USA Trip (12th Sep - 8th Oct) - Day 1

Having been back in Australia we were keen to get travelling again and having sold Alana's apartment we were able to start planning. 

Our initial thought was to head back to Sweden, but we then pivoted to consider the USA. It had been a long time since we had seen our American family and we had previously discussed visiting Los Angeles, so November last year I started planning.

Along the way we ended up talking with my sister and nephew who had not had a chance to meet the US family before, and they decided to join us.  My dad and stepmum also organized flights to Ohio and transport to Michigan to meet with the family.  What started as a small trip for the five of us ended up exploding into a massive, planned family reunion and a month of travel.

I spent the next few months planning out what we could do and where we could go, and before we knew it, it was September 2026 and the trip was on us.  

The weeks leading up to the trip were filled with rugby - hosting rugby finals, presentation nights and Grand Final games, and so the actual date snuck up on us.

Because of booking at different times, my sister, Tara, and my nephew, Brett, flew out a different flight. They were going to have a couple of relaxing days in LA while we flew a little later in the day.

We arrived at the airport nice and early for our 2pm flight and the first leg to Brisbane went by pretty quickly (2.5hrs).  We then had a couple of hours in Brisbane before we were due to fly out to LA. Unfortunately, the airport was under renovations, so our only food option was McDonalds (which we'd had for lunch at Adelaide Airport before we left).

Then we had a 13.5hr flight to LAX airport:

Flying Adelaide to Brisbane

Our plane getting loaded in Brisbane

About to land in LA

Arriving in LA

We arrived in LA and once we collected our bags we took the bus to the car hire yard. There were about 10 people in line in front of us but, despite there being about 15 desks for Budget/Avis, there was only one worker issuing cars. After an hour and half we finally got the keys to our car and drove out to our hotel in Anaheim.

Once we'd checked in, we headed out to get some dinner and heard approaching police sirens. Suddenly two police cars raced into the parking lot and an office jumped out and started searching the bushes with a torch. The hotel owner told us to go back and lock ourselves in our rooms, but let us leave out the other side of the carpark. As we walked across the road to Taco Bell, an additional 4 police cars turned up, followed by a fire truck and an ambulance. Taco Bell locked the doors once we were inside, but no-one seemed overly concerned or to know what was going on. We never found out what the issue was and it was still going when we finished dinner, so we decided to walk down to the Anaheim Convention Center where Blizzcon was being held (but had closed for the day). We took some pics and worked out where we would be going the next day and then headed back to the hotel. By the time we returned the police incident had cleared and we all crashed out pretty quickly. 

Our accommodation for the first two nights was the Anaheim Stanford Inn & Suites:

Head of the Bight (13-15 July 2025)

One thing Kristine has been planning to do for ages is to travel to the Head of the Bight in winter to see the whales. Inevitably every year something has come up to stop her - Covid, Sweden travel, rugby etc - and so this year she decided it was happening.  Tomas and Alana stayed home to look after Tony, and Cameron, Kris and I packed up before we headed to the Lions game on Saturday and were off early Sunday morning.  It was a good chance for Cameron to get some driving hours towards his license, as it was 10-11 hours through, without stops (we had a few stops and made it in about 12hrs).

The Great Australian Bight is a bay that sits at the central south part of Australia, between Adelaide and Perth.  

The original plan was to wild camp somewhere near the Head of the Bight, but on the way we decided we would aim for Fowler's Bay as they had places to camp and some good whale sighting. Fowler's Bay is on the far eastern end of the Bight:

The main point of interest at the Head of the Bight is that is is where southern right whales come to calve in winter.

Southern Right Whales are baleen whales, meaning they have baleen plates in their mouths to filter food. This is the same type of whale as the humpback and the minke whale. The southern right whales live and feed in the waters off Antarctica and the females travel to the warmer waters in the Bight to calve.

The right whale was named because they provided a large amount of oil and blubber and were easy to hunt as they came in close to shore in protected bays. The North Atlantic right whale was almost hunted to extinction in 1750, so the American whalers moved south to Brazil and the Southern oceans. From 1800-1850 the southern right whale numbers dropped significantly and whaling was made illegal in 1936 to protect the numbers. The numbers have been slowly rising, and the whales returned to Fowlers Bay in the early 2000s.

Our trip started around 7:30 on Sunday morning and we headed north to our first stop at Port Wakefield, then on to Port Augusta. After a quick stop for lunch, and to refill with fuel, we continued on to Kimba.

Kimba is a marker point halfway across Australia from East Coast to West Coast and home to the Big Galah:

The Galah is 8m tall and was built in 1993. It is made of steel, chicken wire and fibreglass and took 18 months to build. We had previously visited in 2020 on our way to the Gawler Ranges, but the Galah has been repainted since then.

The Galah in 2020

After a quick food and toilet stop we were on again, stopping next in Ceduna for dinner and then on to Fowlers Bay. We arrived at our campsite at around 9:30pm and were set up and in bed by 10:30.

The next morning we had a sleep in and then headed down to the Fowlers Bay jetty to check out the beach and sandhills: 

 

Fowlers Bay

There were apparently a few whales in the bay, but we couldn't see any from the shore, so we headed on to our next stop - The Head of the Bight, which was another 2 hours west.

The visitors center and cliff access cost us $20 each, but we had a great view of the 10 cow and calf pairs that we in the bay at the time:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mum and Calf

Back roll

Mum with the calf circling it

The tail of a southern right whale can weight around 2 tons

One of the calves was white, these generally fade to gray as the whale ages:

 

We got a fin wave goodbye as we were leaving:

We still had a few hours of daylight, so we headed another hour and a half down the road the the Nullarbor road house:

Petrol was $2.85 a liter! Compared to around $1.65 in Adelaide

 

We got back to our camp after dark and had dinner before an early night. Unfortunately sleep wasn't going to be happening as it started to pour with rain and Cameron's swag got flooded out:

We bought him into the camper and rearranged everything, adding some tarps to the outside of the camper to keep the rain out. We had just settled back down when the winds picked up, with constant winds of 17 m/s with gusts that were must higher. We ended up needing to add pegs to the awning and move anything that could blow around, and then spent the night hunkered down listening to the camper taking a beating and hoping nothing broke.

We were supposed to stay one more night and had booked a boat tour the next day, but we decided that since everything was wet and the wind had pushed a pole through the seam of the annex, we would get up at first light and pack everything down. 

It was much calmer the next day

We had everything packed by 9:00 and went down to meet the whale watching tour boat at 9:30. Just as we were about to board and were standing on the exposed jetty, it started to pelt down with rain, soaking us all.  The water was pretty rough so it made the boat trip pretty rocky, but we did get to see some whales in Fowlers Bay:

 

The tour lasted 2 hours, and then we had a warm shower, changed to dry clothes and started the drive home.  The return trip was uneventful and we got home at midnight.

Despite the weather, we saw everything we planned to see and had a great short holiday.