While visiting my friends in Minneapolis I took a day trip to Lake Superior’s North Shore.

My friends and I built up a big appetite after spending the morning driving north from Minneapolis so we stopped for lunch at the New Scenic Cafe which is a few kilometers north of Duluth. The food here was excellent, especially the Salmon Burger.

After a week in California, I flew across the country to Minneapolis. On arrival in Minneapolis I checked into my hotel and then headed straight to the Mall of America. A few hours later I left with a few new pieces of clothes that I had picked up for some really good prices.

My final day in California was spent visiting the NASA Ames Research Centre, the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and then watching the sunset over San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean.

The NASA Ames Visitors Centre was a disappointment, it looked like it was either temporary or extremely rundown.

My best mate took some time off work to show me around the Bay Area during my visit to California. On one of the days we didn’t really have much of a plan other than that we may go visit the area around UC Berkeley. After playing around on Google, I stumbled onto the website for the USS Hornet Museum. Not really knowing what to expect, other than some fun exploring an old aircraft carrier, we set the car’s GPS navigation and drove across the bay to Alameda.

Visiting Alcatraz was one of the highlights of my trip. My friend and I were fortunate to get some last minute tickets as I was not aware of just how popular it is and how far in advance it sells out.

After a few days in San Francisco I arranged with some of my friends to do a day road trip. Through my travel guide book and messing around with Google Maps I discovered Point Reyes which is around an hour and a half north of San Francisco (or a little more in traffic).

Being a nerd, the main attraction of Point Reyes is that forms a peninsula situated on the Pacific Plate and is visibly separated from from the North American Plate by the San Andreas Fault which runs directly under Tomales Bay.

I spent three days with friends in San Francisco during my stay in California.

On the first of these three days I met up with two friends of mine who work for technology companies. After a tour around a company making autonomous cars we had lunch in at “The Market” which is directly below the Twitter head office. Following this my best mate and I began to walk around the Market Street and city hall area of San Francisco.

In June I took three weeks leave and travelled to the USA and Canada to visit friends who live in various cities.

My trip began on a wet Wednesday morning in Sydney with a 15 hour flight to Los Angeles, followed by a one hour flight to San Francisco. With the exception of getting quizzed about my travel plans by various airline staff and border agents both in Sydney and Los Angeles the trip up with Delta was smooth and after being upgraded to Economy Comfort quite enjoyable.