Rained out of Death Valley

There is, of course, nothing to see in Las Vegas during the day time. We decided to go to Death Valley National Park, about two hours away. It rained and thundered all the way there. Our Buick's windscreen wipers automatically adjust to rainfall intensity and they were going swish, swish, swish as fast as the motor could push them.

When we arrived at Lathrop Wells, they told us that the Death Valley junction was closed -- but we could drive an extra 10 mines up to Beatty and get into the park from the north.

So we continued our long drive, then down the sloping, windy, wet road to Death Valley. It was dangerous. On the side of the road, we saw a car that had flipped over onto its roof.

After slowly picking our way through flooded roads, we finally found the Visitor Centre. It was full of people who had also braved the rain. We watched the orientation movie. It showed us all the interesting things we could have seen, had it not been raining. I wanted to see Badwater, the lowest point in the "Western Hemisphere" (282 feet/86 metres below sea level). It is a saltpan because water cannot drain anywhere -- it is constantly evaporating (except today, evidently) and leaving salt behind. We also missed out on the salt formations in the Devil's golf course.

After the film, I asked a ranger what kind of activities we could do in the rain. She said wearily, "Frankly, nothing. We've closed all the roads."

Rained out of a desert, pshaw. What are the odds?

Two days out of 365. What bad luck! A long drive home with nothing to show for it. Well, I didn't consider it a total waste. Even in the rain, we could see how spectacular and varied the desert was -- sand, stone, reds, greys, yellows, flat, mountainous, wrinkled landscape.

We got to explore Las Vegas by night again. I even gambled. Dad had put a quarter into a 1¢ machine and had 25 unsuccesses.

"What the hell," I thought, "I'm in Las Vegas. Might as well gamble once." I pulled out a coin and moved towards a slot machine.

"Joan! That's stupid," Jason said. "You're putting a quarter into a quarter slot machine. You'll only get one go."

"But the odds of winning in that one go will be better than for a penny machine, right?"

"Yeah... I guess."

I popped the coin in. Jason also put in a quarter. I pulled the handle. The symbols spun. Something came up, I dunno, whatever. But suddenly, I heared a tinkling sound, as some coins fell into the tray. We won!

I quit while I was ahead. I'm happy with my 50¢ profit.


Mum dashed out of the car into the rain so that she could take this photo in Rhyolite, a ghost town north of Death Valley.


Oh dear. What's happened here?


Mars. I mean, er, the Sierra Nevada desert.


I won! I won!


Inside the Luxor, a casino hotel with an ancient Egypt theme.

Las Vegas, city of excess

This was our longest drive yet -- six hours across the Sierra Nevada desert. I saw the most amazing thing. We turned a corner and suddenly, the horizon was lined with dozens, nay, hundreds of wind turbines! They were like hairs on the hills, ants marching along the crests. It was beautiful. I saw a sign: "Tehachapi, world wind energy leader". I wish Kate were here to see this!

Las Vegas is gaudy, tacky and fake. It's fun to look at but I don't like it much. The hotels pretend to be classy, with their faux gold, columns and mirrors but it's all insubstantial. When you walk into a casino looking for food, shops or restrooms, they make you run the gauntlet. You can see that someone's designed the layout so that you have to walk past the slot machines and gaming tables.

So I was getting quite jaded by it all (and annoyed at the thought of all the electricity being wasted) but suddenly, I found some beauty amongst the tackiness. The grandest of the casino hotels, the Bellagio, overlooks a large lake. At night, this lake is the stage for a wonderful water/light/music show. Jets of water are choreographed to dance, twist and spin to classical, swing and Broadway music. I loved it.


Hundreds of wind turbines! Isn't it amazing? The picture isn't bad, considering I took it from inside a moving car.


In front of 'New York, New York'. That's a casino hotel, not an actual city. There's even a rollercoaster.


Excalibur casino hotel is much bigger than this photo implies.


Look how many M&M colours there are! Who would have thunk?


We are the M&M family.


I have a drinking problem. Namely, that I can't fit my mouth over the bottle opening.


The fake sky in the Venetian. You can't tell from the photograph but it is actually quite a good illusion. It does feel like you're outside on a sunny day, even when you know that it's night time outside.


The foyer of the Venetian casino hotel.


Las Vegas by night. I try not to think of all the electricity it's using.


The Bellagio fountains, the most beautiful thing in Las Vegas.

Yosemite Day 2

For a place of granite rock and snow, Yosemite National Park sure has a lot of red tones. I'm glad I worked out how to use our digital camera in time to capture the tones. In fact, as you can see from the pictures, I added a greater splash of red to the park.

We hiked up towards Upper Yosemite Falls but stopped at Columbia Rock. It was a very tortuous track, lots of climbing, very tiring. Jason was amazing, leaping up rocks to create shortcuts. I was shocked when mum followed him, even cheerfully scrambling over rocks that Jason hadn't thought to approach. She was upright while Jason tripped! My mum is cool.

Dad and I stuck to the path. I think this is an indication of our squareness -- we follow the rules.

Mum called, "Joan! Come here! We can get a photo of you with the deer!" It was so close. I had never been that close to a wild animal before. So of course, I poked its rump with my drink bottle.

"Joan! Don't do that! What did you do that for?!" they all gasped. I shrugged. Dunno. Seemed like a good idea.

The views 1000 feet up above the valley floor were breathtaking and worth the tiring climb. I'm not yet a good enough photographer to capture it.

That afternoon, we drove to Fresno, a stopover town before we drive across the Sierra Nevada desert to Las Vegas. Fresno is a weird place. I call it "Bunnings City" because every single store is on the scale of Bunnings, the mega-hardware stores of Melbourne. Even the donut stores are huge.

Everything is sprawled out, islands of retail enclosed by six lane roads. It's awful. Nothing is on a human scale. I didn't see a single pedestrian. There is no way you could walk here -- you have to drive. It's the most unwalkable neighbourhood I can imagine, an environmentalist and community-advocate's nightmare.

Two days into this roadtrip and I have learned that my family is funny, entertaining and clever but sometimes annoying. Mum gets silly, dad is sometimes slow, Jason is moody and I'm short-tempered. Perfect, eh?


Fashion faux pas or daring statement?


The mind boggles at the caption potential here. Jason with his ever-present packet of corn chips.


Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!


At Lower Yosemite Falls.


A prime poking opportunity.


Gorgeous view from Columbia Rock.


The whole group is rewarded with breath-taking views of Yosemite Valley after a hard climb.

yo-SEH-me-tee, not YO-sa-mite (like Vegemite)

I have discovered the most wonderful thing. On the Buick we hired, we have satellite radio. There are about 200 channels, including multiple channels for jazz, classical, pop, folk rock, Disney and broadway. There are channels devoted to music from the 40s, 50s through to the 90s. I almost died and went to heaven when I discovered Cinemagic, 24 hours per day of orchestral film scores. I never imagined such a glorious thing. Oh, I want it! I want it! I'd almost move to USA just for it.

Check out the full station listing.

Today, our family of four plus HuiTing (Jason's friend, also a Silicon Valley intern) drove from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park. It is beautiful, awe-inspiring. As you drive through the valley, you are surrounded by sheer granite cliff faces. Everything is huge, huge, on a scale I've never seen.

I want to go back and walk through it in the summer.


I wear red because I figure it's my best chance for survival when I get lost.


The "tiny" Bridalveil Falls.


Dad is inspired to victory.


Jason in front of Half Dome.

Australians are dangerous on American roads

Jason showed us the sights of San Francisco today. We arrived at the ruins of the Sutro Baths at Ocean Beach. The baths were a spectacular multi-million dollar pampering station for the denizens of the early 1900s. There were balmy swimming pools, an amphitheatre, galleries and restaurants.

Jason explained, "Business wasn't very good, and got really bad right before the Baths became ruined."

Dad said, "Was it fire?"

Jason was surprised. "Yeah... How did you know?"

Dad said sagely, "That's what usually happens when an ambitious business isn't going well. Mysterious fire... insurance pay out."

We spent the afternoon at Golden Gate Park, which covers an enormous area. Its length is literally half the width of the whole of San Francisco city. There are full-sized roads criss-crossing it!

Our group of seven people (including three of Jason's friends) hired a surrey, which is a pedal powered buggy. Imagine one of those prehistoric cars from the Flinstones. It was fantastic fun, I was giddy all the way -- such a silly thing to do! Dad "drove" and we had to keep yelling, "Keep right! Keep right!"

Australians are dangerous on American roads.


A monument to man's quest to bathe, destroyed by the imperatives of insurance pay outs.


California takes warnings seriously -- and so should you.


Another dire warning. In case you can't read it, it says, "CAUTION. Cliff and surf area extremely dangerous. People have been swept from the rocks and drowned."


We return to Flinstones-like pedal power.


We see Mr Xing everywhere.


I achieve enlightenment in the Japanese Gardens.


Like a troubled bridge over water...

San Frandisco riddles

Q: What do Asian tourists do as soon as they arrive in a foreign city?
A: Gravitate towards Chinatown.

Which is exactly what we did. It was like we never left Melbourne. Chinatowns all around the world must be the same.

San Francisco's eastern shores are beautiful. We walked to all the piers, including the famous Pier 39. It was very touristy, what some people might call "kitsch" but I loved it. We bought the signature meal being sold at every restaurant and stall -- clam chowder in a sourdough bowl.

We went on a bay cruise to Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, the island prison for the worst criminals in USA.

Q: Who are the only two people ever to escape for Alcatraz prison?
A: Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery
(Escape from Alcatraz 1979 & The Rock 1996)

Important things to note about America

• The seagulls are HUGE. HUGE.
  
• Americans say "leesure" instead of leisure.
  
• People here aren't really that fat (compared to Australians)
  
• San Francisco's roads are CRAZY, ridiculously steep.
  
• Tipping annoys me, if only because I don't know the etiquette of how much and when.
  
• Buying stuff generates lots of coins -- you start of with bills and end up with fistfuls of 1 cent pennies that aren't even worth a dollar!
  
• There are ads on TV telling people to buy cars as Christmas gifts! Sheesh!
  
• I have not come across a single set of normal hot/cold turning taps. Every set of taps here seems to be different. I have to figure out how to work each set every time.

San Fran Disco's Union Square. Like Fed Square in Melbourne but not as cool.


Cars actually drive up these things. Some roads are more like walls and these have been blocked off.


Clam chowder in environmentally friendly edible bread bowls. It made it all the more delicious.


There are lots of sea lions in SF. Bet you didn't know that.


Touring the San Francisco Bay by boat. Do you recognise that famous landmark? Yes! It's Joanden Gate Bridge!

My first flight in 11 years

USA is The Fortress. At the airport, I had to take off my shoes and put them through the x-ray machine. They make you fill in forms that ask if you engage in terrorist activities ("Yes! Yes!"). They also give you space to write down the itinery of every international destination you've been to in the past 10 years. I'd hate to be a jet-setting businessperson filling in one of these forms! Lucky for me (I think), I haven't been out of Australia since 1993.

Ironically, as we bounced from airport to airport, the greatest problem we created for ourselves was at Sydney -- right in our backyard. Sydney airport is a bit odd in that the domestic terminal is six minutes drive away from the international terminal. You have to take a shuttle bus between the two.

We had to get a connecting flight from Sydney to Taiwan. It should have been a simple matter -- just step out of the gate and walk into the International Transfers lounge. However, we were confused by the check-in lady at Melbourne Airport. She said, "Go to Gate Lounge 2 and take the connecting shuttle to the international terminal."

So what do we do? Being the capable family we are, we were the first to march off the plane, breeze past the Transfer Lounge towards Terminal 2. (Mum: "Where is everyone? Why are we the only ones going to the international terminal?")

We were accosted by a man who convinced us that we needed to pay $4 a person to get the shuttle. Very soon after forking over $12, we realised that he was selling tickets for a private shuttle and that we had made some sort of mistake. QANTAS would have taken us over for free -- we had already paid thousands of dollars for plane tickets.

Ah well. Sunk cost. It was just a 12 minute wate for the shuttle and we had half an hour. Should be fine.

We waited. And waited. The 12 minutes became 25 minutes. Mum was frantic. We still had to go through customs!

Finally, the bus came. When we got to the international terminal, we ran to the check in. We were the last passengers and there were no seats left for us to sit together. We ended up rows apart.

It was night time when we got to our hotel in San Francisco. Jason and his friend Cheryl came to visit us. He said, "Dad, why did you book this hotel? This is a really dodgy and dangerous part of town. Don't walk around outside after 6 PM, okay?" That was a bit scary. Idon't think he's exaggerating, either.

It was really nice seeing Jason again. In the month that he's been here, he's found his feet in this foreign city and is able to look after himself. He's an adult!

San Francisco looks a lot like Melbourne except that there is a huge variety of fonts in the signage so it all seems messier...

Well, the 22nd of December has been about 35 hours long and I've had five meals.


QANTAS made the airport Christmassy by hiring a jazz-playing pudding, turkey and Christmas tree.


Mum and Joan at the airport. Note the infamous 'active' t-shirt.


Jason shows us all the places that we cannot, under any circumstances, walk around after 6 PM.