The Strip

Woke early and left the kids sleeping to drive to Las Vegas. Very easy and soon we were there. Leaving Utah to go into Nevada saw an instant change. We were no longer in the state where to buy beer you had to order food. No, across the state line we were greeted with the first exit off the highway for a casino, adverts for adult shops and liquor stores every where, I quite like Nevada.

Any how we thought that as this was our first experience of civilised America, sorry Phoenix, we decided to do a bit of shopping. First destination a bill outlet mall. Have you ever tried parking a 30 foot bus in a shopping centre? well after driving around for all of 10 minutes we were stopped by a mall cop on a segway. Needless to say the Englishman in me said “oh no we are in trouble, he is going to kick us out”. No he simply said “you looking for parking? Park there, there, THERE!” whereby he was pointing to the valet parking. To park there I had to do a nasty little reverse around the corner and negotiate reasonable traffic at the same time. The Mall cop stopped the traffic, guided me in my manouver then escorted us to a 6 car bay parking space letting me take up the whole lot. He left saying “this is my valet parking, you can’t park but take you time and have a nice day!” so it was back to the sickeningly good and considerate service we have got used to while staying here, all very depressing.

a bit of shopping then a drive down the strip to take it all in. a bit of Blackpool on serious steroids. I love Blackpool but I have to confess the Vegas has never been a dream destination for me. I was not disappointed, it still would not be, not really my bag but interesting to see none the less.

The Good Luck

After a brief viewing of eiffel towers, sphinxes, coliseums an new york land marks it was off to see just how close to yosemite we could get. we knew we could not stay in the park as we did not have a place to stay but we were going to try to get as close as possible. with no booking but an RV we were confident we could stop in good time at a comfortable place 200 miles later and getting dusky we have not seen an RV park for the whole journey, in fact we had seen nothing really other than driving past area 51 where surprisingly there was nothing to see.

by 7.45 we were starting to get a little concerned and headed for an RV park that we had thought we could get to but discounted before we came out to the US. We got there 10 minutes before they closed the office and got the second to last space. Good luck, we slept well that night.

Oh yes we did have a fantastic 5 mile section of bumps on highway 120 that really did feel like a rollercoaster at times, Joe was laughing his head off with his hands in the air for quite a bit of it.

The Bad Luck

The next day, after a pretty robust pancake breakfast, we drove out to see a cowboy ghost village. drove down a dirt track, tried to turn around, got stuck, had to be towed out. bad luck, thats just about all i have to say about that.

A Tale of Two Parks

Yosemite, our fourth national park in the space of 10 days and great expectations. we approached the park from the north driving the toiga pass to out campsite. Really really big and quite inspiring but evidence that it is a busy park came early with every lay by parked up and every car park full. the campsite was enormous and dusty but quite breathtaking. in our camping space we had 3 or 4 pine trees that must have been at least 100 feet tall each. the whole campsite was like this.

we set camp and the next day set off to explore the north of the park. a nice hike up a hill called lemerts dome and then a rewarding swim in the clearest lake i have been in for years, a lovely day and a beautiful park to explore I could have spent a few days there.

Day two we went the south of the park to see the landmark spots of the Half Dome and El Capitan. While impressive they seemed a little dull after the splendour of the previous parks we had been to, also it was really busy with, it seemed, people who were there because it was something to do rather than because they were interested in the place. Its difficult to explain but it had a different feel from the other parks. The day was saved by a drive back to the north of the park and a walk around a grove of simply massive sequoia trees, a magical place.

anyone planning to go to yosemite, I would say stay to the north, its different from the south.

Next up San Francisco, great expectations. Its our first proper city stop, I need buildings, cars, people, shops. I NEED A SHOWER!!!