London To Istanbul (maybe): Quick update, some photos + a return date

Since the last post we have done an awful lot of driving and seen a lot of cool things. Nothing hugely interesting or disastrous has happened however and so none of it seemed particularly bloggable. So, what follows is a quick update with photos and comments where appropriate.

Where are we now and when are we coming home?
We're currently hanging out in balmy Palm Springs at a tennis / sports resort. We'll stay here for the next few days and then fly home from LA on Monday arriving Tuesday 6th May. Initial plans include getting fit(tish), never eating burgers/pizza again and finding a couple of soul-nourishing jobs.

Where have we been and what have we been doing?
In short we've driven around 5000 miles in our (disastrous/white/American) rental car and have visited:

Monument valley
The Coachella music and arts festival
Death valley
Mammoth lakes
Bodie - a really cool ghost town
Lake Tahoe
Muir woods
Sausalito
San Francisco - hanging out with old friends
Napa valley- drinking wine and eating too much
The Pacific highway to Santa Barbara

Highlights and photos

Monument valley

Coachella was awesome. 3 days of lying around in 100 degree heat listening to music and drinking lemonade slush puppies. The best bits were:

Paul McCartney's 2.5 hour set which included lots of Wings / Beatles songs
Morrissey playing 'How soon is now' (Other than that he was grumpy and complained about the smell of burning animal flesh.)
The Cure set - although Robert Smith doesn't seem to go in for much in the way of audience interaction
The Killers, Paul Weller, Franz Ferdinand and a scottish guy called Paolo Nutini who was very summer-y.