Day 30 - headed for the Rocky Mountains

We continue our journey east. We're now in the pleasant town of Pocatello (I had to ask Mattias where we are now - I'm like one of those diva rock stars who go out on stage and yell "Good evening Norwaaaaay! What's that? Sweden? Same shit, different name..." - all these inns that look the same feel like we're living in Terry Pratchett's movable shop; you never know where you're going to wake up) where we're lazing in our bed after eating at yet another all-American diner. For your information it was about two weeks since I had any fries!

Not much to report. I won't bore you with the details of my quiet, controlled Swedish rage against the last motel we had (broken flush, broken A/C, batteries removed from remote, woken up at 7.30AM by people tearing up the carpet in the corridor, NO APOLOGY FROM MANAGEMENT!) because the one we're in now is sooo lush.

I want to share something though. America is truly wondrous in how climate, scenery and temperature changes dramatically from one hour to the next, and also from one state to the next. State lines are usually drawn by natural borders, like mountain ranges or rivers. This results in adjacent states usually having rather different atmospheres. Today, we definitely experienced some of those changes.

One day, three states, three pictures:

The dark, gray, dusty desert of Nevada:

The salt flats near the Great Salt Lake in Utah:

The green, rolling hills of Idaho:

Yellowstone national park tomorrow. It's huge, and we only have one day, and the road layout is a circle of which we'll only have time for half. Because we are such typical tourists, we're going to take the route past Old Faithful (they geyser that erupts every 90 minutes). Pics tomorrow, hopefully!

Until then.

Day 21 - Two sides of Las Vegas

Hey all,

Guess what - for all the luxury and lavishness of this hotel, there's one thing they don't have. Free internet. That's right, we have to pay by the hour to use the net, so that's why I didn't even post last night.

Here's a recap of the last couple of days.

In Flagstaff we had discovered two things. First of all, the old route 66 used to pass through there. Route 66 no longer exists as a US-wide road, but some stretches have been preserved, and obviously some of the new roads are built along or on top of it. For a fair few miles, we went along the I-40 much the same way that route 66 once went.


The second thing we discovered was (as I said earlier) that our route to Vegas would take us past and thus over the Hoover dam. Here's a shot of it. Notice how all the cars drive on top of it!


The queues going the opposite way over the dam were unbeliveable. They went on for miles after we passed and we were thinking maybe there had been some accident, or someone got stuck in the security check. We heard later on that these were the people leaving Las Vegas after the busy weekend!

So here we are in Las Vegas. It's a crazy place. Our room is on the 23rd floor which is about halfway up the building. We have a sweet view over Las Vegas boulevard - more commonly known as The Strip:


Yesterday we explored the city, and most importantly The Strip. All the hotels here have different themes. The Venitian is mimicking Venice, Caesar's Palace is set in Rome, Luxor is a big pyramid with a gigantic sphinx for an entrance, and New York New York is... Well, it's New York:


The Bellagio is one of the most famous and luxurious hotels in LV. The fountain is famous and can be seen in Ocean's 11. There are shows every 15 minutes where they operate the fountain to music. When we saw it the first time it was (fittingly enough) playing Viva Las Vegas by Elvis!


But Las Vegas isn't all about gambling, neon lights and oversized hotels. Less than an hour's drive away is the Valley of Fire state park (state parks are like national parks, only smaller obviously, and less well known). Even though the surrounding areas are grey and dusty desert, this particular area has been subject to some strange geological activity that has exposed an underlying area of red sandstone. It's gradually being washed, blown and worn down (over an immensely long period of time of course), giving the stone strange shapes. Here are some pictures of our trip there today:





We're just about to get into our wonderful, big, soft bed (I want to take it home!). By the way, we gambled but didn't lose much. No big sums, just tried a bit of slots and roulette (Mattias could have spent a long time at the table, but we'd agreed on a sum so we didn't spend more than that!) and watched as other people's money poured into the pockets of the casino.

Tomorrow we're off to Los Angeles and the west coast. Still lots of fun to be had!

Until then.