On arrival to Hollywood from our final Greyhound bus, Tom tried to have an argument with the bus driver on the street (calling him unreasonable to his face). Trudy "I told you so" Coleman was on hand to lend her moral support, but not actual support. We walked to the end of the street and who should stop LITERALLY right next to us but Cam and Mitch (the gay couple) from Modern Family. Cue Tom's mental and physical breakdown in the street, throwing his 40lb rucks...

We went to San Diego with the full intention of spending all of our time on the beach trying to get a tan. This is exactly what we did! While lounging on the beach we also managed to fit in some sunsets (Trudy got thoroughly bored of Tom's amateur photography) as well as some dolphin spotting ("Definitely not sharks Trudy, definitely not"). At this juncture it would be remiss not to mention our crazy hostel room-mate Edward (otherwise known as Moochy or The Spon...

San Francisco is a very odd place when you first get there! Especially if it's early in the morning following another overnight Greyhound hell-bus. As we walked to our hostel/ bedsit/ halfway house/ prison (more on that later) we were welcomed by San Fran's finest downs and outs (Judi, what is the collective noun for a group of homeless people? Can I just say that it felt like a swarm...). Literally, it felt like every vagrant, tramp and 'bum' in America had been...

Our arrival to Vegas was unimpressive in the extreme! Tom, having 'carefully researched' the route to our hostel in advance, directed us North from the bus station. However after an hour of walking in the dark (under the yoke of our heavy rucksacks) we arrived at the 'correct' address - a dark and deserted graveyard. We stopped into a bar to ask whether we had the correct address to which the barmaid said "you do know that there's a Las Vegas Boulevard North and ...

We went to Flagstaff to enjoy some more healthy outdoors living and to see some natural wonders. With that in mind we rented a car through an English company so that we could drive ourselves to the Grand Canyon the next morning. Although we saved money by renting through an English company we didn't actually get a car! So on the one sunny day we had in Flagstaff we spent about 2 hours on the phone to Trudy's mam in a three way conversation with customer service! ...