Monday, May 30, 2005
Hell's Canyon
Phill: 30/5, Hell’s Canyon - The van, despite only being 6 years old has been a source of worry for us. It’s at that stage where lots of very minor things seem to go wrong. Today it was the turn of the “Service Engine Soon” light to come on for no reason, insofar as we could tell. We stopped at a random rest stop that had a sign for “Free Coffee”, and sure enough there was a fairly old couple there, with pots of coffee on the go, and a whole load of home-baked cookies on offer for a small donation. You have to get so far out into the countryside to get this sort of behaviour in the UK. From the way that people were stopping and chatting to them, it seems to be something they do regularly - which is really sweet. Many of us think that we know what to expect of the USA - and sadly that’s just all the bad stuff - we never realise how much there is over here in the way of friendly people and incredible scenery. Also, when you’re in a country for longer, you have more opportunity to notice little differences in customs, such as the High School Graduate’s car that we saw when we stopped for fuel - over here, it’s the done-thing to decorate your car in much the same way as people do for “Just Marrieds”.Anyway, today we were heading for Hell’s Canyon - a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon, that sits on the border between Idaho and Oregon. I was expecting a canyon in the sense of a rocky, desert setting, which of course makes no sense in such a verdant state. The canyon was very much green and alive with both flora and people out on the river-reservoir created by the dam. The drive along the canyon-edge to the dam was long and curvy, but it was fun and well worth it for the views.
We crossed the river to the Oregon side, and took a nearby scenic drive towards Joseph which was a pretty route following a river up into the mountains overlooking the canyon. What a view! The hills provided narrow winding roads, surrounded by trees and gorgeous wildflowers. It didn’t end there as the drive went on through the Wallowa mountain ranges.
We finished up at a place called La Grande - which wasn’t - and had an impossible to find campsite. We stopped and asked for directions, which worked out well, as we ended up at a different campsite out of town (Eagles Hot Lake) that was really nice and spacious and had great staff. The owner gave us some food recommendations in a nearby tiny town called Union, which turned out to be closed so we grabbed pizza and buffalo-wings instead. Now, just to clear this up for the Brits and the confused - Buffalo don’t have wings, but it is a place in New York state where a delicious spicy-sauce was invented that you put on deep-fried chicken-wings. What we didn’t know though, was that the chef would accidentally cook us 12 wings instead of 6 and just give them to us anyway, and that the large pizza was colossally bigger than we realised, which we stood no chance of finishing. We returned to the campsite for some gaming and blogging, very full, but happy.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Photos for Fiji
For those of you looking at pics, here's the lot from Fiji. There's quite a few of them, but I figure that you'll just look at the ones that you fancy anyway. We're both wondering right now whether we'll get the USA pictures up before we get back to the UK... time will tell. (Click Fiji for pics).
Friday, May 27, 2005
Yellowstone, Where the Buffalo Roam
Phill: 27/5 to 28/5, Yellowstone, Wyoming - Our original plan was to head up to Glacier National Park on the Canadian border, but it was fairly remote and we were getting worried that we weren’t going to make it all the way back up to Yellowstone when my parents arrive later in June. So after driving some of the way through Montana, we turned south and then back on ourselves and in through Yellowstone’s West entrance. This turned out to be one of those amazing happy-accidents, as the drive took us through some fantastic scenery as we followed rivers through forests and mountains under a glorious blue sky. We arrived with a lot of the afternoon leftover to see the park, and managed to see loads of Bison and Elk, and take in some lookout points over wonderful countryside. We miss the geyser Old Faithful by a few minutes, so we took some of the walks there while we waited. The walks are a bit of an obvious time-killer for the main event, but they weren’t too bad and with Faithful erupting every 90 minutes or so, it’s nice that there’s at least something to do. We were prepared to be disappointed, but Old Faithful is an impressive sight, and well worth the wait. It also made a fitting finish to our time there, as we headed out of the South exit in search of accommodation.That wasn’t so easy to find. Yellowstone is right above Grand Tetons Park, which only has National Park style camping with no power and fairly basic facilities. The only other place we could find though wanted to charge us $45 for one night, so we opted for no power and to throw out any food in the morning that needed constant refrigeration, as it worked out cheaper besides anything. There were no shops or restaurants either, so we resorted to our gas stove (thanks to Bobby Soul) and emergency Mac ‘n’ Cheese. It was the first time we’d cooked using the burner, and of course, it was always going to be when it was late, dark and we were hungry. Everything went fine though, although the heavily processed cheese sauce wasn’t my favourite, at least we had no tent to setup. It was pretty painful watching a group arrive and try to pitch theirs by the light of their car headlights. We carefully wrapped any leftover food scraps as we were now in “Bear-Country”, and settled in for a cold night in the van.
Morning brought another picture-perfect sky, and we decided to do another half-day in the park before leaving. There were some beautiful lakes and mountains at Grand Tetons to photograph first, and then we amazed to find snow still on the ground in a lot of Yellowstone. We took a really good walk by one of the lakes that is surrounded by geothermal activity, saw some waterfalls and more geothermal springs including some amazingly colourful mud-holes at “Artist’s Paint-pots”. Yellowstone has a slight “theme-park” feel to it, in the way that there are specific stops and sights as you pass through, but it is stunningly beautiful and we were glad that we made sure we didn’t miss it.
We left via the West exit where we’d originally arrived, and despite two laps of the block, I couldn’t get a photo of the “Welcome to Montana’ sign that we’d missed when we first arrived there. So we gave up, did some online chores, and then headed into Idaho.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Oh yah, we had a sooper time in Minnesota, eh?
Phill: 18/5 to 22/5, Minneapolis - Despite having been to the States a lot during the last few years, we’d never before made it to Paul’s place. In another one of the jokes that the twins don’t find funny, he lives in the twin cities of Minneapolis-St Paul, up in the freezing cold of Minnesota. What I think would top this off, is that Steve lives in Bristol, so he should move to the area there called “St Paul’s”, just to complete the circle - although I’ve heard it’s a bit of a dive! Anyway, we arrived on a rainy dark evening which Paul soon helped us banish with some beers and an appetizer platter at his local.Our time at Paul’s was nice and relaxing. He has a great bachelor pad - forget large TV’s, Paul’s got a projector, which we put to good use watching movies and playing God Of War on the PS2. So cool - just need to get an apartment big enough in the UK now, because TV will never be the same. We went to the Mall Of America - a place so big that it has an indoor roller-coaster park - but were a little disappointed with the shopping there (it’s a place to go and get general things, rather than to look for specific things, if you know what I mean?).
We had lunch with some of his colleague-friends, and went to see Star Wars III with some others. Paul had graciously booked us tickets to see it at a DLP cinema (Digital Laser Projector) - another amazing audio-visual experience. We ate far too much including some good sushi, and some awesome ice-cream, but combated that by going for runs/walks around the lakes while Paul rollerbladed or cycled. Paul was an excellent tour-guide, taking us around the downtown and Uptown areas of Minneapolis - ensuring that we got to see the interesting bits of architecture and history, and managed to fit a beer or two in as well.
Even though it’s Western food, America managed to keep my perfect record of getting a bad stomach in every country we’ve been too - so we weren’t as sociable as we’d have liked - but relaxation time is surprisingly rare on a round-the-world trip so we weren’t too bothered. Before we knew it, our time was up (thanks again, Paul) and it was time to get on and start our longest-distance road-trip yet.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Tourists in Wisconsin
Phill: 13/5 to 18/5, Wisconsin - It was time to begin the road trip to end all road trips - well, for us anyway. We set off early for Wisconsin, and had a good trip up there, despite attempts to thwart us being made by faulty automatic-road-toll coin-counters and having to pick up a more sensibly sized cool-box than we'd gotten from Sam's Club (a place that only sells huge things). We forgot a time-zone in our calculations, and ended up at our friend Larisa's (Reese) place over an hour too early. No problem - we knew where the local Best Buy was, and went off to stock up on cheap DVDs. Soon enough, Reese bailed from work and we got stuck into a bottle of wine and met her friend Lisa. After eating at Casa Bianca (where I was amazed by the Anti-Atkins-Pizza - pizza with a pasta topping!) Paul (Hill) turned up from Minnesota for the weekend, and we met Reese's new beau. We kind of watched this strangely funny movie called Napoleon Dynamite in bits and pieces throughout the evening, which is something of a cult in the US right now. Madison, WI is a real college town and they were graduating that weekend, which meant the city had a funny feel to it. Good, but funny. We hung out with Reese and Paul, grabbing food and beers downtown throughout the day - including a drink in a place aptly named Paul's Club, well, it was his birthday after all. In the afternoon we went bowling with Reese's friends Jess and John, complete with Reese's insistence that we all put stupid names up on the scoreboard.
The birthday evening of someone that doesn't really drink often calls for some thought, but I think we got it sussed by eating at Hooters. A lot of us had never been to a Hooters before, for those of you that don't know, Hooters is a Bar-Restaurant that has a general policy of employing young attractive waitresses. I think they kind of enforce this subtly by making the uniforms consist of a skimpy white vest and bright orange hot-pants. Cunning, eh? Opinions may differ, but Ren and I were quite surprised at just how cool the place was. The staff were friendly, and loads of fun - there's kind of a "more noise the better" attitude there - and the food (chicken wings, burgers, etc) was pretty good. When we told them it was Paul's birthday, they got a few chairs together, got Paul standing on them, and started singing him a birthday song. Paul then starts dancing, in this crazy butt-shaking manner which was hilarious. We had no idea until afterwards, that they'd told him to spell "Hooters" out at us with him backside. They even got me to do a "running-man" to some of the 80's music they were playing. Definitely a place to go for a big party sometime. We finished up at the Great Dane, Reese's "local" (meaning it's a 10 minute drive - typically USA) which provided it's own amusement in the form of a large party of drunk girls that were enjoying the attention they were getting from kissing each other all the time. Paul seemed quite pleased with it, as you'll see from the photos. The evening was topped off with home-made Margarita's at Reese's place - which turned out to be rather good. All in all, a pretty good day.
We all had a lie-in, before we all (plus Lisa) went to "Smut 'n' Eggs" so named because they serve breakfast while playing some "specialist interest" movies on about 5 screens. Very cool, very funny. We had a quiet day, sorting out a lot of techie stuff - photos, email and Ren's new laptop, before Paul had to head back to MN for work the next day. We had other plans though, and headed up to the Wisconsin Dells. We felt slightly guilty, that having been to WI three times, we'd never been to it's biggest attraction - The Dells. It was great. The place is what Brits would call "seaside-tacky", but with the unexplainable charm that out and out kitsch brings. We took the scenic boat-tour up through the Dells and started really getting exposed to American tourist culture, which was kind of strange I must admit. The boat ride was great though - it's an interesting and beautiful part of the country, which is what we're here to see. We stayed that night at Reese's folks' house, which is this amazing "mansion" on the edge of a lake, where we talked away the evening and most of the night until around 4am! Some things don't change, which is great.
The next day at the Dells, we took the Ducks tour (this is the Dells thing where you take a ride on an ex-army amphibious vehicle) which was good fun. We also did this strange, but fun "hands-on-puzzle-game-thing" called Wizard Quest. We only rescued 3 of the 4 wizards, so we had a consolatory ice-cream blizzard at Dairy Queen - America does such great junk food! We went back to Madison, and whiled away some more time over margaritas and take-out food with Lisa and Scott. All too quickly, it was the morning, and time to move on again.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Leaving L.A.
Phill: 6/5 to 7/5, Los Angeles - Between the 4 of us, we managed to persuade Barb to come riding with us along Venice beach, down to the Santa Monica pier. After the usual bike sorting tasks we rode along the cycle path, taking lots of photos and even more video footage. They have this cool old tandem bike which helped Barb immensely - she's used to bikes that you backpedal to brake, which lead to a funny video clip when she rode solo. It was really funny, but I honestly think it's great that she came out with us - she's such good fun. The guys took us to Big Jim's, the site of the original "Muscle Beach" where there is now a bar, at which we quickly downed a beer, before I had to ride off to the dentist's again. Ren kindly came with me, but as we climbed the hill away from the beach, I managed to put enough pressure on the pedals to break to rear derailleur. So after bending it as far away from the rear-wheel spokes as possible, I rode off with oily hands on the other bike as fast as I could, while Ren freewheeled back down to the bar. Everything went smoothly for me at the dentist, but poor Ren had to ride along with Brad pulling her all the way to their friend's house.Paul and Janet have two children who look like my idea of typical American kids (even though Paul’s an Aussie) - cuties with great mops of blond hair. They made us very welcome, with a much deserved beer, but we had to shoot off really quickly as Tony and Carms were coming into town for dinner that night. We ate some great food at a place called Jamie’s - but poor Braderella had to cancel his because we'd dallied too long all day, and he had to go and close up the store. Later, Tony dropped us off at E&B's place so that I could burn some backup CDs of our photos so far, while chatting and drinking, of course.
After not much sleep, E&B were there to pick us up at 9am (thank goodness for free coffee) and take us to the airport. Even though it was the longest we'd stayed in any one place for probably 6 months, it felt like our time had gone too quickly. Check-in was easy, quick and efficient, although we're not so keen on the new policy of not bothering with meals on domestic US flights and just offering massively overpriced snacks for sale instead. We watched a distinctly average (an Australianism for "rubbish") movie called "In Good Company", and landed at Chicago. We managed to get "served" by two separate people in a sandwich place, who were more interested in their cell phone conversations than in doing their job. A slice of pizza later (apparently it's a "Chicago thing", and incidentally, pizza is an American invention) and we were back on a plane for Detroit.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Canals Of Venice
Phill: 3/5 to 5/5, Los Angeles - Left alone with Brad and Eleana, they treated me to some good English traditional food (a curry), and after closing up the Quizno's store, we chatted the rest of the night away over a beer. The next day, my dental appointment loomed, and although I got up with plenty of time to spare, I still managed to be rushing out of the door at the last minute. B&E lent me a mountain bike of theirs, as the dentist was just around the corner, in Santa Monica. All the staff at the dentist were really helpful, and very understanding of my "travelling" status - but most of you can only imagine the embarrassment of going to an American dentist with a British set of teeth; "Wooh, I could do a lot of work in here" and "A bleaching wouldn't go amiss" were the comments of the day. Sure enough it was one of my teeth with the enormous metal fillings that was the cause of my pain. It seems like school-boy physics when they point out that a lump of metal that big can expand and contract a lot with temperature changes, and that it's a disgrace that British dentists do this sort of "patch work" - I didn't mention that my dentist had warned me that the filling in question would at some point need replacing - with another sort of filling. Anyway - root canal and crown it would be. Sigh!They called in some favours, and managed to persuade the root-canal-filling-guy to fit me in immediately, and the crown-making-lab to rush the job in 2 days (instead of the normal 10). Which just left me to cycle over and get the root canal done, and then rush back for the crown "ground-work". That 15 minute drive turned out to be quite a long cycle, especially when you've not been in the saddle for a year! By the time I realised how far it was, it would've taken E or B too long to come get me in the car anyway, so in short, I spent about 8 hours either in the saddle, or under the drill. Now you might think that with the amount of competition in the USA, dental and medical treatment would be cheaper than the UK. Well, sadly, because no-one can afford it without insurance, no one pays it directly - so the prices are set at levels that insurance companies will pay - which means that when you have to pay as an individual, it's pricey. For example, even with some "sympathy discounts", this cost me $2000. I'm not sure if that hurts more or less than the toothache!
Back together with Barb and Ren, we went out to a cute little fisherman's village area, where we ate dinner at a really good Italian restaurant. We headed to the hotel that Eleana had booked for us - a nice Best Western, just minutes from her house, and crashed out.
I've gotta hand it to Eleana and Brad, they know how to put on a good tour - they did it for us in Detroit one time too. They always manage to show enough of the classic tourist spots, combined with a couple of local underbelly sites as well. This one started with Hollywood Blvd - the stars on the street, and the Chinese theatre, which I discovered is the only place where the celebs leave those famous impressions in the wet concrete. We got our photo of the sign, and had a great long chat about cultists (read: Scientology) - well, we were in CA after all!
The 5th of May, or "Cinco de Mayo" is when California celebrates it's Mexican side by joining in with their Independence Day parties. All the other states it seems, also use this as an excuse to drink as many cereveza and eat as many tacos as they please Although we were disappointed by the lack of things going on during the daytime, we did get down to Olvera St, LA's "Mexican town" - which was nice to see. Ren managed to gain a new shirt, because Barb wouldn't take no for an answer, and we drank a few Mexican beers and margaritas. The guys finished with a tour of some downtown architecture, followed by drinks and chili at Barney's Beanery (a Hollywood thing on Santa Monica Blvd), before heading home to the hotel.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
The Totty Table 3
As another giggle, here is our current (joint-opinion) league table of women around the world:
1. (-) Russian
2. (-) Japanese
2. (*) New Zealand (joint second)
4. (3) Vietnamese
5. (*) Australian (WA, VIC, QLD, NT, NSW, SA)
6. (4) Thai
7. (5) Chinese
8. (6) Laos
9. (7) Cambodian
Key:
- No change in status
* New entry
# Previous postion on table
Note - Australia has a state by state breakdown - WA being the top of the Australian table.
1. (-) Russian
2. (-) Japanese
2. (*) New Zealand (joint second)
4. (3) Vietnamese
5. (*) Australian (WA, VIC, QLD, NT, NSW, SA)
6. (4) Thai
7. (5) Chinese
8. (6) Laos
9. (7) Cambodian
Key:
- No change in status
* New entry
# Previous postion on table
Note - Australia has a state by state breakdown - WA being the top of the Australian table.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Moce Fiji!
Phill: 28/4 to 2/5, Fiji - We finally got the "proper" Fijian welcome at Kuata. They had a load of people down on the beach as we arrived, singing the traditional welcome song, which was really nice. Then as our speedboat left, full of the people leaving, they sang a sweet farewell song that got me realising why everyone speaks so highly of the Fijians. It's all the small things. They checked us in to a really nice private room, which made us think that maybe Ren's dedication to arranging our Fijian accommodation independently might've paid off as we didn't pay very much for it at all. Dinner was another fun affair, as the Fijians sang a welcome song, and announced all of the new arrivals by nationality. With everyone shouting the traditional "Bula!" for them. They then sang and danced throughout dinner and got a really good atmosphere going. We chatted with a German guy and a Scottish girl with an English accent (which was odd) and turned in early-ish with a bit of Fiji-belly.We whiled away our time on the island for the next day and a half, reading and watching the people (which there were a lotof compared to the other islands) and the sea. It was lovely, but we were feeling ready to leave. So after a night's drinking with some Aussies and a load of Norwegians we skipped brekkie and had a lie-in. We were taking the sneaky local-boat back to the mainland, to avoid the overpriced monopolising Awesome Adventures, which meant traveling back in a fairly rickety speedboat that had to change fuel tanks on-the-go about 3 times. Still, they delivered us swiftly, and provided transport back to our lodigng for a fraction of the price - so we were happy. We even got to eat a packed lunch that the people at Kuata very kindly threw together for us when they realised we were leaving just as lunch was served.
We finished in Fijian fashion, reading and sunbathing by the pool, and doing very little apart from a few chores, a tiny amount of internet-time, and trying to watch a movie (The Yards) while two typically English-Backpacker girls lay across the best seats in the room and talked throughout instead of just staying in the bar area. I never understand that.
When the day came to leave, we realised that we'd overlooked the PM on out tickets, and instead of leaving in the morning, we were leaving closer to midnight - whoops! We passed the day in the style to which we'd become accustomed - doing very little, but we were definitely itching to leave and start doing things again. That night we were checked-in at the airport by the most unpleasant woman ever, who pointlessly sat us in the middle aisle of a 2-3-2 seating plane (why???). We spent our time in line gawking at a group of American sorority girls that had 4 pieces of luggage each - 2 huge suitcase (one marked as heavy), and two huge piece of carry-on. Well you know, it's hard having to take a pair of shoes for each outfit, right? We agreed that we'll probably never choose to fly Air New Zealand again, they were nice enough, and the food was good - but a trans-Pacific flight without personal TV screens wasn't fun.
