky raccoon decided to raid our bucket of clams, dropping one as it scarpered. Amazingly this clam was still alive in the morning so we reunited it with the others and hoped that it would recover from its ordeal.
Best Hike and Scariest Moment – Dual Award
The Angel’s Landing hike which we did in Zion NP was incredible, if a little scary. Chicken out point isn’t called that for nothing! I’m so glad I made it up the scary bit as the view was stunning across the valley.
Biggest Misconception and Most Frustrating
· My understanding of the seasons in the US was somewhat flawed. I stupidly thought that it would be sunny in California in April, but that wasn’t the case most of the time! We came across 6ft of snow in a number of places and apparently you can ski until the 4th July! The extreme weather conditions were highlighted by the fact that one morning we started in Death Valley in shorts and flip flops and 3 hours later we got out of the car into snow and freezing temperatures at the Mammouth ski resort.
· This was exacerbated by the fact that it was a La Niña year and a huge amount of snow fell over Winter and well into Spring. This meant that a lot of roads and hiking trails were closed and the weather was a lot colder than usual. We weren’t able to camp as much as we’d hoped, nor explore the more remote parts of the National Parks.
Most Impressive Tree
· There were a lot of trees in North America. I honestly can’t believe how many trees there were! The Redwoods in California were particularly memorable as they are truly enormous. It was so sad seeing old photographs of loggers with the trunks of 1000+ year old trees that they had felled – completely irreplaceable. My favourite tree was the Cathedral Tree which I drove the Jeep through, just! So bizarre having a living tree with a tunnel through it.
· The corkscrew redwood is also worth a mention as it was a pretty tree as well as being a massive one!
Weirdest Cooking Experience
I have a number of incidents that fit into this category!
· The first is toasting bagels in our motel room in Bryce Canyon as it was snowing outside and we couldn’t face the cold. However, we hadn’t banked on such a sensitive smoke alarm, which we managed to set off. Luckily we weren’t up too early, so hopefully we didn’t wake up our neighbours!
· We had another odd motel room cooking moment in Tofino on Vancouver Island. It was pouring with rain and there was another smoke alarm in the room, so we opted to fry our fish and make risotto in the bathroom with the extractor fan on.
· In Ukiah with Matt and Laura we watched a Figian woman cooking a wild boar in a hole in the ground. She didn’t have enough time to cook the boar through fully unfortunately, but the outer bits tasted good, and I’d be interested to try it again.
· Cooking with Jason’s Uncle Dave definitely rates a mention as it was a fun yet exhausting experience. Working under his direction we shopped, chopped, prepped and cooked a rack of lamb with roasted veggies. It was like a military operation!
Funniest Moment
· So Le Roux laughed lots when the wind at Death Valley blew over my wine glass and spilt my red wine all over me as I sat down for dinner at the picnic table. With no showers at the campsite this was not ideal!
· I got to laugh when Le Roux managed to slip while crossing the river at Meat Cove in Cape Breton and got his shoe completely soaked. For “Speedy the Mountain Goat” to miss his footing is extremely rare – it’s normally me falling over and slipping, hence the amusement value! I also had to laugh when a wave washed over his shoe when we were fishing off the rocks on Vancouver Island.
Best New Experience
· This award, without a doubt, goes to the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. An incredible experience that I would recommend to anyone - definitely worth saving up for!
Most Eccentric Person
· There are a few candidates for this category, all lovely people, but just a little bit different!
- the couch surfing family in Sonoma, California were a little bit hippy and had a menagerie of pets, including 2 massive pitt bulls that thought they were cats!
- Jason’s Uncle Dave in Vancouver was a fantastic character – he talks at 100mph and is exhausting to be with, but a very nice guy;
- Alex’s Grandad in Calgary was a full on cowboy, albeit a pint sized one!
- Le Roux’s hobo friend in Port Townsend, Washington who shared our chilli dinner and boxed red wine definitely makes the list;
- Mary and Zita, two B&B landladies we stayed with in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island – slightly crazy but very friendly old ladies!
Longest Drive
The journey between Thousand Oaks on the north side of LA and Williams, Arizona near the Grand Canyon was nearly 500 miles and took 9 hours. We took in Historic Route 66 where possible and were rewarded with some incredible scenery and funny little gold mining towns complete with randomly roaming donkeys! Our ridiculously frequent photo stops probably added an additional 1.5 hours!
Most Surprising
· McLobsters?! Lobster in McDonalds in Canada is not what you expect to see. I couldn’t quite bring myself to have one though.
· How expensive campsites were, particularly in California - $35 per night, not including a shower?! We stayed in cheaper motels over on the east coast!
· Winter extends until July in a lot of places we went – what happened to Spring?!
· Wifi in campsites – brilliant for getting the blog and photos done while sitting by a campfire!
Most Spectacular Drive
· Three contenders for this category:
- Historic Route 66 across California and into Arizona
- the Oregon coast
- the Rockies in British Columbia
· I don’t think I can choose between these though as they were all so different but equally spectacular. You should all drive these routes at some point in your lives!
Craziest Law
· This award goes to a small town in Arizona called Kennesaw where it is illegal NOT to own a gun. Only in America.
Most Annoying
· The black flies and mosquitoes were incredibly annoying, especially in Maine, as they ate me alive and made me look like a chipmunk with a golf ball on my forehead. Not the look I was after. Also sleep was nigh on impossible as once one bite started to itch, others joined in and soon I was wriggling around like mad trying to scratch them all.
All in all an amazing 3 months was had, despite the few frustrations with weather and bugs. I loved the freedom of having the Jeep and being able to go anywhere we wanted and not having to carry all our stuff. It was also great staying with so many friends along the way who enabled us to have a different experience to just being random tourists – many thanks to all of you who put us up and took us out and about in your local area. I’m very keen to go back to both the US and Canada as there is much more to see and do - hopefully it won’t be long before I find my way back.
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