We are now in Ashland, Oregon, enjoying our second "rest day" of the vacation and our first day with sister, Wendy, before heading north tomorrow to Portland. Without wi-fi here and still no iPad update to the blogging app, it is down to Plan C for this update; here's hoping it gets no worse, as I have no Plan D. Much of Friday was not spent travelling from Lake Tahoe to Sacremento, but gently hiking 9 miles to some smaller lakes in the Tahoe region. The intimat...

Two gentle but different days around Lake Tahoe with Peter. Day 1 took us back to the Wild West, with a visit to "authentic" Virginia City, complete with gun fights and the like. Stupid David forgot the camera, so no pictures of the Bucket of Blood Saloon and the Suicide Table, but probably just as well. Slightly more seriously, Virginia City was the 'birthplace' of Mark Twain, as it was there that reporter Sam Clemens first used his famous pen name. More seriou...

Yesterday (Monday) was a rest day - our first of the vacation. A bit of shopping, a little tourist stuff and a lot of nothing. And very welcome it was as well. Create some space and memories from previous visits begin to come back - the endless adverts on the TV, how often people say "You're welcome" and the taste of sweet corn as it should taste. Today was meant to be our last serious hike during our time in the US, but it nearly didn't happen. Anne woke up wit...

Highway 50, through Nevada, is said to be America's loneliest road. Certainly you drive 70 to 100 miles between small towns, with not a sign of habitation in between. More interesting was the two-part "Baker Experience". The store there offered coffee and we minded the shop while the owner went out back to brew it for us. While she was away we could easily have dumped the whole store contents in the boot of the car and made off - 2 packets of soup here, a can of ...

Apples are great. Beautiful Californian Granny Smiths at a very cheap price. But we probably won't be allowed to take any back into California. Had better get munching. As for the other apple. Blow the fact that the new iPhone will add half a per cent to the US GDP. The associated iOS 6 download on my iPad means that my blog app doesn't work, so I am having to do this the hard way via the back door. Any bets on an app update the day we fly home? You can only ta...