Pictures are getting better!

Route 66 at Kingman, Arizona, outside the TI

Daughter Pacification!

Well, what have we been driving in US? A Dodge of course. No collision damage waiver needed as even with Margery driving it we didn't scare the wildlife or Ron, well only occasionally! You git, Ron! you moaned like mad! What you seem to forget is that apart from one trip to the Shopping Mall in Florida (yonks ago!) I've never driven left hand drive!! I don't think I did too badly - I even coped with the strip after dark and that is scary!

We knew the petrol heads reading this would need an apprpriate updated! Our verdict? A Tank!

eeeennnnoooormus! but not too bad to drive if you like automatics , which Margery doesn't.

Even more scary - no handbrake! yuk! But there was a footbrake which we only found on the last morning...oops.

The truck was loaded up for you other petrol and diesel heads. Can you identify it. No Harry, its not a John Deere Tractor!

Grand Canyon Centre Parks

Some pictures!

We haven't stopped for the last two days!

On Friday we drove out to the Hoover Dam. Ok, we've got dams in the uk, but they're not set in mountains like these, nor are they quite so HUGE! (and this one is only one of a series of 4 that control the Colorado River from it's source to southern California.) Until you realise that the majority of the towns and cities rely on this arterial flow, the enormity of the system is difficult to appreciate. The destruction caused by the river during the spring snow melt surges flooded the majority of the usable land which then went to drought conditions during the summer. Understandably, the Americans are very concerned about terrorist attack, so they have security checks on all cars approaching the dam. There are times I'm very glad we live in England.

So what's all this about Centre Parks? Well, if you've ever visited one you'll understand, but for those who haven't, let me try and explain.

"They changed paradise –put in a parking lot with a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot! Don,t it always seem the same, you don't know what you've lost till its gone". (Joni Mitchell)

Centre Parks is very much about an image – the same lodges in beautiful areas, shuttle buses to transport you around an enormous site, twee shops and themed stores to attract (or repel!) customers and helpful liveried staff ready to answer your every need. Got the picture?

Ok, now put all that on the edge of one of the most mind blowingly beautiful pieces of God's creation. Yep, thats the South Rim of the Grand Canyon! Sadly mankind would never have visited it at all had it not been for early entrepreneurs wanting to develop it as a tourist site. It has no other value for the developer. But to lovers of beautiful scenery, and wild and wonderful places it calls!

Why? Just take a look – and as usual, the pictures never do it justice.

Fortunately it's not quite as bad as it sounds! The Canyon itself is relatively untouched, and you can walk along much of the rim with a view unobstructed by the ubiquitous safety barriers you'd find in the UK. All of the buildings are set back from the edge of the canyon itself, so maybe I've been a bit unfair.

But the views! My mind is still in overload!

So, how did we get there? Jen warned it was a long way (we'd worked that our too!) To be precise, if we'd driven straight out there, it would have been 290 miles each way. !!!!!! Hmmm – and much of that with 25, 35 or 55 mph speed limits L

We left Las Vegas at 5.30 ( it was supposed to be 6 but neither of us could sleep with excitement!) Drove straight there, with one stop at a diner for an all you can eat breakfast at a town called Kingman, which is really only known about from the song Route 66. We'd made a second stop at an Arizona Tourist information this time...nothing to do with the fact that it was on Route 66, and had a Route 66 museum and a very large Locomotive outside it, was it Ron? The information we got from them suggested an alternative route out of the Park, for several reasons.

After travelling up to an elevation of over 7000 ft we paid our 25$ to get into the park (ouch!) and spent a great time, taking LOADS of photos, and saying "Wow" far too often than is really healthy! It had snowed leaving a real Christmassy winter feel with blue skies and warm sunshine over sparkling white snow which contrasted with the red and grey rocks below. We were able to see the Colorado River 4000ft below when we went to Desert View on the south eastern rim, in Naverjo country. As the sun went down so did the temperature, we left the park at dusk and drove through Flagstaff, (also Route 66 fame) and saw a 1 mile long train pulled by 2 very large diesel engines which we had to stop for as it crossed our route back to LV. The Hoover Dam in darkness was a second bonus as it looked liked a dwarfs workshop, all lights and tiny machinery, when viewed from the top of the hill.

The light pollution from LV can only really be appreciated when you can see nothing in the black desert but the stars and then in the distance the grey glow; and guess what, we only saw two or three PV collectors in the GC National Park. The USA has soooo... much sun, and yet doesn't think to use its free energy. The power of the oil companies!

This return loop on route 64 added an extra 100 miles to our journey but was well worth it even though we didn't get back to LV until 11:30pm.

A little bag repacking was required this morning (ugh!) On the way up from LA our bags were technically 5 and 9lb overweight respectively (strangely Ron's was the heavier – I think it's the bigger walking boots!) All the airlines have different rules – American said you could check 2 bags each in, no problem, but they shouldn't weigh more than 50lb each. Our luggage weighed a lot less than 2x50lb, but were in one case each. Thereby hangs the problem! On the way up, the girl at the check in very kindly waived the 125$ charge for each bag she could have charged (another definite ouch!) but suggested that we repacked into two bags each for the return journey.

Not wishing to risk either of our decent rucksacks to the tender mercies of baggage handling, we decided to get the weight of both cases down just under the 50lb limit by putting walking boots, travel books, lots of the chargers for laptops, phones etc and our Trangia cooker into Ron's daysack (this being the oldest and tiredest one we have with us) on the grounds that if it gets damaged, he could probably do with a new one anyway. Sorted! Or so we thought. At check in, being a different airport, they were going to charge 85$ for checking in the 3 bags! Arghh! However, the check in clerk turned into another of our "angels" when he asked whether we were flying home –no, to the Cook Islands – "oh, that's ok, if we send them straight through to Rarotonga, there'll be no charge – we don't charge for transatlantic or transpacific flights!!" So the bags have the correct "RAR" labels on, and we won't have to lug than around at LA....Lets just hope they get to Rarotonga at the same time as we do!!!

As we say good bye to LV we are looking forward to our overnight trip from LA, via Phoenix (and by the time we get there you all will be sleeping!) to a south sea paradise. South Pacific here we come!

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Sushi for breakfast? Only in USA

Hi guys, sitting in Nevada Tourist office with a handy wifi!
planes all worked out ok yesterday, didn't bother with supper - brains didn't know what had hit us! However, on the advice of a fellow traveller, went out to "survey the strip" Boy oh boy, is it all that we thought! I dread to think how much electricity the neon is burning!
You can visit NY Paris and San Fransisco Bridge in 2 blocks! our hotel takes about20 mins to walk from one end to the other, and it's not the biggest!

The view from where I'm sitting is of the Sierra Nevada with Lake Mead and the Colarado river. Red rock and desert against startlingly blue water - we'll try and post a few pics next time - they're all still on the camera at the moment.

Yes I did have sushi for breakfast!! Buffet at MGM with everthing from porridge to sushi, tapas and everything else in between!

Virgin on the ridiculous

Despite every attempt that has been made to keep us in the UK we are in the Upper Class lounge at Heathrow waiting for our boarding call! Thanks to all who have been praying as it definitely is working.
We must say that we can both remember the last big freezes in 63 and 1980's and we hope it gets better soon for you guys.
Philias is disgusted as they don't allow animals in the lounge, so he's been hung up guarding the coats in the cloakroom.
R+M both have had facials in the spa. For R this was a first, but apparently more men avail themselves of this treatment than women! Not sure what this means? It means that us ladies are sensible and have them elsewhere as well! M
Its LA next stop and then a connection to Las Vegas; we hope to arrive at the hotel around 3am UK time.

So that's definately a sleep on the plane, then :-) Philias seems to be enjoying his flight!

Best Laid Plans..!

The best laid plans...as they say, go oft awry! So much for our nice laid back Tuesday afternoon, sorting the house and doing some leisurely packing! By lunchtime we'd both decided, quite independently of each other , that with the weather closing in, the only sensible thing to do was to get out of Dorset and Hampshire as fast as the snow and Bertie the BMW would allow!

SO...cases were not so much packed as thrown together, bins were emptied (as was the fridge!) washing up and most of the tidying up was done. Not quite ᾲ la headless chicken syndrome..the brains were definitely engaged, but you get some idea of the speed involved!

There were a few moments of inspiration..we both came up with the thought that we weren't risking friends (or their small children!) driving us to the airport in this wretched weather, so the train would take the strain. That wouldn't be so much fun with the luggage, so Ron phoned the Hilton at Heathrow and they very kindly agreed to store the big cases overnight! Brainwave! J

So, we came up yesterday via Heathrow to drop cases, arriving at Val and Ian's house with Sims and without any mishap at about 8 last night. We seemed to be running just ahead of the main snow belt all the way! Phew!

We drove through snow, but by the time we reached Kent, it was still not laying on the roads to any extent.

Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex really seemed to be "copping it" if the road reports were to be believed!

Then, this morning, Val very kindly drove us to Swanley (the A20 and M20 being almost clear) and we caught a train about 15 mins later to Victoria. By 12.15 the tube had conveyed us to Terminal 3...and we asked the dreaded question at the Virgin Check in...how's it going? You can imagine our delight when they said they'd managed to get all bar one flight off this morning, and that was only cancelled as Boston was snowed in!

So, all being well and barring whiteout overnight, we should be ok for tomorrow. Either way we can't do a lot about it, so we're just sitting back comfortably in our hotel room, having just spent the afternoon in the swimming pool and sauna! The next move for us is to choose one of the 4 restaurants to visit for supper (it's a hard life!) and get an early night before a very long day tomorrow. We'll let you know how we get on tomorrow!!

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The calm before the snow

We are sitting here listening to the weather forecast for the next few days. It sounds quite interesting with ice, followed by rain and snow. We were told before moving to Dorset that it never snows here. Well, they're wrong. We had snow in February 2009 and are now expecting possibly to be snowed in tomorrow. Maybe it's because of all the logs we've been burning increasing global warming. Unlikely-you haven't seen the amount of logs we've got through since installing the log burner in November. Watch out Ringwod Forest you only have 9 months until we start the fire again.
On Wednesday we are travelling up to Kent and then on to Heathrow, if the weather is kind to us. We also see that Las Vegas has a forecast of rain whilst we're there, and that when the Colorado River is at its lowest since the Hoover Dam was built. What is about us?
We went to Guernsey just before Christmas for the wedding of Peter and Lucy. We had a great time, and it snowed, with Jersey being brought to a standstill. Is it me?
Simba is getiing quite twitchy; maybe he will settle once his food, bed and the cases go into the car on Wednesday morning. He is qite clingy at the moment making sure that we are not let out of his sight.
We will update the blog as and when we can, even if it means visiting McDonalds. There are hotspots for wifi we are told and so we wont have to rely on hotel internet.
Our plants have gone on holiday and so with the decorations also taken down after Christmas it looks pretty bare. After recently watching The Day of the Triffids, I hope we've done the right thing leaving them with our friends in West Moors!