Traveling Without Moving

LUCK! Good luck, great luck, divine intervention... whatever way I look at it, I am still over joyed by my recent win of a holiday to California!!


I entered a competion on twitter, a joint marketing promotion by Bulmers cider and Xfm radio, where I had to tweet a favourite song that summed up the feeling of a weekend. I tweeted Radiohead 'No alarms and no surprises' as a feeling close to my heart - but it gave me the biggest surprise I've ever had!

The actual prize was return flights, 4 star hotel, insurance and visa for 2 people for 7 nights to Los Angeles. As it happens I couldn't imagine not being able to share this with the whole family, so we have paid a bit more so that the boys can come with Mark and me and we have hired a motorhome for 2 weeks.  We plan to go accross to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, take in the Hoover Dam on the way back to Death Valley in California and see how many of the wonderous national parks we can take in on our dream holidaytime.

Mysterious moving rocks in Death Valley

And when I say dream holiday, we would never be able to justify spending money on a any kind of break normally.  We are just not that sort of family.  I take the boys down to my Mums every summer, Mark stays at home and this is the closest we get to a holiday.  But now...this truly is the holiday of a lifetime in the sunshine state - what a contrast it will be; the Californian Wilderness, from the Wilderness of the Hebrides, I can't wait!

The John Muir wilderness area in the Sierra Nevada

A big part of the fun of traveling is always the planning - whether you are going to Russia, or Reading!  I have found a great site called 'Roadtrippers' and thanks to the interconnectedness that is the internet, I can plan and dream and research to my heart's content, all from the comfort of home.

https://roadtrippers.com/trips/california/6641205?a1=x!-118.16660254457399,y!35.025801072860524,z!5

We won't quite be setting off into the wilderness like John Muir, with just a rucksack, a few books and a bar of soap. But it feels like a huge adventure, life changing, enlightening and an experience to always be remembered and captured on film.  Just what all family's should be able to do together.