San Francisco. Our Amtrak train from Salt Lake City arrived at Emeryville station near San Francisco in the late afternoon. Despite the lateness of the Amtrak train from Salt Lake City, I had thoroughly enjoyed the journey of a night and a day over the Sierra Nevada mountains.

We stayed that first night in Emeryville, figuring that we'd want to rest up as soon as possible after the journey and we walked to the motel from the station. I subsequently found out that there was a free transit bus from the Amtrak station to MacArthur Metro nearby, which we used on the return trip but we were glad of the walk, good exercise after 24 hours cooped up on a train.

The next day was Sunday and as previously we found the local Roman Catholic church which happened to be just around the corner. In the UK most masses are followed by coffee and biscuits which offers an opportunity to chat to other parishioners or, if you are in another parish the chance to chat to some of the locals. So far our Sunday worship experiences in USA and Canada had not offered this opportunity as parishioners seem to drift away after the service. The Sacred Heart was different. We settled in near the back of the church and as the service drew to a close the pastor asked if he could introduce any visitors. We were content to remain incognito but an elder gentleman near by, called Richard I later learned, drew attention to us rather pointedly and Rev Karl Davis came over with a microphone, requiring me to give a brief resume of our circumstances, all of which naturally elicited applause and interest afterwards. Coffee and a buffet lunch (!) followed, where we were treated with great kindness, interest and generosity. It's these sort of occasion that has made travelling truly worthwhile.

We continued into San Francisco, where we remained for four nights taking in many of the must-see attractions. Riding on the cable car was fantastic! We'd walked to Fisherman's Wharf on the first evening for supper, and having observed the cable car passing by, pulled along as they are by cables underneath the roads, I resolved to catch it for our return trip. When the opportunity arose later, the queue to board was quite long but we bypassed much of it by volunteering to stand on the external side plate, rather than sit inside, which position in any-case affords a better view of the route.

The next day found us renting bicycles to ride to the Golden Bridge. With perfect weather – sunny with a cool breeze, the ride was excellent if a little long for Emily - I brought us back via the somewhat hilly Presidio park rather than along the water front, and we'd opted not to catch the ferry back from the other side of the Bridge (as it seemed a rather pointless exercise).

The day after, we toured Alcatraz Prison on the island in the bay – another superb attraction made famous by a couple of movies, not least of which Clint Eastwood's “Escape from” where he plays the part of one of the only escapees, the story being recounted by the park wardens.

Emily was particularly taken by the 100+ sea lions that live next to Pier 39, basking in the sunshine, but not by the live toads that we observed in a fish tank in Chinatown, waiting to be eaten.

We returned to Emeryville Amtrak station early the next day and caught another train – this time to Los Angeles. The Coast Starlight is an attractive train route that wends its way through multi-various fruit orchards before hugging the coastline south of Santa Barbara to LA. It arrived at 9pm and we made our way across town to Huntington, south of Down-town LA, well positioned to catch a plane to Las Vegas the next day. A rather 'interesting' neighbourhood, Huntington was quite industrial and a little run down, but the hotel was quite good and the locals actually very friendly despite initial appearances.

Las Vegas & Monty! We flew to Las Vegas the next day, arriving a day ahead of Monty, whom I had arranged to fly out, on his own, for his half term week. We wandered around some of the Fall Hotel displays, with the Bellagio being particularly spectacular.  Monty duly arrived on schedule and we began a packed and fun-filled week that, aside from seeing some of the 'Vegas sights, included taking in the Hoover Dam, Death Valley, Sequoia National Park and the Grand Canyon. Phew!

He was somewhat jet lagged from the flight and for a first few days wanted to go to sleep too early, in the late afternoon, for which we resorted to a plethora of stay awake techniques, most of which were only marginally effective.

After a night in Las Vegas at the Circus Circus hotel, which offers a child friendly environment in direct contrast, almost, to the rest of the city, we headed off to the Hoover Dam in the morning. Impressive for its size and the endeavour encapsulated in its construction, Monty was reassuringly quite taken with the Dam, famous as it is for film sequences during the Transformer movie.

We moved on to a small village called Shoshone on the edge of Death Valley and the heat that we experienced during that first day was a good harbinger for the following day. Shoshone had an excellent open air swimming pool a short walk from our motel; fed by a hot spring it was deliciously warm, and quite difficult to get out of afterwards to dry in the cooling evening. Emily was delighted when some bats emerged for their evening feed and started to dive along the length of the pool to drink.

Death Valley. We descended into Death Valley National Park the next day. An awesome adventure, we stopped at various places to take in the vista, but didn't tally too long away from the car's air conditioning, as the temperature climbed, eventually, near 'The Dunes' in the centre, to a breath-taking 116°F! Thankfully the dry heat was manageable in small amounts but I'm not sure how the first settlers survived particularly in places like Badwater, a dry salt lake, 282ft below sea level and the lowest point in the United States, strangely a stones throw from Mount Whitney – the highest point (not counting various peaks Alaska). Zabriskie Point and the Mosaic Canyon were equally memorable for their outstanding beauty, the latter a very narrow but walk-able gorge, forged over many years - by water of all things.

Lone Pine, where we stayed in the evening, was equally interesting. With the famous rocky mountain backdrop ( including Mt Whitney) many old western movies were made in a rocky bouldered area a few miles out of town, now called Movie Road, with film casts, including the likes of John Wayne and Roy Rogers often frequenting the village. We made our own film with Monty and I shooting it out amongst the boulders.

Sequoia National Park. We made tracks for the Redwoods, the next day and, en route to Three Rivers where we were staying, we came across The Trail of a Hundred Sequoias. A path of huge trees, really impressive, but more than that we discovered, a couple of the very big trees had fallen over a month prior to our arrival and the trees were now blocking the Path. The fall had been witnessed and filmed by a couple of German tourists, and the incident was now viewable on uTube.

Fortunately the area had just been opened up by the park rangers, where previously it had been closed to the public, and we were able to clamber all over the stricken twin trees, which activity only served to reinforce their enormous size and the striking redness of the internal wood. We explored another big tree area the next day which included General Sherman, the largest tree in the world, by volume. Huge Trees! We sat amongst them to eat a picnic lunch, I was in heaven. These trees were estimated to be 1500-2000 years old compared to those examples in the UK, some of which are in Handcross, planted in the Victorian period, and less than 150 years old.

The roads around the Park were very windy and circuitous to say the least climbing as they do from sea level to 6000ft in the space of only a few miles. Whilst this made for interesting driving, Emily, with her sporadic travel sickness was relieved to put the wooded mountain roads behind as we took the faster and straighter route back to Las Vegas the next day, where on arrival we checked into the Stratosphere – the famous tall tower at the bottom of the Strip.

Grand Canyon. Emily had booked us on an early flight to the Grand Canyon the next day. Up at 5, breakfasting in a diner, and a short hope from nearby Boulder City to the Canyon, we were there by 9am, taking in the amazing vista and the rather disconcerting sheer drops over the edge to the valley below. The Grand Canyon is a risk assessment nightmare; there are vertical precipices everywhere with very little warning of how far the drop is, certainly none from the tour guides. Our tour included venturing out on to a walkway suspended out over the canyon with glass floors, most disconcerting but with excellent views of the valley floor thousands of feet below.

This was Monty's last full day. We saw him to the airport the next day to return to UK and we remained in Las Vegas another day before flying back to Las Angeles the day after, this time for a few days. We were sad to see Monty go back. It had been a blast having him with us for a week filled with action packed adventure.