Vegas, baby, from what I can remember, Vegas...

Leaving Yosemite was an obstacle course of mist, children and deer crossings. It also had us encounter the first of the many and varied design of petrol pumps. I think every petrol station in the states has a different method for making petrol come out of the pump. It was a continual challenge throughout the trip... But we had a nice lady who showed us how to keep our car going under its own steam.

It was about an 8 hour driving day. Needless to say we were bright as buttons when we left at 7am. The drive was uneventful, in a Californian desert interstate kind of way. The road trip pic earlier was pretty well standard viewing most of the way, once aforementioned children and deer had fled before us. But eventually we rounded a hill and had full view of Vegas spreading out like a concrete oasis in the middle of the dry plains.

Vegas seems like a bit of a blur of night lights and incessant bells and whistles from hundreds of thousands of pokie machines. The Strip is quite a place to see - particularly at night, and its electricity bill something to forever ponder. Our first night saw our travelling party split over conflicting entertainment options. Opting to avoid Celine Dion, Angie and I headed to catch Mystere, one of the many Cirque de Solei performances which was quite amazing. I've never seen human ability like it - highly entertaining; catch a show as soon as you can.

Unfortunately Vegas has some amazing shopping, so we filled in the daylight hours (yes, it felt like all 12 of them) at the Shopping Outlets, ensuring we would stretch our packs to breaking point. The days are quite in Vegas; its not until the neon fires up late afternoon that things get interesting. People watching is an awesome past time, there are brides wandering about, bucks and hens, and tourists covering any stereotype you care to impose.

Next day was our tour of the Grand Canyon about 5 hours drive away. We had a informative, yet irritating driver who shoved junk food in his mouth whenever he wasn't talking at us. We drove over the Hoover Dam wall which was more interesting than I had expected. Either side of the wall we stopped for military inspection, just to make sure we had left all portable explosives at home.

We viewed the Canyon from the south rim where its approximately 10-13 miles wide. It was an overcast day, so there were pools of light and shadow drifting across the rocks which made it look quite amazing, and managed to break up the haze. I was much more impressed than I thought I would be. I took a bit of a panorama to put together - its not perfect obviously, but I think it looks OK in showing the enormity of this massive tear through the Nevada desert.

(Click on the pic for a bigger view)

And that's about all I can tell you about Vegas - what can I say? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas... So here are a couple of other pics.

Ah, Paris...

Paris Hotel - possibly the flashest hotel I've ever stayed at, or care to think of the cost of...... The Strip, Las Vegas.

Yosemite Sam

Showing Yosemite the Love - Who doesn't want to hug a tree every now and then?








Liking the sun flare of late - just thinking why fight it???

San Francisco

For a long time I was misspelling San Francisco and trying to refer to it as San Fran only. Luckily I'm over it now that I have a more personal relationship with the place. I left off with being too lazy to ride back across the Golden Gate - well, not so much lazy, as trying to utilize our time better than retracing previous steps, or tyre revolutions....We caught the famous San Francisco cable cars back up the hills (which we were definitely too lazy for - they were big!!). Unfortunately the historical trolley cars are as old as they look, and half the passengers needed to disembark at the 1st steep hill, walk up and get on at the next flat intersection. The great thing about the drivers is that they ring the bells in very rhythmical way. I wondered if rhythm was a compulsory skill for the job.

So with the jet lag fading for the most recent Aussies, and me over my early morning, it was time to face our fears and pick up a large American vehicle and get ourselves safely out of town. Things were not looking good when I could not work out how to adjust my seat, and then required clarification on the 3 pedals on the floor. Fancy pants pedal park brake...

When I say large, think Ford Falcon, despite requesting a mid-sized vehicle. Having spent the longest recentest time in North America, I was driving out of town, something I was not phased about until getting there. Luckily it was almost insultingly easy to get out of town and over the Bay Bridge. One thing I will say, is that I'm pleased that the US Highway patrol is not as vigilant as they should be, as it took some time to register the miles as opposed to kms, and not speed that big American car along side all the other speeding American vehicles. Other than that I was an excellent driver.

The 1st day's drive took us west (east was out due to obvious geographical limitations) to Midpines, about 5 hrs drive immediately west of San Fran. Most of the trip was built up and passing truck after truck, then a cluster of fast food 'establishments' then more trucks, another truck, and fast food cluster, then truck, truck and eventually there was a bit of wide open space! At the time I mentioned how much the landscape reminded me of somewhere, but I've forgotten now - might think of it later. It was really dry, just like the hills around Wodonga as I remember leaving them - and hilly like that - perhaps it was Wodonga I thought it reminded me of...in summer.

Yosemite, on the other hand, was pine tree after different variety of pine tree. We headed into Yosemite National Park on the 9th Oct - Angie's birthday actually. I mention this specifically because of my frustration at the very few bear experiences I'd had in Canada which resulted in me making the point to one of the girls pre-trip that if Angie saw a bear (knowing that we'd be in Yosemite that date) I would be - slightly upset. Why? Because who wouldn't like a bear experience on their birthday just 4 days prior, and jealousy is an ugly thing...

I'd wanted to see Yosemite since studying Ansel Adams in 1st year uni. He has mastered the ability to produce the perfect black and white print - most of which were taken in Yosemite. So the first thing I did after parking the car and running into some red deer wandering around the visitors centre, was head to the Ansel Adams Gallery for a few pointers. Unfortunately my skill is no where near the realm of Mr Adams.

There are a few walking trails quite close to the visitors centre so that the day visitors don't have to carry food and plan their walks weeks in advance. We started with the walk to El Capitan, following the road slightly, before diverting over to the river where we stopped for lunch. We resumed the trail with renewed vigour (just cause I love the expression) and were wandering along the trail merrily in conversation about goodness knows what before I stopped dead in my tracks to watch what I thought was a dog/coyote/wolf ( as my head tracked it) before realising there was a little black bear crossing our path about 60m ahead of us. I turned to Pooh and Charm to shut up, which took a while as they thought I was mucking around at the thought of a bear in these there parts. By the time they stopped and realised that I would never joke about something like that, Angie had took off about 10m back behind me, which I thought was an interesting juxtaposition with my temptation to just run ahead and get a closer look. I say temptation because I was nearly off before I remembered that mum would not be too far away. Dammit.

For the purposes of story telling, Yogi crossed the path and wandered into some long grass, then onto a log just for one last look, and then was off. I didn't manage to get the camera out - it was one of those moments you know won't last long, so do you fumble for the gear, or do you enjoy it for the moments you have. I chose to take it as it came, and love every second. Need I say that there was much rejoicing after the fact - and I don't mean the sarcastic much rejoicing of Monty Python's Merry Minstrels - honest to goodness beaming grins and hi 5'ing...followed my my realisation that my prediction of Angie having a bear experience on her birthday had come true.

Most of our day paled in comparison to that, but at the same time was a ripper day still. We drove up to Glacier Point, driving through the most amazing variations of Fall colours. By the time we got there it was freezing, so decided to head back down to catch sunset on Half Moon Dome (the single best Ansel Adams pic that inspired me to go) but we were not in luck that day. After an awesome day it was time to head for the ... rest of the hills; delayed somewhat by a truck stick on a narrow bridge crossing, and finally home, ready for an early start.

Roadtrip USA, Part 1

Roadtrip USA 2007 - California Interstate 99 heading to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Golden Gate Bridge, not looking very Golden due to sun and angles etc, but I kinda like it better anywho. Looking back from the northern peninsula - if I panned left you'd see the pretty cool skyline of San Fran city.

Time Vortex

OK, sorry the blog has not been updated for almost the entire trip - and you're still not in lick today. Our hectic schedule and lack on internet cafes as EVERYTHING is now free wi-fi for yuppy laptop owners (yes, I am bitter and completely jealous) so have had very little opportunity to blog. But enough with the excuses, I will endeavour to do a big blurb ASAP with pics as soon as possible. Even if I have to wait til I'm back to Canada and THEN I will do segments so its not just a little too much.

But here's a teaser:

San Francisco - I continued my feeling of being cold continually at the airport. The days were beautiful and sunny, although the evenings got really cold. It goes without saying that it was brilliant to see my 3 buddies walk through the Int. Arrivals gate (albeit over an hour late, compounded with my early arrival) but after the bone crushing hugs and stubborn tears, it was like the 6 month distance had never happened.

The hostel - well, best not mentioned, but at least we didn't have to share our room with others. The Blue Angels were flying that weekend so it was packed down on San Fran Bay. I couldn't help note the excess use of fuel on those things just to promote uncle Sam, but then I'm not the best ambassador for pro American relations. Sleep was at the fore front of every one's minds, (even I had a 4am start) so it was not a late night.

Sunday was high adventure - hiring bikes to ride the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm not all that into bridges, but it was kinda cool - you were so high up from the water and it was windy as anything. We rode clear 'cross to Sausalito where we stopped for lunch and caught the ferry back (we were not that keen!!! its a long way!), past Alcatraz which looked like one of the worst prisons on earth quite frankly..... TBC.

Temping

Yeah, really don't like temping - feels like I'm prostituting myself...I folded 4 reams of paper in half Friday afternoon instead of looking forward to beer o'clock. Makes you miss the old job that you know and occasionally love. Tomorrow I think I get to stuff envelopes, oh yeah, let the good times roll.

For those of you who don't know, this is my last week in Vancouver. I'm leaving early, early Saturday morning to fly down to San Fransisco and an awesome 4 week roadtrip with a few of the posse from home. When I come back to Canada I'm heading to Ottawa to see what else this country has to offer. For those of you with my contact details, that mobile number will be active until 1st November and then I'll need to get it changed to Ottawa local. Yes, it is very annoying. Backwards in so many ways... Obviously you can throw out the street address, I never intend to set foot there again...