Saturday, July 18, 2009

Viva Las Vegas!


Greetings from Las Vegas where it is every bit as mental and a lot more than we expected! We have survived our first night on the strip and only managed to lose other people's money!!Tonight we are going to try and win our fortune! We have eaten dinner in Paris, watched the gondolas sail by in Venice , bought some ridiculously tacky souvenirs and even met midget Elvis!

Since our last blog we have spent 3 days in Yosemite hiking in the heat and lolling in the waterfalls as as our reward! Our first morning we awoke to a bear right outside our tent which was very exciting until he tried to actually come in our door! Later that - day a 3 foot rattle snake crossed our path and then a deer led the way on our hike home. We saw a vulture soaring to the ground at about 300 mph and we have even spotted a coyote!

We left Yosemite and headed to Bodie - a real live ghost town in the middle of nowhere where loads of the stuff has been left as it was. It hasn't been inhabited since 1930 so pretty amazing and eerie to see all the stuff like beer bottles on the bar and the beds and chairs and wallpaper falling off the walls. Onwards from Bodie we had a 5 hour drive to Death Valley - the second highest temperature in the world was recorded here in 1913 and has only been topped by Libya coming in at 2 degrees higher at 136 f. We arrived at 10pm and the only way I can describe it is like stepping into an oven , the air was unbelievably hot and the temperature was still over 100 f at that time of night . The pool was full of people trying to cool down! The next morning we went to the general store (the only other building apart from the saloon!) with the intention of buying some eggs in order to do some scientific research (how long would it take to fry and egg on the roadside!) However it seems we aren't the first visitors to the area to want to try this and the park ranger has forbidden the store from selling eggs because they are creating too much mess on the roads!!
The highest it got up to when we were there was 125 - consequently the petrol decided to boil in the tank and for a while we thought we might actually die in the desert! We had been driving along a 9 mile loop in the middle of nowhere and suddenly we were been intoxicated with petrol fumes coming through the AC. The fuel gauge was dropping rapidly as nervous laughter rose from me and Jo! My first thought was to phone Christopher or Dad and ask for advice but not even a bar of signal on the phone so we were on our own to work this one out!
We hailed down some French tourists and asked them to go in convoy with us back to the nearest sign of civilisation , which fortunately was only 5 miles away. Once we reached there we let the car cool down and tried to cool ourselves down with bags of ice on our heads! Turning off the AC and a little rest for the car seemed to do the trick and onwards bound to Las Vegas we went (via some of the most hillbilly towns I've ever seen!) One of them even had speed boats for sale - not sure where they were going to go with them though considering we couldn't have been further from the water!

And so here we are in Vegas about to head out for the second night of gambling and general craziness!! On to Grand Canyon tomorrow for a few days to recover in nature!!

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