While we haven’t been planning this trip for a long time we have changed our mind many times about the starting point.
When we first thought about it we aimed for September 2023-August 2024 starting in Europe and travelling east. Everything stacked up from the one direction round the world flights to the weather and key times of year to visit places. Everything apart from school.
Returning to the UK at the end of August, Daniel would be starting secondary school, but speaking with a few friends working in education they suggested he needed to be around for secondary school orientation days which happen at the end of year 6 (so around the June/July before). Knowing it still made sense to start from Europe in September we flipped the US part of our trip from the planned Summer 2024 to Summer 2023.
The next sticking point was where to land in the US. Jon’s uncle is based in D.C. and we planned to spend time with him so that was where we aimed for. Flight prices were the first hurdle here. Oddly it was cheaper to fly to the West Coast. Mainly our fault as we were booking everything last minute (typically how we book things). But we also thought that a few beach days and some California sun might be the best place to start so 6 weeks starting in Los Angeles became the new plan.
Now 6 weeks in, we’ll be leaving Cali in 3 days and I’m honesly gutted. We’ve driven over 3000 miles total and seen the most amazing places. Apart from a handful of foggy early mornings at the coast, the weather has been perfect, the people incredibly friendly and the variety of activities endless.
Our overall place reviews will all have a WLT (would we live there) score – for California all 4 of us give it 100% yes.
