Melb ➡️ U.S.A

Hey wonderful friends,

Firstly, we feel so so incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to spend an extended time travelling in 2024 together and being in good health. It really feels like a once in a life-time opportunity! Thanks for sharing in this with us.

We hope these emails make you laugh a little, share in the things we learn along the way and be inspired by Tom’s resilience to explore the world with such dainty, soft feet.

A few things to note…
- we’re hoping an email will pop into your inbox every few weeks/monthly
- As the photo’s we’ve taken don’t all fit in each email, we’ve uploaded them all onto a site for you to look at alongside the email https://millaphotos.myportfolio.com/ password: millatom2024
- we may include quizzes with the chance to win a special item from a secret location sent to your house
- if you have questions for us, please reply to the email! We confirm this is a monitored email account and will endeavour to reply within 3 business days 😉
- we are open to travel suggestions/tips so please reply with any you have!

We’re writing this from Costa Rica (5 mil, we like to compare population numbers at different places, so will always include the population of the city/town we visit in brackets after our first mention of the place), and we’re currently on a bus from San Jose (340,000) to Monte Verde (4,000). But we’ll tell ya a story from the start, first stop Hawai’i (1.422mil)!

While our actual first stop was planned as San Francisco (820,000), ingeniously, we found flights via Hawaii that were about 1/3 of the price as a direct flight to San Fran (our flight totaled $450pp, thank you Sky Scanner multi-city search). The catch was, our overlay was for 4 days, and Honolulu is v v expensive, so we tried our hardest to do free activities only such as walking, sitting, talking, swimming…that’s about it in Waikiki and eat cheap, cheap, cheap. One lovely sunset evening, we’d meandered through the expensive beachfront hotel lobby of The Moana Hotel pretending that our Tevas fit in and doing some great people watching. We found our way onto their section of beach, and decided why not do our own version of ‘sunset snorkelling’ with our goggles that we’d packed from home in our 40L carry on. We decided we’d swim from one point on Waikiki Beach to the other and then walk back along the sand. Swimming in tandem, we rolled over the waves, looking out for sea-life and headed out deep to make it past the surfers on the break. Next minute…

We actually couldn’t believe it!

Once we got to the shore we were lolling very hard, couldn’t believe that dudes luck and how good of an ad this would be for iPhones! A few minutes yelling out past the sea of sunset onlookers, owner was found, job well done, hi-five.

The next day we jetted off to San Fran, enjoyed some big Burger King energy along the way, and found Dean (our good mate from Melb Uni Ski Club) waiting for us at the airport terminal <3

Thank you Sarah & Dean for being such good hosts! In SF, Dean showed us the Bridge, a place where they only sell bone broth (you drink it exactly how you drink coffee, as you wake up https://www.tradbonebroth.com/) and we enjoyed some seriously succulent meals.

Then off we headed to ~LAS VEGAASSS*~**~!!! We learnt that if you go to Las Vegas (650,000), you don’t only get to see Las Vegas… you get to experience the canals of Venice, high-rises of New York and the full range of human experience in the 24/7 casinos where inside, you have no clue what time of day it is.

As four Aussies in Las Vegas coincidentally over the same weekend that the NRL were doing an exhibition match between the Brisbane Bronchos and Sydney Roosters, most Americans were genuinely very shocked when we told them we were only visiting Las Vegas for the NASCAR this same weekend. We approached the NASCAR as one would a cultural immersion excursion and oh boy did it deliver. See figure 1 below. If we had to describe the NASCAR in three words it would be loud (loud cars, loud people), tail-gaiting (the term used to describe people in their RVs at the NASCAR) and all-encompassing (the smell of burning tires, the taste of Coors Lite and the sight of American’s fist pumping with a dawg in-hand). To fit in a little more we made some custom tees that we sported and got some attention…

including some free caps we’re wearing and small desk bins from Las Vegas Raceway marketing people!

We stayed in the RV lot at the NASCAR for our first night of an 8-night RV adventure with Sarah and Dean, so next stop was Hurricane! The RV was an absolute novelty and very very fun.

These were the stops on our RV trip and some key highlights along the way…

1. Hike at Kolob Canyon in Zion National Park - walls of red rock that contrast blue skies, we followed a stream through the canyon. Along the way we saw paw prints (we were convinced these must have been mountain lions) as well as a very happy volunteer who hikes the canyon once a day to do upkeep on the track and who explained that the cave formed at the end of the track is from erosion of the rock from a table of water half-way down the face of rock which trickles down causing a concave shape.
   

   

2. Capitol Reef - Aeropress coffees in hand, here we saw petroglyphs that are 700-1200 years old, mostly depictions of goats and people. Very cool! We went for a hike and saw snow-capped mountains behind the sandy rock faces.
   

   

3. The drive from Capitol Reef to Monument Valley was incredible, so many different and interesting rock formations, canyons and mountains. Long Dong Silver (A very slender tall grey rock that Dean found on the internet) was a treat to run across the grey sand to find. And the descent down into Valley of the Gods, passing the upside down truck 50m down the cliff face as we drove switchback after switchback on a windy gravel road (best view of our lives). That night, camping on the edge of a canyon at Goosenecks State park 
   

   

4. It was hard to believe the Grand Canyon was that grand when you first see it. It’s just too big for our brains to comprehend, so you’re looking down at a river 1500m below and your brain convinces you it’s just a little stream. So it’s not until you hike 8 hours down into the Grand Canyon and you see it’s actually a 90m wide river that you can kind of comprehend the vastness. It was a tough hike with a huge amount of elevation, made more difficult by rain and snow during it and the mud that followed.  Our legs were feeling it for the next few days.
   

   

5. Hot tubs at Kaiser Hot Springs. We arrived at the car park in the afternoon, parked the RV, grabbed some drinks and walked down a dry creek bed towards where the springs were. After 20 mins we spied a little pool of hot water coming out of the rocks, but decided to continue walking to see if there were more substantial hot spring bathing spots. Not really, though at the bottom there was a nice river we had a swim at. A few other people were about so we decided to try and beat them back to the hot springs to ensure the tub for ourselves. (This next bit is from Tom’s POV) While Dean and Sarah were still sorting their bags, Milla and I headed back. I went up the river bed (double checking for hot springs) and Milla took the shortcut over the road. A couple of minutes later I arrived at the original hot spring, but Milla was nowhere to be seen. Dean and Sarah soon arrived but still no Milla. I had no idea where she was - I assumed she’d be ahead of me and perhaps she’d missed it but after running up a bit I couldn’t see her, so I doubled back and she’s also wasn’t there. We were all thinking the worst! In the space of 15 minutes we thought she was kidnapped! I decided she must have somehow missed the hot springs, so I ran back up multiple kms of river bed before I found her (and gave her a huge hug!) - somehow she’d missed the pool, thought it was further along and had continued walking. She turned around once she saw the freeway. I was genuinely very concerned.
   Once we got back to the tub, we settled in and had a few drinks. The water temp was so perfect we stayed in for four hours, walking back to the RV in the dark and almost getting lost!
   

6. Joshua Tree overflow dispersed camping. Joshua Tree national park was full, so we ended up in the overflow camp site which on a dried lake bed had quite a few people who lived there and a lot of others who went there to party, do burnouts, shoot shotguns into the nearby hills, light fireworks, and drive dune buggies across the sand. It was a fantastic sunset and a great way to spend our last night with Dean and Sarah.
   

   

 To view photos of our trip click this link: https://millaphotos.myportfolio.com/ 
password: millatom2024

Stay tuned for our next issue featuring:

• Tips for trying not to fall asleep in McDonalds in Costa Rica

• Avoiding passengers prone to get travel sickness on buses

• And proof that bad things come in threes

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