Summary of USA

SUMMARY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 

Distance travelled: 6,232 km  (4,021 km overland, 2,211 km by air)

Snakes encountered: 0

Racoons encountered: 1

Chipmunks encountered: lots

Bears encountered: 0

Elvis’ encountered: 8

Money lost playing Craps: best not to mention it

Hottest air temperature: 118°F or  48°C.

Opening title sequences of 80s lifesaving TV shows re-enacted: 1

Modes of transport: ‘compact’ car, plane.

Favourite Places: Death Valley, Yosemite Valley, Valley of Fire, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon, and some amazing roads in between.

The 3 Most Stupid Things Americans asked us:

-         Have you heard of Clint Eastwood?

-         You’re from France.  That’s near Barbados, right?

-         300 years ago, did humans look like us, or like monkeys?

Our Route:

LA - Los Angeles

24/08/13 to 26/08/13. The last stop for us was Los Angeles, where we had a couple of days to kill before our flight back to London (eeeek!).  We spent the first day by visiting Venice Beach.  We waked around the Venice Canals, with boats lining the banks and some interesting houses around.  Then we walked the prom and hit the beach.  We walked north along the beach where we eventually reached Santa Monica.  We ate a bucket of shrimp and watched the famous Muscle Beach, where there were some good gymnasts swinging on the rings and some interesting displays on the parallel bars.  Then we had a look on the pier which was, well, a pier (fast food and giftshops).

The next day we went to Hollywood and Beverly Hills.  After the ‘Walk of Fame’. We had a drive around Mulholland Drive, Bel Air and Rodeo Road, but there wasn’t really much to see, as all the celebrities' house are hidden behind big bushes (to avoid paparazzi and tourist taken pictures). But we saw (from far) the Hollywood sign high on the hill and a good view of downtown LA.

“It’s the Ballgame!” and the final night of our trip.  We went to see the LA Dodgers versus the Boston Redsox to try and understand a baseball game.  Unfortunately we picked the lowest scoring game of the last 10 years.  It was a really great atmosphere, with everyone getting involved.  The crowd were probably more entertaining than the game though (especially RoboCam and KissCam), as there were only 2 runs all night, which both came from the same hit.  Afterwards there was a fireworks display, which meant we had some good value in the end, but we’ll definitely stick to watching cricket.

The next morningt, we just  had time to go to Japantown and had a wander in downtown before going to the airport and catch our fligh to London.

Route 66 to Lake Havasu City

18/08/13 to 24/08/13 - Once leaving Flagstaff our first stop along the old Route 66 was Williams.  This was probably the biggest town we would come across, and we had lunch in Cruiser’s Diner, attached to which were a couple of gift shops selling the kind of biker/Elvis/Monroe memorabilia we would be seeing a lot of over the next day or two.

After Williams the next interesting stop was Seligman.  With much more scrap value than most places, Seligman was full of cleaned up old motors, petrol stations and other kitsch statues and objects.  It had a kind of nostalgic but melancholic charm.  There was an old western jail where cowboys and indians used to be kept, and more gift shops than you could imagine necessary even in the 50s.  We decided to stop the night here at a motel, which was owned by a friendly Indian chap, who lovingly referred to the Americans as “these idiots”.

Perhaps the most interesting places on Route 66 were the small, less frequented places, which had some real characters.  We stopped at a small saloon for a quick hotdog and a drink near Valentine, and the bar was full of old guys in cowboy hats chatting away, probably just to escape the heat of the desert.  One of the last stops on the Route was Oatman, an old Wild West town that had been kept that way, and set in between the boulder topped mountains that looked like the sort of place Coyote would hang out.  This theory was given more weight when we saw a couple of Roadrunners from time to time on the roads around.  Unfortunately we arrived too late to catch the daily gunfight.

At this point we diverted from the Route 66 to detour south to London Bridge… no, that wasn’t a typo, we actually went south to London Bridge, the old one.  The second London Bridge was built in 1831 and served as the major crossing between the City of London and Southwark until 1967, when it was sold to an American called Robert P McCulloch.  He shipped it brick by brick to the middle of the Arizona desert near Lake Havasu and rebuilt it in 1971.  Once it was finished, a canal was dug beneath it, which linked it to the lake.  Tourists came to visit the bridge and eventually a new city has sprung up around the bridge, called Lake Havasu City.  Living so close to the new (or 3rd) London Bridge back home, we couldn’t miss having a peak at this one and get a piece of it for $1.

It was surreal looking at this old stone bridge, with English, American and Arizona flags all around it, a small Disney-esque English village and clear blue skies, all in air temperatures of 45C.  It was the traditionally English surrounded by the typically American as the super-tanned emerged skimming through the arches on their Jet-skis and monster trucks and gigantic campervans crossed over the top of the bridge.

Page to Flagstaff (via Grand Canyon)

11/08/13 to 18/08/13 - We left Zion and took off on a fairly long road trip passing the ‘Grand Staircase’ until we reached Lake Powell.  We crossed the Glen Canyon Dam and into Page, where we found a luxury campsite with pool, jacuzzi and WiFi.  We pitched next to a friendly biker dude, Who gave us some of his leftover ice.

The Colorado River was dammed in the 50s to create the massive Lake Powell, a boaters paradise in the middle of the desert.  We chilled on one of the many beaches for an afternoon, our jaws dropped at the size of some of the americans’ houseboats and we enjoyed a T-bone for dinner.

The following day we took a tour of Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon on Navajo Indian land.  Our tour guide couldn't have been less interested in showing us around, but the canyon was really nice, and most photogenic.

Later in the afternoon we rented a kayak out in the lake, and paddled around for a few hours beaching the boat every now and then for a swim.  It felt pretty unique with all the sandstone shores, some of which had layers that looked like chocolate cheesecake (maybe all the food has gone to our heads).

From Page it was a couple of hours drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  We passed through miles of pine forest and passed bison which were grazing in the green meadows (its not all orange like you see on the photos).  We took a short walk to a viewpoint over the canyon, before having to go back through the forest to find a place to camp.  We found a space in the national forest, which was packed with squirrels and chipmunks.  To our surprise it was cold at night, as the elevation near the rim of the canyon is around 2500m, higher than most ski resorts in the Alps.

The following day was spent walking through the forest and stopping at more viewpoints over the canyon, which is an unimaginable site.  Its 10 miles across and over a mile deep.  You can rarely see the Colorado River raging through the bottom of it, but now and again you can get a glimpse if you really squint.

After another cold night we did another short trail and then made our way down to Flagstaff, a student town with a busy railroad running through it, and a major stopping point on the historic Route 66.  This was our gateway to the ‘Mother Road’.

Flagstaff was still pretty high up, and we were warned to drink plenty of water (although for us now 2000m is nothing compared to what we’ve experienced in the Andes).  The town was pretty small and had a few nice places to wander (a lot of soap shops for some reason).  We had breakfast at a traditional Diner, with biscuits and gravy accompanying our over-easy eggs.   Perhaps most interesting was the excellent Museum of Northern Arizona, which included a geologic and biologic history of the Colorado Plateau, including a lot of exhibits explaining Hopi, Navajo and Zuni native-american cultures, many of whom live around this part of Arizona.  Perhaps most insightful was the way the museum guide continually stressed that “the scientific explanation is only one of the theories, there are other theories for how this stuff all got here”.

Valley of Fire to Zion National Park

08/08/13 to 11/08/13 - After leaving Las Vegas we drove north-east to the Valley of Fire.  This was a small area of incredible orange rock formations out in the desert.  We arrived in time for sunset where they were just beautiful glowing red and looking like flames licking at the sky (which is presumably why they are named so).  We camped just between some of the rocks in what was another contender for coolest campsite.

The next morning we got back on the freeway heading north and we stopped at Peggy Sue's, a proper old-school diner with a hefty, permed blonde waitress.  "Would you like some kworfie?" she said and we proceeded to expand our waistlines further still with a stack of pancakes...

Then it was back to the road...

...and on to Zion National Park.  It was the weekend and all the campsites within the 'perk' were full, so we found a nice one just outside the park.

Zion was organised in a similar way to Yosemite, with a shuttle system dropping people at the 'trailheads' (paths).  The shuttle had played a tape, narrating us through the park.  It was informative the first time but a bit tedious after hearing it two or three times.  This being Utah, most of the peaks and rocks are named after biblical figures.  We took a short walk by the river along the bottom of Zion Canyon, and then waded a bit through the river upstream towards the Narrows, which was pretty fun and refreshing.

Each day we had to drive through the Mt Carmel tunnel, which was a feat of engineering when it was built in 1930  and is about the same width as the Rotherhithe tunnel (there's even less room with a big american car).  The rocks either side of it are amazing and look like something out of a cartoon.  One was named after a chess board (Checkerboard Mesa) due to the pattern on the side of it.  There were frequently deer or desert mountain sheep in the road, which we had to stop for.

The next day we took on the legendary Angel's Landing trail, the final section of which was along the top of a ridge on smooth rocks, with 1000m drop-offs on each side.  Several people had died attempting this, but it was still busy, despite the heat.  There is a chain which you hang on to in case you lose your footing.  The view from up there at 2400m was incredible, looking down into the canyon below...

Las Vegas

05/08/13 to 08/08/13 - We arrived in Las Vegas in the mid-afternoon, to the heart of ‘The Strip’ where our hotel was booked.  The Strip is where most of the action of modern Las Vegas happens, with mainly big casino hotels taking up each block. Most of them were built before the roads, so all the streets running perpendicular to The Strip are named after the hotels. This made it easy to find our hotel, one of the oldest on the strip, the Flamingo. The Flamingo has 26 floors, many restaurants, a big shopping centre, 2 casinos, 2 outdoor pools, and a large garden with parrots, pelicans, flamingos and other exotics kind of birds. After more than 10 months traveling, this was by far the best hotel we had stayed in and for 30 dollars the night… a bargain!

After checking in we took a walk down The Strip (no air con there) and even when the sun went down, it was still really warm. We got to see Vegas by night, which is probably the best time to see it with thousands of lights in every direction and replicas of the most famous buildings in Europe (and The World).

Our hotel was very close to Paris with the Eiffel Tower (Flora admitted that it was the first time she had slept so close to the Eiffel Tower and had never noticed the US flag on it before). Also there was the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe with a huge poster of Gordon Ramsey hanging from it (Here too, Flora was pretty sure that he wasn’t French, even if he does swear a lot!).

We also had a wonder in Venice, New York, Monte Carlo, Rome (Caesars' Palace), and Luxor. It was funny for a day, but it soon gets boring, mainly when you want to get somewhere quickly. Due to the traffic, you spend your time on an impressive network of lifts, walkways and escalators.  

Somehow we made it to Excalibur (a medieval English themed casino hotel) for our free Craps lesson. The whole lesson took an hour and was excellent. Croupier George took us through the rules, as well as the good and bad bets to make. It was good to learn a new game as we were a bit bored of Blackjack and Roulette (especially in Vegas where the odds are more in favour of the house than anywhere else in world). Craps is played on a long table with dice and is actually pretty easy despite looking complicated… we went away feeling like pros (or like Sharon Stone in the movie “Casino”.)

We couldn't be bothered with another night on the busy strip, so we went to Downtown, about 3 miles north of The Strip. Downtown was different. This was the Old Vegas and we liked it. It had a more nostalgic, American feel, and old fashioned light bulbs instead of plasma screens. This was certainly the Vegas that Elvis was singing about… and by the way, Elvis is not dead, he has actually multiplied.

We found more characters in Downtown. Croupiers laugh and joke with you and punters are much more social. Most importantly, minimum bets are cheaper too, so you don't lose your money so quickly.

The food was cheaper and better, although we were not tempted by the ‘Heart Attack’ burger, boasting to be the most calorific burger in the world. Instead we shared a ‘lighter option’, the chicken waffle burger with maple syrup. There was also a free rock band in the main square, belting out the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which got everyone in a good mood. It was good fun. Then we put our Craps lessons to work, and we were lucky. By lucky, we mean we managed to play for quite a long time with not too much money.

We left Vegas the next morning for the Hoover Dam to have a look around. We enquired about camping in the area. None of the options inspired us, and we were toying with heading back west to Red Rock Canyon. Eventually we bit the bullet and drove there in time to catch the sunset and have a fried egg sandwich for dinner. 

The campsites at Red Rock were closed due to the heat, so we drove to a McDonalds to use Wi-Fi to find a motel nearby. As luck would have it, we got a great last minute deal for the Golden Nugget in good old Downtown Las Vegas. The Nugget is known to have the biggest golden nugget ever found and of course came complete with swimming pool, which had a shark tank in the middle of it, and with a water slide running through middle of the tank… after a day or two in Vegas nothing surprises you!

So one last bonus night in Vegas on Dave's birthday. We went to the Bellagio to see the famous water fountain show, which was cheesy but really well done. Then we went back to downtown and were feeling some birthday luck. Flora started well on the Roulette table, almost clawing back what Dave had squandered on Craps. As expected, her luck turned. Nevermind, it was still a fun evening. We went to bed happy and a little bit merry due to the free cocktails we had whilst we were playing.

The next day we relaxed in the pool and jacuzzi, (making the most of our swanky hotel, before going for the 10 dollar all-you-can-eat buffet, a classic in Vegas. We had crab, shrimp, ceviche, roast beef, roast pork, ham, risotto, salad, spring rolls, smoked salmon as well as loads more. We even shoved in some deserts too. There goes any hope of coming home thinner!

Death Valley and Lone Pine

04/08/14 to 05/08/13

We drove for two hours or so through the Sierra Nevada in the direction of the Death Valley.  We could see the landscape changing dramatically. Little by little, lakes dried up, huge grey stones disappeared and green trees vanished to make way to a dry, dusty, orange desert.

We found a free campsite (with nobody else apart from one weird man staying there) and as it was around 5pm and still very warm, we decided to stay there for the night (rather than go deeper into the valley).  Usually at this time of year campsites in this area are closed as it is too warm, there is no shade and therefore dangerous.  The thermometer of our car indicated 110 degrees Fahrenheit almost all the time in the Death Valley (44° Celsius).  Luckily there was a tap and we wetted our T-shirts to cool down.  It actually worked for a couple of minutes and then by the third minute our T-shirts were dry again.  Some small birds flew around us, desperate for food and water.  Even if we tried to scare them, they came very close and one even landed on Flora’s finger (the other one just kept trying to attack Dave). We saw the sunset and the sand dunes, rocks and skies changing colour.  The warm wind started to blow stronger and stronger as the sun dropped.  Our tent (the cheapest one we could find) was too weak for this type of weather, so we decided to pack it up and to sleep in the car.  We made sure that all the doors of our car were locked because being in the Death Valley under a hammering heat with a potential serial killer next door felt like a credible and perfect scenario for a horror film.

During the night the temperature dropped a little bit but 100°F (38°C) was still uncomfortable for us especially in a car.

As you can imagine, we woke up at the crack of the dawn (before it got too hot again) and explored this amazing and vast landscape.  We started by seeing the Mesquite sand dunes, an old borax mining village (yes, Chinese workers used to live out here before the days of air-con) and Badwater Basin (the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 86 metres below sea level).  Then we turned around and drove through the one-way Artist’s Palette and made a quick stop at the Golden Canyon. 

This was a very outstanding drive but as soon as we walked out from the air-conditioned car, we felt the real conditions of being in a desert and the hottest place on earth (135°F or 57°C is the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on earth and it was here at Furnace Creek in the Death Valley).   Even if we stopped for a short walk of just a few metres from the car, we made sure that we had a bottle of water with us.  You might think it impossible for the Death Valley to sustain life, but in the sand we saw some tracks of birds, lizards and snakes.  They usually come out at night when it’s cooler and there are other animals to hunt.

After exiting the Death Valley we entered Nevada and stopped for some gasoline and supplies (mainly water) at a small town called Lone Pine.  This had some old ‘wild west’ character and some fun buildings so we took a pit stop here before heading further east towards Las Vegas.