USA

Good evening folks, from an internet cafe across the road from the Wilshire Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California. I'm in the internet cafe adjacent to a Carl's Jr. hamburger restaurant, looking at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel, our resting place for this evening, out the window. Our road trip has come to an end, folks, as we have come full circle in our journey, and are back in Los Angeles for our final sleep before departing the United States of America.

But first, a recap. We left you last night reasonably early, with the birthday girl's maiden blog entry rounding out the night for you. Not so for us though. After Sarah had finished her part of the blog and I posted it, she quickly went onto Google to search for session times for the movie "The Proposal", a chick flick featuring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Not my first movie preference, I would like to add, but given that yesterday was Sarah's day, I begrudingly accepted her request!! As luck would have it, the AMC movie theatre was only a block down the road from our hotel in San Francisco, so we took the nice walk, hoping to catch the 9:00pm session so that we could have dinner (at a Denny's that we passed on the way) beforehand. Unfortunately (or was it fortunately??) the 9:00pm showing had already sold out, so we settled on the 8:00pm showing - given that we arrived at the theatre at about 7:25pm, it put dinner on the back-burner.

Going to the movies in America is very similar to doing the same in Australia - the only real difference is that Americans can, and do, bring hot food into the theatre, with the concession stand (or snack bar, Aussies) selling hot dogs, pizza, pretzels and all sorts of other no-good-for-you treats. We skipped the food part of it and settled in to watch the movie - a typical chick flick that I actually somewhat enjoyed, until the final credits started rolling and there was the now-obligatory after-movie action - although I didn't see it thanks to a young lady who started to leave when the credits started rolling, but stopped to watch the after-movie stuff - WHILST STANDING UP. A few people motioned to her to sit down, but she was having none of it, and stood all the way through the final action, ruining the experience for me a little bit. This was exacerbated when we walked out of the theatre and crossed the road at the traffic lights, with the "walk" indicator smiling brightly at us when we stepped off the sidewalk. It soon changed to a flashing red hand, with a countdown in seconds of how long you have to finish your crossing. We were about half-way through, with ten seconds left to cross, so we picked up the pace a little, only to have a bus start tooting at the car at the intersection waiting for us to cross, and gesticulating at us as if we were doing the wrong thing. This is what annoys me about this country - the United States is a wonderful place to visit, and the people in the majority are courteous and accommodating, but there's an element of the American society that are rude, pushy and downright ignorant. I suppose it's the same anywhere in the world, but it seems here as if it is almost done on purpose, as if the person in question feels it's their right to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and it can grate on the nerves, I tell you.

In the end, we gave dinner a miss last night, as neither of us were really hungry - the Eating Machine had blown a gasket for the night, and instead we returned to the Pickwick Hotel and went to bed, knowing that our final big driving day was ahead of us.

The alarm went off at 6:00am this morning, and anyone who knows Sarah knows of her abhorrence at waking before 9:00am on days when she doesn't have to work, so the alarm on my phone, playing "This Ain't A Scene" by Fallout Boy, was met with various moans and groans, and when I was still trying to wake her twenty minutes later, a fearful version of "The Look" was unleashed that had me scurrying to the shower!! I eventually raised Sarah - although she wasn't anywhere near fully awake, and her eating of eggs and bacon at breakfast looked very much like it was done on auto-pilot. We were finished with breakfast, packed up and checked out of the Pickwick Hotel just after 7:00am, with the GPS set to take us to Los Angeles via Highway 1 and the famed coastal route - a predicted nine hour journey, as opposed to a five-hour trip down I-5!!

But the drive was worth it - from five minutes after leaving downtown San Francisco when we turned onto Highway 1, until just after 2:00pm when Highway 1 merged with US Highway 101 and morphed into a freeway, I was completely at home on the road, with the Pacific Ocean as my companion. Having grown up with the ocean literally a stone's throw away, it makes me feel at ease when I can see the water, and we ran right alongside the Pacific today - in some stages feeling that a slight steering adjustment to the right would send us careering into the greenish-blue waters. On the other side, for the most part, were mountains - windy, bendy, challenging stretches of road not dissimilar to our trek through the Yosemite National Park and Sierra Nevada mountain range when driving to San Francisco on Monday, and the reason that the trip took longer than the run down the interstate. Sarah was snapping away happily with her camera for the journey down, and although I haven't seen the actual photos yet, if the scenery she was photographing was any indication, we should have another set of outstanding photos to show everyone on our return to Australia on the weekend.

By 3:00pm, we had finished with our coastal run, and were making our way towards the metropolis of Los Angeles, with the fact that we still had shopping bags full of stuff in the boot of our car with no big bag to bring them back to Australia. I had the bright idea of, rather than trawling around Los Angeles - where trends had indicated that the downtown shopping areas of large cities tend to be more of a department store scene - for instance, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's and Bloomingdale's as the majors (think Myer and David Jones, Aussies), whereas the suburban areas tended to feature Wal-Mart's and Target's - cheaper department stores - to stop at one of these suburban shopping malls to pick up a cheap suitcase to bring everything home in. My prayers were answered as we entered the city limits of Cammarillo, about 50 miles out of Los Angeles, and we passed a mall with a Target, right next to a freeway exit. We nicked into Target and picked out a duffle bag - there were suitcases in our price range, but they were sets of three, and I didn't want a family of suitcases invading our trip - and went and emptied out the car, packing everything as close as possible into the bags they will be travelling back to Australia in. It was a tight squeeze, even with the extra bag, and whilst there's still a little shuffling that has to be done, most everything is packed, and the car is clean (anyone who has seen my car back in Australia knows that it tends to maintain a "lived-in" look almost year-round, and the Nissan Altima wasn't all that different!!). We then drove the 50 miles into Los Angeles without too much complaint, although we entered after 5pm, therefore copping peak-hour traffic, but the pilot was much more confident in driving through Los Angeles this time around, and we made it to the Wilshire Plaza Hotel perfectly safe and sound.

The Wilshire Plaza Hotel is at 3515 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles - remarkably, almost the identical address at which we emerged from the LA Metro system, having come from Los Angeles Airport on the FlyAway bus, back on Sunday May 31st in our first hours on American soil - the entrance to the subway station is right over the road from the hotel (in fact, it's right next to the internet cafe I am writing this from), and the Budget Rent-A-Car office that the Nissan Altima calls home is just two blocks away. All I have to do is find a petrol station, which I saw not far away as we drove in, and fill 'er up, and drop it at Budget in the morning. The road trip is officially over folks - our round-trip journey to LA has seen us cross almost 8000 miles of American roads, and has given us a lifetime of happy memories that we have enjoyed sharing with you on the way. It's almost ironic that the hotel we will stay in for our last sleep in America is right opposite the point where we first started to experience our American Dream - I'm normally not into symbolism, but I feel that this is still a pretty powerful symbol of our trip coming to an end.

But, it hasn't quite ended yet. We still have tomorrow, Thursday 25th June, in which to explore Los Angeles before boarding one of Qantas's finest for the trip back to Melbourne, with a five-and-a-half hour stop-over in Auckland, New Zealand. The plane doesn't leave LA tomorrow night until 11:45pm, which had the potential to leave us with a dilemma - check-out at the Wilshire Plaza is at 12:00pm, and we didn't fancy either being at LAX eleven hours before our flight, or dragging our suitcases with us as we checked out Hollywood. Luckily, the Wilshire Plaza offers a baggage storage facility, where we can leave our bags at the hotel after check-out, to be picked up later in the day. Which will be perfect - we plan on leaving our luggage at the hotel, checking out Hollywood for the day, returning to the hotel at around 6:00pm and making our way to LAX, most likely by taxi (costly, but more convenient than lugging our luggage through the LA nightly commute).

I'll try and post a quick something from LAX tomorrow night to let everyone know that we are at the airport awaiting our flight, which is scheduled to land at Melbourne Airport at 3:30pm on Saturday, June 27th (yep, after the 38 hour day for our first day in America, we skip completely over Friday June 26th on the way home).

And the question that you are undoubtedly asking yourself - why is he in an internet cafe instead of the hotel?? Simple, really, it comes down to economics!! The Wilshire Plaza wanted 49 cents a minute for internet access (which makes San Francisco's five bucks for twenty minutes look like a bargain), whereas I got a three-hour access card here at the internet cafe for ten bucks - the equivalent of twenty minutes of hotel time!! Whilst I won't get through three hours (although over an hour has gone already - we checked out some stuff here before dinner, including seeing the Red Sox win again, this time 6-4 over the Washington Nationals, with Big Papi hitting another home run. He had one on the season when I arrived in America - I go home with Papi having gone deep seven times in the last month - if he goes into another slump, then the Red Sox fans that read this blog need to get the organisation to fly me back over here - I'm Ortiz's lucky charm!!!), it still makes for a cost-effective session.

And so ends what will be our last on-the-road blog of the trip - as mentioned, I'll try and post from the airport tomorrow night, and will wrap things up when we are back on Australian soil (and for the non-Aussies, I'll post some of the pictures from the last couple of days so you don't miss out). It's time for me to cross the road and get some shut-eye - methinks sleep could come at a premium following tomorrow!!! Good night all, and to all a good night!!

Good evening all - yes, despite the clock just turning over to 6:00pm (which means 11:00am Wednesday in Melbourne, and 9:00pm Tuesday in the eastern USA) and the sun still shining brightly in the San Francisco sky, I'm going with good evening, as a lot has been packed into today, Sarah's birthday!! The unwritten rule of "never reveal a lady's age" prevents me from saying how old she turns today - that, and she's sitting next to me watching me write!! Perhaps she may tell you herself later in this blog - yes, Tuesday June 23rd. with only about 53 hours to go in our American Adventure, is the time that one Sarah Jane Lynn is going to make her blog debut!!!!

But before we do (and I revert to the normal teaser rule of saving what everybody wants to see until later in the blog), let's go over a quick (remember - five bucks for twenty minutes, although I brought a prepaid card today which gives me sixty minutes for twelve bucks - bargain!!) recap of the day's activities. Breakfast was on the house today - it was part of our accommodation package here at the Pickwick Hotel, so we ventured into Little Joe's Restaurant in the hotel foyer, and picked any item off the menu. The Ham and Egg Sandwich, with hash browns (not the square hash browns that Aussies think of - this is more like a potato put through a cheese grater then fried, and is quite tasty), was the single greatest breakfast I've eaten in America, and almost put thoughts of white Up bread toasted with Vegemite into the back of my mind!! (I've got a new craving - Aussie sausages, in bread, cooked on the barbie - it must be this summer weather!!). After that, and Sarah's fried eggs, bacon and hash browns were consumerd (well, devoured, the Eating Machine is back with a vengenance having aged another year), we stepped out into San Francisco, headed for a short stroll to where a double-decker bus was waiting to pick us up to give a guided tour of San Francisco.

I'm sure you've all seen the open-air tourist double-decker buses (if you've been to New York or Sydney, you could hardly miss them), which offer the ability to either stay on the bus as it gives you a narrated tour around your specified city, or you can hop off at any number of designated stops?? That's what we took today throughout San Francisco - and it was good. To me, there's not many things to top travelling in an open-air fashion, be it bus, ferry or otherwise, and especially when you get a sunny day that's not too hot (I don't think it would have gotten above 70 degrees today - which is about 22 degress Celsius, as San Francisco never really heats up). It showed us all of the major San Francisco downtown landmarks, but the real highlight of the bus was when it passed through the downtown city boundary, and headed for a red-coloured bridge that looked strikingly familiar!!! Yep, the bus took us to a look-out point where we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, then took us on a ride over the bridge, then back over towards San Francisco. It was pretty awesome to go over it, but this was the one disadvantage of the open-air bus arrangement, as it was bloody windy and cold going over the bridge - so much so that I had to take off my beloved Red Sox baseball cap to stop it being a resident of San Francisco Bay!! The views from the bridge weren't as breathtaking as they could have been, as it was still reasonably early in the morning and the morning fog hadn't yet cleared over the bay, meaning that both downtown San Francisco and Alcatraz weren't at their picturesque best. We disembarked off the bus in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf district - an area with heaps of shops and eateries, and headed for Pier 39, where we were to meet a connecting shuttle to the next, and major, of our activities for the day. We had some time up our sleeves though, so we wandered around Pier 39 for a while, where the fog had cleared up and we were able to take photos (which, given that I'm on a public computer, can't be uploaded, but will be shown when we get back to Oz on the weekend) of Alcatraz and of San Francisco's sea lion population, which have an area at Pier 39 where they can "beach" themselves on a series of floating pontoons and sun their bodies, or have play-fights, as most seemed to be doing. We even took in lunch at the aptly named Sea Lion Cafe, where we had great views of the sea lions, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge to accompany us (after one of our "random American" photos for the day, one of our best so far with Alcatraz featuring in the background).

After lunch, and a stop at a souvenir shop (where I couldn't help myself, and bought a Red Sox hoodie), we waited at the taxi rank for Pier 39 for our connecting shuttle to.....the San Francisco SeaPlane. One of Sarah's dreams for today was to take a helicopter ride over San Francisco - well, I went one step better and got the less noisy, better for photos Seaplane to do the honours. We were picked up (or, the "Kelly's" were picked up) and taken, along with an English couple, to the seaplane base in Sausalito, a suburb of San Francisco, which meant a less-windy ride over the Golden Gate Bridge again, and loaded into the plane for what was an awesome 35-minute plane ride (the plane was a seven-seater Fokker Friendship, but there were only five of us in there, so all was good) over San Francisco and it's surrounding areas, allowing us to view, and photograph, San Francisco from up high (and I wish I could show you the photos now, as they are pretty awesome)!! This was another of those activities that we both really enjoyed, as it was a bit of a departure from the normal kind of touristy-thing, and seemed to be over far too quickly for both of our likings.

When we landed and re-entered dry land (the plane takes off on water. so we had to walk along a dock that swayed with the tide a bit), we were shuttled back to Pier 39 at Fisherman's Pier, and jumped back on the hop-on, hop-off bus to our original stop, passing through some pretty interesting San Francisco sites on the way. After a visit to the Westfield shopping centre next door to pick up another part of Sarah's birthday present which was only released today (she'll tell you more about that shortly), as well as looking for another suitcase to bring all of our extra purchases home with us (no luck yet, couldn't find anything under $90, which is far too rude for what we need it for - no matter, the souvenir stores that specialise in 3 for $15 San Francisco t-shirts will look after us), we arrived back here at the Hotel Pickwick, which brings us to this point here. Dinner will be on the cards shortly - not sure where yet, in my role today as "birthday slave", I'm waiting to be told what to do in this regard), then I think Sarah has something else planned, which she is going to research on the Internet shortly.

Before she does though, I'm going to depart the floor for the night and say my goodbyes - I will return tomorrow night from Los Angeles (the plan for tomorrow is to take Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles - reportedly one of the most beautiful drives in America), as ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it is my great pleasure to, on the anniversary of her birth, introduce to you for this first time in these blog pages to describe her birthday and her present haul in greater detail...the one, the only, Sarah Jane Lynn...all yours, honey!!

Well did I get spoilt today. Most of my presents i already knew about due to being there when he bought them but there was one in particular that I was no around for and this is a gold necklace with a heart on it with diamentes and 3 coloured stones on it which I adore. The last minute present was a Janet Evanovich novel which was only released today and the 15th in the series.

Off to dinner now (editors note - the Eating Machine grow restless), so goodbye from San Francisco.

Good evening all, from the business centre of The Pickwick Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Given that the laptop is still on the fritz, and a bunch of late-night text messages from my brother Daniel determined that the best course of action would be to leave it lying catatonic until our return to Melbourne on the weekend, I'm sitting here in the darkened business centre (until I find a light switch - ah, there it is!!) paying five bucks for twenty minutes of Internet time so I can keep you up-to-date with what's going on!!!

Going to be a relatively short blog tonight for two reasons - a). today was primarily a driving day, and b). five bucks for twenty minutes - we're in a bloomin' recession here, folks!! We left you last night in Las Vegas, moaning about the lack of go in my laptop and theorising that it could be the end of this humble little blog - which, thankfully, it isn't!! The night ended in rather tame fashion - we were going to catch up with a childhood friend of mine, Allan Barrett and his family who are also holidaying in the US right now (and happened to be in Vegas over the weekend), but Sarah came down with a bit of a tummy upset - which thankfully was cleared up by this morning, a nice long bath helped!! Thought it might have been the BLT with no T (tomato) that was devoured by the Eating Machine last night that could have been spiked, but it was bereft of mayo. butter and all things harmful. By the way - Johnny Rocket's - right up there with In-N-Out Burger as the best burger I've had in the States (and now that we are back in California, look out In-N-Out Burger!!). We also planned today's trip to San Francisco, and enquired about a couple of sightseeing adventures for tomorrow, Sarah's birthday, which we hoped to hear back on.

In inputting the destination address into Google Maps, to get a rough idea of directions and travel times, it came up with two different routes to San Francisco. The shortest was back down I-15, the same way we first came to Vegas all those many weeks ago from San Diego, over the Californian border then off I-15 at Bakersfield to transfer onto I-5, which was projected to take a touch over eight hours. The other way was through northern Nevada towards Reno, then turning off and travelling via Yosemite National Park to San Francisco, which was projected to take eleven hours. Much to my surprise, Sarah chose the longer option, wanting to see Yosemite National Park as driving scenery instead of the billboards, chain motels and fast-food restaurants that dot the usual landscape.

So we were up early this morning, checking out of the Venetian with a lot more bags than we arrived with, thanks to our expedition to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets yesterday, got the car from the valet, found out that valet parking at the Venetian was free, and we left Las Vegas, not having seen a single penny of our money leave our possession by way of gambling, which I'm pretty proud of!!

We set out for San Francisco via Yosemite, hoping that the GPS would show us the right way (I had some written directions scribbled down just in case), but when I added Yosemite as a way point, it lead us a merry dance, via the exact route set out by Google Maps last night. The drive through Nevada was pretty boring, given that we were looking at nothing but desert the entire way through, until just before a little town named Tonopah, when I saw probably the first other car on the road for about half an hour, and it had red and blue flashing lights that started once I passed it, and followed me up the road. Startled, I looked down to see my speedo reading a few miles over the posted speed limit, and thought I could be in trouble. Never fear though!! Once the officer sauntered up to my window, demanding to see my license and car registration, I unloaded with the most polite Ocker I could - and he fell for it!!! We got to talking about footy, and the differences between Australian Rules, gridiron and soccer (I was out of the car by this stage, as he wanted to see my passport in conjunction with my Victorian drivers license, and the passport was in a bag in the boot of the car). It ended with the officer apologising for being an inconvenience, wished us well for our trip, and shook my hand!!! Off scott-free!! Mind you, I did keep a close eye on my speedo from then onwards.

The trip through Nevada went without any more hassle, and we crossed into California at about midday, headed for Yosemite.

Entering Yosemite is much like entering the Grand Canyon - you have to pay a fee per car to enter the park, which in this case was $20. Yosemite, though, is more set-up for hiking and camping rather than sightseeing, although Sarah did get some pretty good photos - I didn't think I'd see snow-covered mountain peaks in a Californian summer!! Where the drive was made longer, though, was not just by the diminished speeds through the eighty-odd miles of road in Yosemite (distance-wise, the Yosemite route and the I-15/1-5 routes to San Fran were almost identical distance-wise), but by the winding hills and valleys after you get out of Yosemite's park limits, then having to deal with the RV's and caravans that are doing nil miles per hour in front of you when you get into the flats! Still, we manuevered all of them successfully, and navigated our way back onto the freeways surrounding San Francisco, then over the Bay Bridge and into the Hotel Pickwick, our home for tonight and tomorrow night!!

That pretty much sums up today - and this time I really have to duck off and get my beauty sleep, as it is a certain young lady's birthday tomorrow - she's claiming a 41-hour birthday, though, as at 7:00am here this morning, it ticked past 12:00am on Tuesday 23rd June in Australia, so it's multiple birthdays for Sarah this year. Being the dutiful boyfriend, I've allowed her control of the itinerary tomorrow (which she has been planning for a couple of weeks now) and have said I will do whatever she wants tomorrow as well. There's also the gifts, which, thanks to prudent bargain hunting, haven't left as big a hole in the pocket as they could have, but I'm hoping will still bring a smile to Sarah's face - I'll let you know tomorrow night!! Until then, though, I bid you adieu, as my five bucks has quickly turned into twelve, so I need to save some money for tomorrow night's blog. See you tomorrow night!!

Good evening folks, from a pay internet kiosk just outside the Grand Canal Shops here at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where we may have suffered a major blog malfunction.

Twenty minutes ago, everything was looking OK - we had just finalised our hotel bookings and driving directions for our trip to San Francisco starting tomorrow, and I was just about to start on today's blog entry, when the problem I've been having with the wi-fi connection here at the Venetian struck again, in that the computer shut itself down to safeguard against a system crash, however there was a difference this time - it hasn't fired back up since. Calls have been made to my IT support back in Australia - ie. my brother Daniel - but it looks like the computer can't be fixed without Dan looking at it, short of blowing away the hard drive and starting again, which would knock out all of our photos (which Sarah still has on her camera, thankfully) and all of her iPod songs, so I'm reticent to do that.

What that means, is that I may not have the facilities to continue writing the blog. Thankfully, after tonight we only have three more nights in America, so it's better to have happened now than at the start of the trip. Hopefully, our accommodation from here on in will have some sort of pay internet stations, so we can at least report in to say that all is well and check e-mails, comments etc (so keep commenting folks, we'll still get them)!! Luckily, not much happened today, as we basically had a "shopping" day at the Las Vegas Premium Outlet mall, but Sarah was going to make her blog debut tonight and outline the massage she had today at the Canyon Ranch Spa here at the Venetian (and Mum and Nan, we had the photo of Sarah in the top that you brought her to put up here too)!!

I'm just about out of time here, so I will have to bid you adieu for tonight, and hope that either a miracle happens and the computer regains life (it won't boot up the Windows start-up sequence), or that the Pickwick Hotel in San Francisco can look after us on the internet front. We'll try and get something up here tomorrow night, but I can't vouch for quality or quantity. Until then, folks, we are still both safe and well, so there's nothing to worry about!!

"Well, finally”, I can hear you saying. Allright, I may have been a little lax in the timing (not my fault entirely, but I’ll explain as the blog goes on), but you’re going to get an added bonus with this entry, as you will be getting TWO, count ‘em, two entries in one. In this blog entry, I’m going to cover Friday 19th June – our day at the Grand Canyon and subsequent drive to Las Vegas, as well as today, Saturday 20th June and the happenings of Las Vegas. I write this from the air-conditioned comfort of our suite at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, easily the fanciest digs we’ve stayed in so far – I’ve called it the Christine Suite, as it’s a suite that my Mum would feel right at home in.

But let’s rewind a touch, and talk about yesterday (Friday) morning, which started with the crow call – or the train horn, more appropriately – at 6:00am in Flagstaff, Arizona. Bit rude, I know, but the plan was to get up to the Grand Canyon early to try and beat some of the crowds. After getting ready and having breakfast at the Grand Railroad Café (a whopping great New York steak and eggs to fuel me for the day, whilst Sarah had an omelette that Steve Hooker would have a hard time pole vaulting over), we left for the Grand Canyon just after seven, expecting to be there not long after eight. It took a little longer than that though – it was about an eighty-mile trip, and there were some slow speed zones getting out of Flagstaff, so the trip took a little longer than I thought it would – although going past old mate Fred Flinstone at a little town called Valle on the way helped break up the drive!!

We didn’t actually get all the way to the Grand Canyon though, as we stopped at a little town called Tusayan first – about five miles from the Canyon itself, and home of an IMAX theatre playing a show called “Inner Secrets of the Grand Canyon”. We stopped and watched the movie – we had just missed the 8:30am screening, so we hung around for the 9:30am screening. The show was pretty good – as all things in IMAX seem to be – and told some of the history of the Grand Canyon, it’s former inhabitants and the men that first navigated the Colorado River through the Canyon. After the half-hour show though, our appetites for the real thing were sufficiently whetted – Sarah practically ran to the car once the movie had finished – and we set out for the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is in its own National Park, which is governed by a section of the US Government, so there’s an entry fee to get in, which was fully expected. $25 per vehicle was the charge, which is pretty good in my view. We were smart about parking too. We had already figured out that the second car park – Parking Lot A – was going to be the way to go, as we figured that the first parking lot we would come across, near a section of the Canyon called Mather Point, would be choc-a-block with people trying to park at the first lot they saw!! True to form, there was a bottleneck of twenty cars searching for one spot at the Mather Point car park, so we smiled and waved at them as we sailed past (using the term “waved” is borrowing some literary license – I was only waving with one finger!!!) and into the almost-empty Parking Lot A!!!

If you don’t like walking, then the Grand Canyon is not for you, as to get the best views, even from the rim of the Canyon, then a little bit of leg work is required. Ideally, you would spend a couple of days in the Canyon and hike down into it, but walking around the Rim was plenty for a couple of fit specimens like Sarah and I – I was fairly stuffed after a pretty steep ascent at one point!! The Grand Canyon do offer a series of shuttle buses to get you from point-to-point as well, which can be a big help (yesterday wasn’t a particularly hot day, but fatigue can set in pretty quickly regardless). A tip if you’re heading in the Grand Canyon direction – keep yourself hydrated by drinking plenty of water or sports drinks, as there’s not a lot of places to buy them once you’re up there on the Rim looking for the best shots!!!

We explored the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, easily the most popular for tourists, as it is open nearly all year round. The North Rim is only open from May through November, and can be a bit easier to get around, but whilst it is only eleven miles (seventeen kilometres) from the South Rim to the North Rim as the crow flies, the fact that the crow has to fly over a bloody big hole between the two rims means that should you want to drive from the South Rim to the North Rim, then it’s a five-hour, 215 mile drive!! The South Rim is just fine, don’t you worry about that, but I only recommend the North Rim for those travelling directly from states north of Arizona.

So, to the Grand Canyon itself. How do you describe the beauty of the Grand Canyon?? It’s hard to define it under a single term – you really have to see the scenery, and how the hues of the landscape change as shadow sets in and out – to be able to find the right words. I saw it, and even I struggle to define it. “Breath-taking” is a good start – some of the views are absolutely awesome, and we only scratched the surface of it, as we skirted only the rim of the canyon. Below are some of the photos we took – you’ll notice our mugs ruining the landscape in some of the shots, including our “random American” picture, which was actually taken this time by a family from Canberra also holidaying in the States – I nearly shed a tear when I heard the mother’s Ocker twang in her accent – so you can judge for yourself this beautiful part of the American landscape!!!

We spent a good portion of the day at the Grand Canyon (and we have heaps more photos which we will show you when we get back to Oz), with the trusty Altima pulling out of Parking Lot A just after 3:00pm, pointing in the direction of the town of Williams, Arizona, then back onto I-40 and headed for Vegas. The trip, according to our GPS, would take the best part of about four-and-a-half hours, meaning we would be in Vegas by about 7:30pm. Given that we hadn’t stopped for petrol since lunch on Thursday at Grants, New Mexico (which I mentioned in Thursday’s blog, if you haven’t read that yet), I thought I’d pull into Williams and fill up. Wrong move. Advice for young players – make sure you fill up in Flagstaff, or have enough petrol to get you about 20 miles past Williams to some of the smaller towns just off I-40. I think the people of Williams must be reading the blog, and said to themselves “hey, that Aussie fella is passing through here and will probably need petrol, so let’s take him for a ride”. And taken I was – petrol was $3.17 per gallon, easily the most expensive I have purchased in America. As such, I only put twenty bucks worth in, figuring that it would make sure I got to Vegas with no worries. I cursed a fair lick when we got twenty miles down the road and petrol was running at $2.67 per gallon – I thought such words would never spew from the mouth of a naïve, country Victorian, Christian-raised lad!!!! We pulled off Interstate 40 at a little Arizona town called Kingman – again, a place probably no bigger population-wise than Sarah’s home town of Orbost, but with every chain motel, petrol station and fast-food restaurant you could think of – and headed down Highway 93, which takes you 100 miles into Las Vegas, and also over the Hoover Dam. I’m going to quote directly from Wikipedia about the Hoover Dam, as I didn’t know much about its origins until I just looked them up – Wikipedia is a bloody handy resource, an internet encyclopedia for those unaware, located on the internet at http://en.wikipedia.org

“Hoover Dam, originally known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1936, it was both the world's largest electric-power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station. This dam, located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as the Secretary of Commerce and then later as the President of the United States. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. The dam and the power plant are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. Lake Mead is the reservoir created behind the dam, named after Elwood Mead, who oversaw the construction of the dam.”

So there’s the information about the Hoover Dam – another pretty impressive place to view, and we had plenty of time to view it, as well, as traffic is a pain in the proverbial from about twenty miles before the Dam, and then as you cross over it v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in a single lane of traffic at about zero miles per hour!! The Arizona Department of Transport have decided in their wisdom to build a four-lane both ways bridge over the Hoover Dam to ease the traffic congestion for people driving to Las Vegas, and whilst this is going to be a fantastic idea once it is up and running, it wasn’t much help for us driving through their last night, and it took us about forty minutes to drive a couple of miles over the Hoover Dam – having a security checkpoint a couple of miles away doesn’t help, where the pick-up trucks that SO MANY AMERICANS HAVE (Aussies – think utes on steroids) that look the slightest bit suspicious. Knowing what was going on, but not sure if I had to hand over license and registration etc, I wound down the window and gave the young constable organising the show the biggest dose of Ocker I’ve unleashed this trip – a “G’day”, a bit of “what’s goin’ on, mate” and the like, enough to make him smile, explain that it’s a “security checkpoint, sir” and wave me on through!!! The slow drive over the Hoover Dam gave Sarah plenty of time to take photos though, and here’s a couple of them, including the bridge that is being built.

After crossing the Hoover Dam, we travelled the thirty miles into Las Vegas (with the sun in that annoying position that when you flip down the sun-visor on the car, it still gets underneath it), and thanks to the GPS doing a sterling service, drove straight into the Venetian Hotel and Casino and into the self-parking area. After driving around there for about ten minutes and not finding a park, or a way to go to find the upper parking level, I got fed up and drove to the valet level, where the valets parked my car with no problems (and no dollars changed hands, an added benefit). We grabbed our luggage and worked our way through the maze that is the Venetian – past shops, restaurant and the casino floor to the main entrance and the check-in counter. It took us a good twenty minutes waiting in line to get to the check-in counter, so thankfully things were efficient when we got there. We then headed up to the sixth floor of the Venezia tower to our room – a Deluxe King Suite, with a king-sized bed with it’s own flat-screen TV, a sunken lounge room with another flat-screen TV, an L-shaped five-seater couch, a desk with phone, copier and printer (and somewhat dodgy wi-fi – more on that later), and a small table and chairs. Then there’s the bathroom with two sinks, a separate bath and shower and ANOTHER (albeit small) flat-screen TV. Like I said earlier, a Christine suite!! After getting settled, we went downstairs to find something to eat, and got no further than a gelato stand that has twenty-four different flavours of lactose-free sorbet, which saw Sarah go weak at the knees and say “this is my dream shop”!! We had a sorbet, took a walk down the Strip to have a look around, checking out Treasure Island casino and the surrounds for a bit, then came back up to the suite, nice and stuffed after realising exactly how long the day was!!! I put the small apology post on the blog site that you saw below, not having the energy to sit up and pen the above last night, and retired for the night, knowing that the alarm wasn’t going off this morning!!

Now for Saturday, and waking up unassisted at about 9:30am after a fantastic sleep in our king-sized bed!! I got up and started writing this blog entry, but experienced a few problems with the computer, being that one of the drivers (or something like that) that is needed to power the wi-fi connection playing havoc with my laptop and frustratingly causing it to turn the computer off of it’s own accord, which got old very quickly – especially after I thought I had the problem covered and was writing away happily, only for the laptop to just turn itself off again. I’ve isolated the problem – if I turn the wi-fi connection off, there’s no problem, so this blog has been written on Microsoft Word then transferred over to Travellers Point, with the photos transferred the same way!!
At about 11:30am I gave up with the blog, vowing to write it later (reasoning that Australia wasn’t out of bed on Sunday morning yet, so it was OK), and we headed out to see what Las Vegas had to offer. First stop was again the sorbet shop, where the Eating Machine was de-railed after ordering a double scoop, but not being able to finish it off!! After that, first port of call was the Venetian’s replica of Venice’s Grand Canal, to head for a gondola ride. First, here’s some photos of the Venetian, and their re-creation of the streets of Venice. Note that most photos look like we are outside – where you see blue skies and clouds, we are actually inside!!!

The Venetian have two different gondola rides – one inside, under the painted ceiling, and one outside under the real skies of Vegas. Given that the weather was sunny without being too hot (and because we were sensible and had applied sunscreen before we went out), we chose the outside gondola ride. It’s a four person ride, at $16 a head, or you can hire a private two-person gondola for $64. That is, if you are anyone else apart from us!!! We had two groups of three in front of us in line, then only a group of four behind us (it’s usually four people per gondola), so we were bundled into to the gondola on our own!!! The ride was nice and calm, taking about twenty minutes around an artifically-made course, with the gondolier singing in Italian for some of the way around – including an early “Happy Birthday” to Sarah (it’s on Tuesday 23rd, for those of you wanting to send comments, e-mails and gifts of cash and jewellery to save my pocket-book!!) in Italian, which was really nice. Here’s a couple of photos – us on the gondola, and the view from the ride!!

After the gondola ride, we went for a walk down the Strip again, checking out a few of the casinos and just enjoying the vibe of Las Vegas. It’s interesting to see people walking the streets with beers and assorted alcoholic drinks at 12:30pm!! We headed for the Bellagio, which many of you may remember as the casino that George Clooney, Brad Pitt and mates knocked off on the movie Ocean’s Eleven, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Bellagio dancing fountains. We caught them briefly as we crossed over the bridge from Bally’s to the Bellagio, and here’s a few photos from that!!

Knowing that the fountains do their thing every half-an-hour, it gave us a chance to check out the shops at the Bellagio, which are a veritable “who’s who” of shopping. I was led into Tiffany and Co, Chanel, Gucci and a lot of similarly expensive stores, with items that were well outside our price range (Sarah picked up a small Gucci handbag that she had taken a fancy to, only to put it back very quickly when she saw the price tag of $3150!!!). Sarah also snapped a couple of shots of the interior roof of the Bellagio’s shopping strip, which are pictured below.

We were then lucky enough to secure a spot in the shade to watch the Bellagio dancing fountains, a nice routine set against the song “All That Jazz” from the musical Chicago. Here are some photos from the routine, which was pretty cool!!

With the Bellagio in the bag, we walked back to the Venetian, via an outside shopping strip near the Flamingo where Sarah picked up a couple of dresses that can be worn in heaps of different ways, and took five before heading to the Food Court for a quick lunch, then to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum here at the Venetian!!

We picked up our tickets at a place called HalfTix, or something similar, where they sell half-price tickets to shows, restaurants, tours and the like. Instead of paying $25 a head plus tax, we coughed up $38 in total, which included HalfTix’s commission – a pretty good deal!! I really like Madame Tussauds, and their representation of celebrities, sports stars, Vegas personalities and American personalities. Here’s some of the celebrities we encountered in the museum – and yes, I’ll put beneath each of them who we are with to help you out!!

Here’s me with Julia Roberts…

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Shaun and the “Governator”, Arnold Schwarzenger

Sarah with actor Matthew McConaughey

Sarah with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Doing my best “People’s Eyebrow” with The Rock

Throwing out gang signs with rapper Snoop Dogg

Sarah having a casual chat with Cameron Diaz

Sarah with George Clooney

Putting with Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer watching on

An old mate, Michael Jordan

Shooting a two-pointer over Shaquille O’Neal – and scoring!!!

Sarah shaking her rump with Beyonce

Getting an autograph from a young bloke that you may know named Elvis!!

Both of us, one after the other, with Marilyn Monroe

Waiting for a deal at the poker table with actor Ben Affleck

Us with a much older Elvis!

Sarah with Vegas legends Siegfried and Roy, and their famous tiger!!

Shaping up to Muhammed Ali

Sarah with JFK and Jackie O

Sarah with Princess Di

Me walking on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

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The both of us with President Obama

Shooting the breeze with Honest Abe.

And folks, that basically brings you up-to-the-minute with what we are doing – we’ve spent the last couple of hours relaxing – whilst I’ve written this blog entry with ESPN on in the background (watching the score ticker for the Red Sox playing the Atlanta Braves, with the Red Sox winning 3-0 on the back of ace pitcher Josh Beckett pitching all nine innings whilst keeping the Braves scoreless), Sarah has been playing with her new dresses, trying the different styles of dress she can make with them!! We’re going out for dinner shortly (and might take in a quick swim at the Venetian’s awesome pool complex) and will likely have another look around Vegas under lights, but will update you on that tomorrow night!! Wow, that one took a while, but you got two days’ worth in one hit, with some pretty good scenery on the way through, so hope you enjoyed it!!! See you tomorrow night, again from Vegas