Our trip to begin the JMT began with another epic journey being the one from Perth, Western Australia to Los Angeles. We were flying Cathay Pacific into Hong Kong which was a long flight before we even began the long haul across the Pacific Ocean.

The trip to Hong Kong was relatively uneventful but we were definitely feeling tired from the red eye flight by the time we arrived. Once we arrived we were on the search for somewhere to grab breakfast (not many options) prior to hopping on the flight to LAX.

The flight to LAX was long and arrives early in the morning US time. This puts your body clock all over the place as you basically have an entire day to get through without sleep. Our hotel was in China Town as we had deliberately booked to be as close to Union Station as possible to allow for a short walk to public transport to travel to Yosemite National Park.

Arrival at Los Angeles Airport

LA skyline

Given we were unable to check into our hotel until around 3pm, we dropped our bags at the hotel and decided to head across to Santa Monica. Given all the logistical issues of planning to hike a trail when you are not actually resident in that country, we had ordered a few items (including a whole stack of Mountain House backpacking food) to be delivered to REI there. We headed out in a cab (which made us realise how spread out LA is and just how much wiser it would have been to hire a car) to head to Santa Monica.

The Pacific Ocean

Santa Monica Pier

REI Santa Monica

The REI store was a joy to walk around given we don’t have anything similar in Australia in terms of size and variety. It would be fair to say Ben and I stumbled around the store in a hiking gear-induced daze for around an hour or so (or was that the jet lag…) and the credit card took a bit of a hit.

After we had loaded up on a few items, we had little energy left to do anything other than head back to the hotel. There was a fantastic little ribs place just down the road from the hotel (not the place to hit if you’re not a Dodgers fan) and we had ribs, fire-roasted veggies with some craft beer. Dinner over, it was back to the hotel to watch some baseball before finally falling asleep almost two days after leaving Perth airport!

The best ribs in LA