Jen & Dans America and Canada trip

First mudbath!

2008-01-27T16:16:00.000Z

Having had Charlie home for a week, the first Shire playday of the year beckoned.
And in true style Jen buried Charlies nose in a big puddle of gloop.

On the way home we blew a head gasket... oh what joy!

Charlie's home safe and sound

2008-01-21T16:01:00.000Z

A little later than anticipated, but Charlie Camel has made it back to Blighty safe and sound. Jen and I took the morning off work to collect him from a warehouse in Northfleet, Kent.

We arrived there as arranged at 9am after a night at Jens mums, 10 miles down the road. Unfortunately Charlies import paperwork hadn't arrived and so we weren't allowed to take him home. A tantelising 10 minutes wait brought good news though as the paperwork was finally faxed through and we were allowed to take him home.
We did notice that both of the rear tyres had some damage, presumably where thay has been chocked badly.

Sweet home Southampton!

2007-12-03T13:26:00.000Z

Thats it, we're home :-(
But we had an interesting reception at the airport. Moo had been promising to come and pick us up, but he got called to Germany with his work, so instead he managed to arrange for about half of Shire Land Rover Club to come and meet us... at 7:30am on Saturday morning... at Heathrow! You're all mad!
But thanks guys, it really made a fantastic ending to a fantastic trip!

More news on the shipping. I got the full story from Kingstown about the delayed shipping and now we don't mind it taking a long time. The problem is that the warehouse closes over the Christmas period and they don't want to risk having any containers turn up during that period. If they do then there is an £80/day charge! Ok... we'll wait till after Christmas then!

Gutted!

2007-11-29T22:54:00.000Z

Well, that really is it now. We checked into a Motel in Linden last night and had a meal at the really nasty diner next door. 2 Lasagne's, 1 hot choc, as many pepsi re-fills as you want, 1 side salad and 1 extra large portion of Garlic Bread... all in for £10!
This morning we got up and drove 5 miles to the car hire place to pick up our Kia Optima (sounds remarkably like a battery to me!) with Sat-Nav :-) Jen punched in the shipping company's address in Linden and set off, me in Charlie Camel following close behind.
15 minutes later we arrived at Pembroke Shippings warehouse, sorted out paperwork and were then informed by the nice lady with the face like thunder that it would be at least 4 weeks until the car ships to England! HUH!!! 4 weeks... Steve (Kingstown), if you are reading this expect an email! Gutted! So it probably won't be until the end of January that we see Charlie Camel again :-(
Having waved goodbye to Charlie, we jumped into the jap-crap, set the sat-nav destination to Baltimore airport, set the cruise control to 70mph and sulked our way here to the Holiday Inn Express. We are going out to get horibly pissed tonight to drown our sorrows. Then we'll probably do the same again tomorrow as we have to hang around at the airport for who-know-how-many hours. (Well, Dan will, I'm driving back from resturant... but I do get to eat Cheesecake... Mmm! Jen)
And to make matters worse, Jen has just started singing "And now the time is near!"

Dad, it's been an amazing trip, glad you and everybody else who has posted has enjoyed it.

So, now that we won't have a vehicle to play with off road I'm just gonna have to get cracking on Bertha! :-D

Blue Ridge Parkway

2007-11-28T03:16:00.001Z

For the last couple of day's we've been driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway through The Carolina's, Georgia and now we're in Virgina.

This has to be the part of America that looks the most like the UK, principally because we spent one whole day driving through thick fog and rain! lol!

By the time it got dark we had visibility of about 15ft and the going was pretty slow.

Luckily the next day was a little bit clearer and we got to enjoy some of the beautiful scenery.

We stopped pretty early today so we could take advantage of the sunny (but cold) weather and sorted Charlie out for his journey in the container as tomorrow's our last full day with him - boy, that went quick! Tomorrow we're planning on finishing the Skyline drive which will bring us out at Washington DC after 110miles which will leave us only about 220miles to New Jersey where we'll find a motel and drop Charlie off in the morning... :-(

See you all at the Jolly Sailor Saturday night!

Heading North and Blog Comments

2007-11-26T01:57:00.000Z

We started our northern trip after Sea World heading for the Blue Ridge Parkway - a road running along the course of the Appalachian Mountains which, if all goes to plan, should put us out near Washington DC. It was a recommendation from a family camped next to us at Key West.

Today was spent following the I75 to Macon and then the 129 to the 441 and at the moment we're staying around the I95 before following the 441 to the Blue Ridge.

Nothing much else to report so instead we're going to answer the comments that have recently been put on the blog, which we love reading :-) :

Richard and Tracy: You are evil. If it's just the new job, we know about that - Hehe! If you're moving away because of it, then you're not allowed :-( But we're both going mad trying to figure it out!

Granny Billie: Thanks for the Happy Birthday message!

The Farter: We saw Hemmingway house, but didn't visit as we were tipped off that it was a bit rubbish so we went to the pub instead :-)
We arrive back in Blighty on Saturday morning. Keep drinkin' those John Smiths!

The Keys... its Itchy!

2007-11-24T01:57:00.000Z

Driving down to the Florida Keys is an interesting experience. From the Mainland to Key West is approximately 100 miles, and it's pretty much all big long bridges intersperced with the odd tropical, palm tree covered paradise island.
We had planned a couple of days down at Key West, one day relaxing in the sun and another day investigation Key West. Well, all went according to plan, we spent a day at the camp site chilling out. Before we realised it was late afternoon and time to get some more relaxing done at the local bar :-)
Then the following day we made our way into Key West to check the place out. What a funky little town! We took a walk from one end of Duval street to the other, and then made our way back up Whitehead Street and into Malory square to watch the sunset. This is something that Malory Square is well known for and the watersedge was chockablock with people and street entertainers. The sunset was pretty cool to say the least, and the numerous boats and clippers made it picture perfect.

Having been nibbled half to death by the midgeys and itching like a pair of flee bitten muts, it was time to head north again. It was Thanksgiving day so the roads were pretty quiet. We popped into the Everglades again to experience an airboat ride after my Dad sent several nagging messeges instructing us not to leave without taking a ride. WOW! What a ride! I'm sure we didn't go that fast, but with the noise from the V8 engine, silenced only by some flexi-pipe and a couple of cherry-bombs and the wind being sucked past by the 4ft propeller bolted directly to the engines flywheel it felt like we were tearing along! Now an airboat ride isn't the best way to see wildlife, most of it gets scared off by the noise, so we just held on and enjoyed the ride which included some amazing acrobatic boating manouvers.
Whilst there we also checked out the live snake show and as luck would have it Jen got dragged out the audience and had a massive albino python plopped on her shoulders! LOL... she took it rather well actually.

Anyway, onwards and upwards, and heading towards Orlando again, this time to check out SeaWorld. We took a quick detour to do a drive through of Miami, famed for its ArtDeco buildings, and its home for the filthy rich!

We finally arrived in Kissimee quite late looking for a campsite and eventually picked a Motel as it was cheaper than camping... work that one out!

Today, as it was Jens birthday yesterday and she's always wanted to go to SeaWorld, we spent the whole day there. What an amazing place, far better than I expected, and we fed the dolphins!

Now though, with less than a week to go before we come back home it really is time to start our northbound journey. We're hoping to have time to check out the Blue M ountian Ridgeway.

Pictures added!

2007-11-20T19:02:00.000Z

I've added the pictures to the two latest posts below so you can see what we've been upto :-)

Nothing much to add today, we only got up at 11am! Spending a nice day relaxing by the pool/hot tub and the coast. Planning on sorting out Charlie for his trip home when I finish procrastinating!

Weather: Sunny with a nice breeze. Lucky eh?

Snow?! 27C here...

2007-11-19T23:53:00.000Z

Well, with a heads up from Tim and Lou I've been having a look at the pics on the BBC website only to see alot of England covered in snow! Home now feel's like a long way away as we're sitting on a campsite on a beech about 14miles north of Key West in Florida. In Fact, today we hit the southern most point of the continental US, only 90 miles away from Cuba. We've spent the whole day in shorts and t-shirts and even now I'm sitting here in my new Portal Tek t-shirt and my tracksuit trousers - but the long trousers are only 'cos of the midges! It's a bit warm.

On our way here we checked out the Everglades National Park. This is a pretty amazing place, what looks like grassland is actually water filled with and immense amout of wildlife. We decided to start with a short couple of walks as recommended by a ranger, only to come across more types of birds and fish than I could count and some pretty large Alligators - some of which lieing only a few feet away from the path! The ranger told us not to worry though, they won't bother you on land. Mm. Ok! lol!

We then headed down to Flamingo at the southernmost end of the NP and camped on a beautiful campsite amoungst the palm trees and on the edge of the Mangroves. As we pulled up the midge-meter was at it's lowest reading which made us happy - but we covered up and put on the bug spray anyway. The next morning I jumped in the shower only to find several hundered bites :( Litterally. Apparently my walking trousers are not mosquito proof, it's so bad I even got sympathy from Dan! lol!

Cooking under tha palm trees:

Several minutes was spent applying bite cream and a copious amout of midge spray before we wandered down to the Marina to take a boat tour out into the park proper. We were lucky and saw lots of American Crocodile, there are less than 900 of these remaining. They're pretty big!

Later that day we headed out towards the Key's and stayed the night in a state park. Whereas camping had previously been costing about $14 in state parks it was now $32, you can tell you're getting near the keys! Today we headed down the amazing drive down here over countless bridges and lots of blue ocean to end up just north of Key West. We've booked into the KOA here (as it has it's own bar and beech!) and are planning a day off tomorrow and checking out Key West the day after.

Lunch on the beech at Key West:

After that small rest we're heading back up north starting our return journey to New York... although we've loved every minute of the trip I think we're both looking forward to coming home.

Giant Mice, Aligators and Snakes

2007-11-16T23:43:00.000Z

Well, that was exhausting!

Sunday meant Kennedy Space Centre Day. It's full of spaceships and things. (sorry, Dan wrote that bit).

As for Disney, I’m glad to say, it appears we may have gotten older, but happily not grown up :-) Still, three days and four nights at Disney was plenty – otherwise the constant cheeryness and everything being perfect may have driven me insane. Besides, Dan was running out of things to moan about ;-) We’re currently driving down towards the Everglades with some very loud Aerosmith on to make up for the almost constant ‘plinky plonky’ music.

We arrived at Disney on Monday night and booked in at the Fort Wilderness Campground, this had the advantage of being ‘on site’ but a fraction of the cost of one of the hotels. We were assigned campsite site 1505… er… ok! This place, like the whole of Disney World was HUGE. There weren’t actually 100 campsites in the 1500 loop, more like 21, but the campsite still was about 700acres. We had a really nice pitch and bearing in mind I’d only booked 4 days earlier we were still pretty much in the middle of everything and near the toilets as I’d requested, impressive. The campsite itself has 2 resturants, a bar, groceries etc, carriage rides, segway tours, tennis courts, basketball courts, big meadows to play in, 2 swimming pools, a beech with hammocks, boat rentals, campfire singalongs, nightly outdoor movies and it’s own stables that offer horse riding. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot but you get the idea. Needless to say, everything was clean and our site well equipped, it was even cheaper than other campsites in the area.

Our pitch: (this was the cheapest option)

While we were here we were planning 2 days in the theme parks (four of them) and a day in the water park – Blizzard Beech, simply because water parks are cool! Sunday night involved a bit of strategy planning as to what we really wanted to see. 2 theme parks in one day was probably going to be pushing it. I'll give a quick rundown as I'm sure you don't want to read a step by step account of our day, anyone wanting more info can ask when we get back:

Magic Kingdom – the trademark Disney. More for the kids (so it suited us!). Runaway mine train = classic rollercoaster fun, Monsters Inc Laugh Floor = a set done up like the factory in Monsters Inc with an interactive show with the cartoon - a stroke of genius and my favourite ever entertainment at a theme park. Awesome.
Amazing fireworks in the evening.

Epcot - Educational fun. Nemo adventure was cool (basically an aquarium so I'm bound to like it!). Lots of different 'Countrys' surrounding the lake, the England has a convincing pub that serves PROPER BEER and good fish and chips! lol!

Animal Kingdom - Coooooool! 2 Landies spotted, need I say more?! Excellent 'African Safari', convincingly done with some amazing animals and research taking place. The best water raft donut ride although I was *litterally* dripping when I got off! lol! Could have spent all day there, but had to go too:

MGM - Lots of shows, lots of good shows, One amazing show: Lights, Motors, Action (if only I could get a job there!). Rear wheel drive, motorbiked engined Corsa's are always going to be amusing! Had one kid crying though because they split Herbie in half! lol! Indiana Jones, still entertaining, back lot tour ok - but none of the cartoonists were working when we went :-( Fantasmic Evening show a bit overrated, but some amazing effects.

One for Sam and Max:

Blizzard Beech Water Park - Cool! Based on a freak snowstorm in Florida that's melting it's all 'ski resort' fashioned. Loads for everyone: 1 acre wave pools, lazy river floating thing, lots of flumes. Dan gets a medal for bravery as he did the 120ft almost vertical 'Summit Plummet' flume and got the mother of all wedgies! He recorded 52mph, I saw a 61 whilst waiting at the bottom! Apparently it hurts!

Proof that Dan is undeniably crazy, this is Summit Plummet:

We also went to Downtown Disney one evening to use our $15 voucher at Planet Hollywood for dinner. Lots of shops, including the largest Disney shop in the world (good job Mum wasn't with me!) and a superb Chocolate shop. Nice atmosphere to wander amoungst the bars and things. We had hoped to go to The House of Blues to check out some live music, but it was closed for a private function :-(

Finally, we met a nice English member of staff who told us some interesting Disney Stuff! But, it's not for writing on the blog, it's one for the pub over a nice pint of warm beer ;-)

So, in summary, Disney still do everything just that little bit better than everybody else, their attention to detail is incredible. We enjoyed ourselves but are definatly looking forward to getting into the Everglades National Park tomorrow and then heading down to the Keys to check out the Coral Reef and beautiful beeches. We were all themeparked out at the end of the stay, so I'm waiting 'till the trip back up for Sea World...

...Assuming we survive the night. The campsite we're at: 'Alligators and Snakes Campground' ... mm, interesting name.

The Deep South... YOIKS!

2007-11-11T23:57:00.000Z

Dan:

One thing Jen forgot to put on the last blog entry about New Orleans... The locals seem to be taking it all with a bit of good spirit. They have a bumper sticker there that goes as follows: "Took my Chevy to the Levy, but the Levy was... GONE!"

Anyway having left New Orleans and the best state park camp site we have ever used, we headed for Destrehan Plantation. This is an 18th century sugar plantation that was pretty interesting. All the staff who do the tours have to wear period costumes... very silly! At the height of their success, the Destrehan family had over 200 slaves living in rather scanky wooden shacks. These slaves had a big hand in the uprising that led to the ring leaders being beheaded and their heads put on stakes for all to see... Hmmm... nice!

Happily things have changed quite a bit since then and Louisiana is actually a really nice state, the people were some of the friendliest we've met so far.

A quick visit to a Walmart Express-lube for an oil change and we hit the road again and made tracks towards Florida along the south coast. The drive to Florida was all interstate, so not very exciting, but we did pass through Mississippi (the state, not the river!) and Alabama (Richard and Tracy's CD was put on with "Sweet Home Alabama" at full volume!).

We finally arrived in Florida late last night and camped in St Augustine, the oldest established city in the USA. For the first night in months we were able to sleep with the tent open. Yep, it's luuuuurvly and warm :-) In the daylight we took a short drive around and saw the European architecture. Then we headed off to Daytona beach. For $5 a day you can drive about 10miles of the beech. Well, it would have been rude not to, wouldn't it :-) Unfortunately you are not allowed to splash in the sea so we made do with enjoying the drive and rescuing the locals who had no idea how to drive on sand! We ended up dragging one car about 40feet along the beech after he'd managed to get hopelessly bogged down in the sand!.

Jen:

This is where our "holiday" begins, we will be doing all the touristy things for the next couple of weeks before we head back to New York and home. Actually, it's not that bad - we are booked into Disney for the next 4 nights, 2 days in the theme parks and two in the water parks - Hehe, but appart from that the plan is to visit NASA and the Kennedy Space Centre tomorrow and after Disney head down to the Everglades National Park and then down to the Keys - there's a KOA down there with it's own bar on the beech, lol! :-) When we head back up we'll visit Miami and SEA WORLD! Wahoo! That, I am a little excited about. As Thankgiving is somewhere in the middle of that lot we hope to find a nice little resturant that'll feed us as my birthday treat. Cool eh?!

P.S. My elbow is still killing me after falling off in Moab (almost a month ago now), any ideas if this is right?! It's ok usually, but if I lean on it it feels like someones stabbed it with a big carving knife! Ow! Answers on a postcard...

New Orleans - the city America forgot?

2007-11-09T14:51:00.000Z

Well, we did well heading south! By the end of the day we were at the Louisiana border and everyone was sounding very southern - as a consequence, we both sounded very English, it's very strange hearing yourself talk in a place like this! :-)

This was prehaps the 5th night on the trip we couldn't find anyplace to camp. The state park had shut the camping for the season and the RV parks were all closed up for the night, so we headed into a little town in search of a motel. We found one - £17 a night! It was you typical cheap motel, we even had a dead cockroach in the corner, lol! But the bedding was clean so that did us, it was also a bit warmer and Dan's toothpaste didn't freeze which was a bonus. We got a pizza from Pizza Hut, I think we were hte only people in town that night and settled down for a night in front of the tele (which means I got to watch Basketball all night, heaven :-) ).

The next morning was Dan's Birthday! Wahoo! 36 Today! I'd managed to sneakly get him a pair of long fingered Mountain biking gloves without him knowing at Rim Cyclery in Moab so I think he was quite pleased, although he then moaned because apparently that means he's got to buy me a pressie on my birthday. Grumpy git. Although I'd planned to cook him pancakes for breakfast as we were in a carpark next to the road we passed on that idea and just got going instead.

We were only abou 4 hours from New Orleans so pushed on only stopping for lunch at a Drive Inn which was quite cool! We'd planned to visit one of the old Plantation Houses on the Mississippi and have a look around the City before heading to the French Quater. We arrived a bit late to get all that done, so resolved to do the Plantation house tomorrow and headed into the city.

We looked around in the best way possible - we got lost! Well, not really, I knew we were rounghly heading in the right direction, but the devestation from Katrina was still plainly evident. Beautiful old houses were standing either half in ruin or abandoned and borded up, the roads were more like a rollercoaster ride and I was quite glad we had Charlie Camel and not my little Mini as I think getting down some of them would have been interesting! Everywhere you looked though there were messages of definance, many houses had sprayed on the boarded up windows 'we'll be back!' and you oculd see people working to clear debris. There were RV's and caravans scattered outside houses obviously holding the occupants whilst they worked to repair their properties yet everywhere we went people waved and smiled at Charlie, clearly the only way to cope is to get on with things!

The thing to remember - Katrina came through in 2005.. we're now in late 2007.. can you imagine neighbourhoods in New York or Washington still being in ruin over two years later? These neighbourhoods need help and I don't think they're getting it.

10blocks later and we were in the French Quarter - this is on higher land and was largly uneffected by the flooding. Well, the buildings were, apparently most of th workers come from the 80% of New Orleans that was effected so the businesses lost alot of workers and tourists that cancelled vacations, taking a hit financially. It is a stunningly beautiful part of the city with French/Spanish and Mexican influences in the buildings, this is clearly the toursit part of town as we looked at an old Paddle Steamer and the large numbers of bars and cafes.

We did our bit to boost the local economy by having a few beers in a micro brewery ;-) and of course to celebrate Dan's birthday.

As darkness drew in it was clearly time to find a place to camp so we headed out to one of the local state parks. 8ish miles on the map and 20odd later we found it, nice and secluded with free wifi (lol!), clean showers, free laundary... mm, why so many facilities? Ok, there's Aligators (which grow upto 20ft), Lynx, Coyote's... quite glad we've got the rooftent then! Still, a bargin at $18.

Birthday Pancakes this morning:

Sing along now… (Dan’s title) ARGH! (Jen’s title)

2007-11-09T03:16:00.000Z

So, where did we leave you? As you might have guessed we’ve been counting the miles off recently and seeing a few things on the way. Probably the easiest way is to do the brief highlights of each day since leaving Denver:

Day 1:

Heading south on the I25, 4:40pm – a bend in the road! Wow! (seriously, I made a note of the time).

Day 2:

This was a little more interesting, we’d spent the night in Las Vegas (NM not NV) and it was bloomin’ freezing. We were still heading south on the I25 today, but when we got to Socorro we took the 60 west for a bit so we could see the rather unimaginatively named VLA (Very Large Array), this is a radio astronomy telescope made up of 27 antennas with 25m dishes. It’s used by astronomers all over the US for various projects from studying the sun to various distant galaxies, each antenna can be moved on the tracks to span a distance of 13miles apart along each arm, at the largest configuration larger than the city of Washington DC It would take a antenna with a dish of 17miles wide to do what the VLA can do. It was pretty cool to see it all in operation – even better that is was free! Dan got very excited in his geeky Si-Fi way as it was in the film ‘Contact’ with Jodie Foster.

After driving 45miles in the wrong direction we thought we should get back on track and headed along the 380 east past the ‘Trinity Site’ – the site of the first nuclear bomb – we didn’t hang around and found a nice quiet place down the road to camp only to discover a leaking hub seal on the rear axle. As we were camped on BLM land in the middle of a field essentially, it was quite a way to the nearest town so we thought it best not to start the job here and put it on the ‘list of things to do tomorrow’.

Day 3:

Oh dear. Roswell. Well, it had to be done! We pulled up on Main Street to be faced with the funniest street lamps, I think I might ask HCC to introduce these in Eastleigh:

Roswell, as you probably know is the alleged site of an Alien space craft landing in the 1940’s which was confirmed by a member of the armed forces then quickly denied with several follow up stories including a weather balloon, Air Force dummy and probably several other things. We popped into the UFO Museum which was actually quite well done! I expected the worst I think, but they did a good job of trying to present both sides of the story when we could see they wanted to say ‘It was Alien’s!!’. Lots of eye witness accounts of the ‘spacecraft’ crash and subsequent search for bits of spacecraft and a bit of info on some interesting things like crop circles, ancient history etc. with only a few accounts sounding like they’d come from completely mad people :-)

Everything in the town was alien themed, even the Walmart had a spacecraft painted on the side and lots of inflatable Alien’s inside, but we liked them as they didn’t mind us using their car park to change the hub seal. Dan set to work and I went into do the shopping, I think he got the better deal! But, the people of Roswell are very friendly, a total of 6 vehicles stopped to see if we needed help/bits which was pretty good of them as we were well out the way at the back of the car park.

Job completed and we headed up on to the most hell-ish part of the trip for me – and the reason for the thread title – we were going towards… Amarillo. ARGH! 2 days of Dan signing ‘Is this the way to Amarillo’ is enough to drive anyone insane, good job they didn’t have an international airport or I probably would have been on the next flight home, lol!

As we crossed into Texas the Cattle Ranch’s began. Wow, these places are HUGE! Pen’s of cows as far as the eye could see, only separated by HUGE farm buildings and the odd HUGE dust storm (everything in Texas is HUGE!). As we crossed over the border we headed back into Central Time so lost an hour of travelling time so we decided to head to a KOA on the other side of Amar… no, I can’t even bring myself to type the word anymore! Did you know that place sits atop 90% of the worlds Helium? And I didn’t see one balloon :-( This win’s the award for the most noisy campsite we’ve stayed at, we should of known as in the brochure it stated ‘no interstate noise!’ but failed to mention the airport *next door* and the rail road the other next door. Lol!

As it was our only night in Texas we thought it right that we should go out for a good ‘ol Steak Dinner, and as recommended headed for The Big Texan - this win’s the award for the tackiest, yet funniest place we’ve eaten so far.

On the menu was basically every type of Steak you could imagine (don’t come in here looking for a salad) as well as some local delicacies such as fried Rattlesnake. Mmm, tasty! Our server was wearing a big hat and cowboy boots and the whole place was decked out like a huge dancehall/saloon. We thought we’d been caught in some really touristy restaurant only to realise practically everyone eating in there was local! Lol! We did get our server to admit he usually wears trainers and a baseball cap though, not the cowboy boots and huge hat he was working in. Still, the staff were friendly and the food was good so in my book that makes it a pretty good place to eat and apparently one of the most popular on Route 66.

Day 4:

Following on from eating at one of the most famous places on Route 66 we headed north on the I40 following the direction of the old road to Clinton and the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. On the way though we stopped at the Cadillac Ranch. One of Amarillo’s eccentric helium millionaires has ‘planted’ 10 Cadillacs in one of his fields next to the I40, it’s to show the different fins that were part of the designs from 1949 – 1963 and is open for people to decorate/graffti as they please, in fact, there were some cans lying around to encourage you to do just that!

We left our mark and wandered back onto the interstate heading for a Barnes and Noble, this made us very happy as we managed to get hold of a LRM so we could catch up on all the news from the UK Land Rover scene… boy, Billing was a bit wet eh?! Good write-up for Simon and X-Eng, and Shire got a couple of mentions too.

As we’d done quite a few bits of the actual route 66 as it exists now on our journey, we were keen to find out a little more. For $3 each the museum was a bargain and I’d highly recommend it. They’ve managed to salvage as many bits and pieces as they can and reproduced a few others to give an accurate account of the history of the road from LA to Chicago and everything in between. It was quite sad though and a living example of what happens when you build interstates (or bypasses in the UK) as many of the communities, or at least the businesses, disappeared once the new roads bypassed their towns and passing trade disappeared.

We stopped the night just west of Oklahoma City to yet another freezing evening and a night of going to bed with a warm hat on. We’ve had quite a few of these now and it seems to be becoming a theme with central America, warm days and then waking up to find all the water around us frozen (and Dan’s toothpaste – lol!). So, today we’re heading south even if we have to drive until Midnight!

Oo, better go, we turn off in 177miles…quick, get the map out…

Back on the Road... even though we prefer off-road!

2007-11-04T03:00:00.000Z

Well, after much umm-ing and arr-ing and a considerable amount of procrastination on my part, we finally dragged ourselves kicking and screaming away from Moab. Our route for the next few days will take us in a huge “U” shape, ending in Denver, basically following all the recommendations of places to visit from the guys in Salt Lake.

Having left Moab we picked up the 191 south and headed towards the Navajo Nation Indian Reserve and some of its offerings, firstly Monument Valley. But just south of Moab Charlie Camel decided to let us know that he didn’t want to leave either by getting a flat tyre. Imagine our surprise when we got the wheel off and saw this crack in the rim.. YOIKS!!

href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3O_UL1QtoCY/Ry02w0nmb7I/AAAAAAAAAWY/UoGYCo8_nZ8/s1600-h/bustedrim.jpg">

So that’ll be the end of that rim then. Anybody who has any suggestions about how this could happen we’d love to hear them!

Anyway, back on the road again and heading towards Monument Valley. This is the classic western landscape that everyone has seen the pictures of and includes such geological features at the Mexican Hat. We just drove through Monument Valley without going to the “Tribal Park” itself as according to the ‘Rough Guide’ you can pretty much see most of it from the main road. There are various Navajo-led tours around the valley itself, but we were content to just admire from afar.

Next stop on our whirlwind tour of this region was Canyon De Chelly (pronounced De Shey) National Monument, which had been recommended to us by a whole gaggle of people. The Canyon itself is a sacred place for the Navajo people and you are only allowed in with a guide. There are various view points along the rim that look down the 1000ft canyon, but as it was getting late we decided to camp the night at the FREE campground. That evening I had a go at repairing our wheel and the hole in the inner tube using the patented Wallace Gaffer-tape hole patching method ;-)

But not to fear, we put in a new tube in it and we’re now using it to mount the bikes on – we won’t run it on the interstates, the spare that was on the back is now on the bonnet, so fingers crossed we won’t get two flats at the same time.

The campsite and the Cayon itself were absolutely stunning, sadly, the rest of the reservation, well, wasn’t. It was kind of like Pilands on a bad day, Jen didn’t cope to well with the vast amount of dogs running around clearly homeless and the dead/uncared for animals that littered the sides of the road. Combined with the warnings about leaving your car unattended it didn’t make for relaxing visiting, so we planned to make a retreat after visiting the monuments and natural wonders we were planning on seeing.

The following day we were up bright and early and drove through 4 states in about 8 seconds – no, sadly the warpdrive still isn’t working – we were at Four Corners Monument. This is where you can stand in 4 states simultaneously, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

After all that excitement we were off again, this time in the direction of Mesa Verde National Park. On the way there we went through Cortez and saw the stereotypical classic American Diner. Well, as it was lunch time it seemed only right that we should pop in for a small snack (massive burger with huge portion of fries and as many free top ups of coke as you can manage!). These classic diners with their polished mirrored outsides and nasty glass tiled insides are getting rarer and rarer. We’ve seen a few on our travels, but it’s never been the right time of the day to stop. Unfortunately, this wasn’t “Peggy Sues” or “Rosies”, but a Denny’s. Never mind, it did the job and all the waitresses had really big 60’s hair doo’s!

We hauled our enormously over fed and gassed up bodies back to the car and took off again for Mesa Verde. This park has some of the best preserved cliff dwellings, built sometime between Christ and 1300AD by the ancestral Puebloan people. They got bored and moved out at some point, probably because they over farmed the land and bled it dry, but personally I reckon they moved out because they’d only get a short amount of sunshine during the day! (just encase you were wondering – it was actually drought – Jen)

Next stop was Telluride. We were actually passing through looking for a mountain road to Ouray that had been recommended to us as a stunning drive. Unfortunately it turned out that the road didn’t actually get as far as Telluride so we had to get back on the main roads. We eventually reached Ouray, a delightful little town and it was in the full swing of Halloween! We’ve all seen the films and stuff, but I never really thought that local people made that much of an effort, but people here really get into these things, houses get decorated with cobwebs, coffins, witches and of course the obligatory pumpkins, people get dressed up and there is a real happy, fun, party atmosphere… not like in the UK where you get a group of knife wielding spotty oik of a teenager wearing a hoody banging on your door and threatening to kill you cat if you don’t give ‘em a tenner!
We arrived slightly too late to visit the hot springs, so went out for a bite to eat instead. The following morning though, we made our way to the hot springs and spent an hour relaxing in the 102-106 degree f water while looking at the snow capped mountains. If only we could have some mountains overlooking Richard and Tracy’s back garden!

We then went in search of this road we’d been trying to find yesterday. I think we failed, (sorry Rob!) but we did find Engineers Pass, a mountain trail that led high up into the Uncompahgre National Forest and gave us some stunning views of the 14309ft mountain peak.

We left the trail after taking a million and 1 pictures and headed north again, this time towards Fruita. We’d heard from a couple of people that Fruita offered some good mountain biking. We arrived just as the visitors centre had closed, but had a little drive around town and found Over the Edge http://otesports.com/ . We popped in and asked about the biking and the chap serving us was fab. He knew straight away in which direction to point us. We also bought a book listing all the trails that have been created in the BLM land. The main difference between the biking here and at Moab is that here it is all single track stuff, created specifically for mountain biking… cool! :-) Moab provides a completely different experience with slickrock and sand, and the trails are quite often shared with motor bikes, ATVs, horses and of course “Jeeps”. The bizarre thing is that Fruita is probably on a par with Moab for what it has to offer the mountain biking enthusiast, but unless you are a local the chances of you hearing about are pretty remote, which is sad.
Anyway, we managed to get a couple of good trail done, Kessels Run, Prime Cut and Joe’s Ridge. The last one was brilliant, some really nice fast downhills. Jen freaked out being just ever so slightly scared of heights, but gotta give her credit, she only walked one small **EXTREME** downhill bit with a several hundred foot drop down either side. Me, well I just shut my eyes, peddled like billy-o, shouted a lot, and prayed!
The riding here is quite similar to what we have at home, so as we were slightly pushed for time, we made our escape, but have added it to our list of “Future Visits”.

Back on the road again, this time heading for Denver. I had joined the Solihull Society forum (a Colorado based Land Rover club) to ask all sorts of boring questions whilst we’d been planning the trip. And now we had the opportunity to meet a few of the core members. We arranged to meet at the Landsdowne Arms, an English style pub. How happy was I when I saw that they had Tetley, Bass and London Pride on tap! I could have stayed there all night. This is the first time in several months that I have had a pint of proper bitter. Mind you, it was still too cold!!
We had a good night talking to Tom, Jim (Jimfoo from LR4x4) and Todd, and it was great to meet them and their vehicles. It sounds like Colorado has just as much to offer as Moab, maybe more! So that’s another place added to the list of Future Visits then!

At the end of the evening we exchanged club stickers, and Todd kindly donated a Solihull Society Moab Rally t shirt to the “Keep Dan Warm in these freezing cold Nights” fund. Tom then led us to the nearest hotel, which happened to be a Marriott. But with my charm, sophistication and fluttering eye lids, I managed to blag a hotel suite that was bigger than our house for 50 quid! Bargain!

The south is calling, so we’ll be “bigging up” for Nascar from now on in the hope that we can get to Florida without getting shot!

Slickrock Rocks!

2007-10-30T00:33:00.001Z

After our National Park days we were eager for some more Slickrock action, we'd planned to head up to Moonlight Meadows a track that sounded fun for a bit of biking. Only we'd forgotten to look at the elevation on the diagram in the book - it started at 9,000 feet rising to 10,500ft over 4 miles uphill. We enjoyed the drive up into the La Sal mountains and when we got to the trail head we jumped out the car only to feel pretty much instantly freezing and lightheaded! lol! Opps. Maybe this was a mistake. Still, we carried on getting ready and I headed off to sign the book to say we were going off on the track only to find (luckily I thought!) a note from a couple that had done the track yesterday, apparently it was a quagmire of mud, ice and snow. Well, I guess that would make sense seeing as I was standing in snow reading the book! Needless to say, not wanting to damage the tracks, or die of altitude sickness we bottled-it, jumped back in the car and headed for more sunny low-altitude climes of Moab again. Wimps eh?

So, beaten by that track we headed for Flat Iron Mesa as that looked like a pretty easy track with some interesting spurs to investigate. Well, we were right about the easy. It was basically a 13 mile gravel road with lots of sand patches, now, we maybe novice but after about 2 miles of this it was so dull we decided to head back. We used the time wisely though - for wheely practise :-)

So, 2 disasters and feeling a bit downhearted we refused to give up. By this time it was heading to late afternoon so we looked for a short trail in the book and came across Bartlets Wash. Cool - about 6 miles by the look of it with some Slickrock playground time. We found it easily enough and it started well with us riding up the stream bed - it even still had puddles - wahoo! We soon came to the right turn which lead onto the slickrock and we scrambled the bikes up the first (vertical) section, I'm grateful we now have lighter bikes lol! Then, well, it was playtime. Basically we'd discovered a HUGE slickrock playground area - freeform all the way (just avoiding the cryptobiotic soil). We had a great time and it was amazing how much your tyres grip on this stuff, sideslopes and easily controlable downhills were very cool:

We eventually decided to head off for the night and as we had big plans for the next day we stopped at the Canyonlands Campsite in town... for easy access to...

THE SLICKROCK BIKE TRAIL.

HAhahahahahaha! :-) Now. This is a serious trail, only for experts and with a physical 'strenuous' rating. But, it's the trail Moab is known for, so we couldn't leave without giving at least the practise loop (actually the first 2 and a bit miles of the trail) a try. We waited until Monday morning so the crowds weren't there and we wouldn't be holding anyone up as there was no way we were going to be the annoying tourists trying something to difficult for them and ending up in big emergency services call out - so we wanted to be able to walk whatever we weren't happy riding.

We arrived to a packed carpark. Well, that didn't go to plan then! But the atmosphere was great. There was obviously the good bikers, but also the 'tourists' like us and even a young kid (about 10ish) who's birthday it was and had obviously bullied his parents to letting him bring lots of friends along! Still, we played it safe, packed the usual first aid kit, repair tools, twice as much water as we should need and some nutty bars/chocolate bars. After procastinating for as long as possible there was nothing left to do but to get on the bikes - the trail snaked out ahead lots of white dashes across a sea of slickrock, disapprearing down gullys and reappearing up impossibly steep hills. Awesome.

If you're scared of heights even the practise trail is, er, interesting - but well worth it. We rode the downhills hanging off the back of the bikes and peddled the uphills until our legs were on fire and loved everyminute of it! Ok, so we ended up walking a few times, but I only walked one downhill (big ledge dropping into a sandpit) which I was quite proud of. Along the way we met Randy (hehe) who was on his own on an older stumpjumper and clearly terrified! He was walking most the downhills so we teamed up with him so he wasn't alone and took frequent brakes to watch the ongoing madness on the rest of the trail. It was quite weird riding with someone more terrified than me, lol!

I only had one tricky moment as I was about 1 foot from the top of a very steep hill (read: hard to stand up on!), I couldn't quite get there and failed putting my feet down about a foot from the top... only it was so steep I couldn't get off the bike... or put the bike down - so I was stuck! Luckily, I had the camera in *my* camelbak so Dan couldn't take any pics!! With Dan's help and ending up on all fours I managed to scramble the final foot to the top dragging my bike behind me. lol! Before we knew it we got to the turn around point - loop back to the trailhead or go on to 10more miles of slickrock fun. We were both buzzing from the ride, but managed to let our brains control our actions. As much as we would have loved to continue, it was an expert trail and most the obsticles described as 'dangerous sections' were on the remaining track, so we were good (probably to the relief of the emergency services) and headed back to the car park. However, we only did so with a vow to return when we were more confident (and after a few spinning classes at the gym) to complete the rest of the trail. We returned to the car park in style riding off the small but steep downhill into the sand - I was very happy to still be in the saddle after that little obsticle. It was certainly the most biking fun we'd had in Moab so far.

We knew we'd saved the best 'till last an all that remained was to get a few pictures of Charlie on 'proper' slickrock. Doing 'Hell's Revenge' at night had meant we didn't really have any good photo's, so we headed for the nearby trail 'Fins and Things'. This trail rated ok as a difficult but not impossible so we enjoyed about an hour of playing on some really steep stuff, some long climbs and seemingly impossible ledges but as the trail cut back to the road we thought we were probably pushing it a bit for off-roading alone so did the sensible thing and headed back into town. Always best to finish on a high :-)

I know at least one person is sitting a home thinking: You're going to leave Moab and you havn't mentioned the Lionsback! Well, it is on private land and the private land is closed at the moment, but I did get a picture:

And we did do the next best thing:

lol! :-)

Whilst we were there we met Esther and Peter in a white Defender TD5 - excellent piece of equipment decked out in the back with everyting you could possibly need and a groovy pop-up tent. It was great to talk to some more Landy people and they seem to be doing some excellent trips (www.yakontour.ch), heading down into South America for the winter. Cool :-) The funny thing was, we'd seen them twice before around the Lava Beds National Park - but both times had been going too fast in the wrong direction! So we were very pleased to catch them this time.

With dinner at the Brewery and all the laundry done, thus ended a pretty perfect day in Moab and as we wanted to end with fond memories we've decided to head off tomorrow... well, that and we've got about 29 days and 1/2 of America still to travel around. Argh! ;-)

Moab's National Parks - Arches and Canyonlands

2007-10-29T23:57:00.000Z

Well, we thought it only right that whilst in Moab we should visit the national parks, this also gave our legs (and my bruises) and Charlie Camel a rest from the rigours of slickrock and sand.

We headed to Arches first as it's a full 5miles north of Moab central. We did our usual and called in at the visitors centre to collect our map and paper and then headed out along the main road with the plan to do some hikes when available (mm, great rest then ;-) ). The park is pretty similar to the terrain we had been experiencing in Moab, only with lots of arches. Suprise. Still, having watched the orientation video (aren't we good tourists) we knew roughly the bits and peices we wanted to see. Amongst them were Balancing Rock:

The Windows:

Landscape Arch (only 6ft thick at the narrowist point):

and of course, Delicate Arch - the unoffical symbol of Utah and what you'll see on all the numberplates around here:

Unfortuantly, it was 4pm by the time we got up to Delicate Arch so we didn't really have time for the 3hour hike up there, but it wasn't a bad thing as it was very busy. So we just took the 1mile hike to the view point (still bloomin' hard work uphill though!) and took some piccies from there.

As we were all arched out we made our way to Canyonlands via a cool trail called the Long Canyon:

Now, this is a bit of a weird national park. It centers on the convergence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, only to get there it's a 200mile drive and a 5 hour hike, you can see where we're going here! The park is divided into 3 areas, the Island in the Sky (the easiest to get to from Moab), the Needles and the Maze. The needles are pretty self explanitory and the Maze is full of stories like 'if you go there you'll get lost and die' - you can tell when you're back in a National Park! That was the area that Butch Cassidy and his gang hid in and it worked as all the lawmen were too scared to go in to get him out.

So, we headed to the Island in the Sky after a beautiful night of rough camping just up the road. Not a bad view eh?

We arrived the same time as the BMW Mini club, but they weren't overly chatty, grumpy lot. So we settled down to watch the Ranger talk about relationships in the dessert - did you know the tarantulas can get to 6" long?! Eh?! No-one told me?! Still, we have yet to see one, I'm just going to make sure I don't have to get up in the middle of the night now. We then drove the few roads within the park to the viewpoints, we could of cycled the White Rim trail, but it's 103miles long and you're not allowed to do it without a vehicle as well as it's impossible to carry enough water! We could of driven it, but the fees were quite expensive and as it was basically a gravel road we thought we'd have more fun on the Moab trails. So, after admiring the views we headed back out and towards Moab.

On our way back we pulled in to have a look at the petroglyphs on the Potash Road created a long time ago... er.. about 400 - 600 BC if I remember correctly?! Most of Moab uses designs from these images in the marketing and sculptures around town, so it was cool to see them 'in the flesh' as it were:

We’re on top of the world…

2007-10-26T03:50:00.000Z

Or at least that’s how it felt. We trucked on up the “moderate” trail with the above title expecting it to be a tad on the easy side. For the majority of the trip it was too, but towards the end we were greeted by large axle twisting rock steps. Nothing that Charlie Camel couldn’t handle tho, he walked up the rocks without a so much as a slip of a wheel.

Its at this point that I feel I should let you into a bit of a secret… We keep praising Charlie Camel for making it along these AWWWWESOME trails, but in actual fact there is a lot of driver skill too! No, seriously, I know you all think I’m a throttle happy V8 lover, but in actual fact, I can drive a diseasel too ya know ;-)
Anyway, we made it over the last mile of the trail which turned out to be more on par with a difficult trail and finally reached “The Top of the World”. It was well worth it! We were at about 6500ft, with an 800ft drop right in front of us. Jen, being a little shy of anything exceeding 10ft, decided that she was going to enjoy the view from a safe distance while I did the Can-Can right on the edge. Oh, and then we parked Charlie on an overhanging ledge :-) Again Jen squeaked!

But the view was amazing. The ledge that we ended up on was right behind Fisher Towers where we camped the previous night.

On the way back down, despite being battered and bruised from yesterday’s rock-eating hilarity, Jen decided to bike the trail back down to the bottom. Gotta give her credit, she didn’t smash all her teeth out this time and was actually a lot quicker than the lardy camel back down to the bottom.

We finished the day off by checking into the Canyonlands Campground again, on Main St so that we could abuse the showers again, and so that I could finally shave off the forest that has appeared around my chops. Several blunt razors later we went for a bite to eat and a few glasses of wine at Eddie McStiffs (great name…. restaurant is for sale if anyone wants to move out here!!)
Having spent the last few days having so much fun, we have decided that we need to visit a National Park again so that we can be told we can’t ride our bikes and that any walking we may want to do will involve several months back country hiking with a very high chance of premature death! So we are going to head out to Arches National Park and if we make it out without dehydration or hyperthermia, we intend to visit Canyonlands too. Don’t worry folks, we’ll be taking a few “High Energy” nutty bars with us and at least 2 litres of water each :-)

'Keeping up with the Chadwicks' :-)

2007-10-26T00:21:00.000Z

Whilst sitting around a campfire a couple of nights ago Dan and I were reminising about old Landy shows and mountain biking at home when we came to a conclusion. Keeping up with the Chadwicks costs a fortune! Andy and Jane Chadwick, our great Yorkshire friends were present and played a big hand in persuading us a Camel would be the ideal expedition vehicle, not the shiney, reliable 110CSW we had at the time. They were also responsible for our first 'proper' off road mountian biking experience in the Lakes (on the way to our Scotland holiday to test the new Camel expedition vehicle we'd just brought and started kitting out....). Mm. So that's a count of 1 Camel 110 and 2 new mountain bikes. lol! :-)

Needless to say, getting the Camel was one of the best things we've done and we're LOVIN' THE BIKING IN MOAB! :-) So, thanks Chadwicks, the bank balance hates you but we love you :-) Hehe.

We'd picked Klondike Bluffs as our first ride as it's one of the only Moderate/Difficult rides in the book (which means easy in Moab) and had been recommended to me as a good first run by Rim Cyclery. When we arrived at the car park there was already a few vehicles unloading, even though it was a Tuesday in late October. We unloaded, filled the Camelbaks with water, first aid kits and PB&J sandwiches and headed out on the trail.

The trail was 5 1/2 miles uphill, but then you got to run round and come back down again... cool. We started out on tracks and sand but soon hit the slickrock and discovered the dinosour trails - Coooooooooooool! The best thing was, they were quite nicely spaced so left ample time to get your breath back as you pretended to examine them - we did notice, we certainly weren't the only ones!

I found it quite weird as I was so used to a heavy bike when I powered up the hills my new light bike just tend to lift off the ground! lol! It took a bit of adjusting the technique but I was getting it towards the top of the slickrock, which was lucky as in some places it was pretty steep, certainly granny-gear territory. Nearing the top of the first slickrock section we came across a v-gully, innocent looking enough I thought I'd give it a go, esepcially since I'd spent most the ride up lifting the front wheel of my bike - Dan was ever supportive and said 'no-way, don't be stupid, I'll end up picking you up of the ground' ... Nah, I thought, well probably, but you don't learn unless you try!

Note to self: Practise riding at home. Slickrock is hard. And hurts. Alot.

But hey! It was fun trying! Anyone who had a bet on 6 brusies, 1 cut and 2 grazes has won. I was quite close to throwing up, seeing as I'd just ridden 2 1/2 miles up slickrock then winded myself, but luckily (for Dan) it didn't come to that. Dan has kindly re-inacted the moment itself so you can laugh at me. It doesn't look alot, but it was bigger in real life, honest. Dan refused to try it and you know how mad he is on a bike:

The rest of the ride up passed quickly as the views were stunning and the slickrock riding very cool. You do have alot of grip, but there's also *alot* of bumps and technical bits and pieces to keep you alert. We got up to the top to find a bike rack at the trailhead into Arches National Park, so we parked up and walked the short way in to enjoy lunch with a view.

After resting a recouperating we jumped back on the bikes to enjoy the downhill we'd earnt on the way up - it took us half the time but had to be double the fun!

We climbed back into Charlie and headed back to Moab to jetwash all the red mud off. Cool as it was (you're right JU, he did look cool!) it was doing a pretty efficent job of blocking the radiator. Once completed we headed out to Fisher Towers, a small track leading to a campsite with, again, a pretty cool view:

A night of stargazing ensued and a plan concieved to tackle the 'Top of the World' Trail in the morning.

< insert imaginative title here >

2007-10-24T03:52:00.000Z

Second post in 24hours, aren't you lucky...

The first evening when we were left to fend for ourselves in Moab we decided to drown our sorrows and headed for the Moab Brewery. This is the only micro-brewery in Moab and very cool it was too. It’s amazing how instantly you feel at home when there’s several nice bikes hanging from the ceiling/on the room dividers, including a nice Santa Cruz. Other decoration included a tent, a figurine climbing the wall, a raft, a gilder and half a Jeep Rubicon. The beer cost $3 at the bar and they served Jacket Potatoes, it was like my spiritual home, lol! We tried most the local beers – my personal favourites are Scorpion and Dead Horse encase you’re ever in the area, they had a good range and even sold pint glasses to help me avoid my felonious hobby of collecting brewery’s pint glasses (we brought two in the hopes that one gets home ok). We stopped at the campsite in town ‘Canyonlands Campground’, which was ok if a little noisy, but importantly enabled us to have a shower and was within easy walking distance of the brewery.

The next day we decided to have a day off. Go on, I know you want to laugh. To be honest at times this trip has felt like an epic struggle to avoid the worst of the weather/get to places ‘on time’ to enjoy them properly and, if I’m honest, the inclination to avoid wasting a minute has lead to us being pretty ‘busy’ most the time. So, we got up late, packed up, parked on the street in Moab and after sending quick ‘thank you’ notes to Rob and Jez we spent the morning and early afternoon wandering around Moab.

It’s a nice little town, especially nice as it seems to be retaining some charm (i.e. doesn’t have a Walmart yet). I’m sure it’s not what it used to be as a little mining town as every other shop front is a gift shop/bike shop/café but still feels friendly. We dropped Dan’s bike into Poison Spider, simply as we’d heard of these back in the UK, we finally found someone who could change his brakes over and give his bike a once-over as he was having problems selecting a few gears and after that we trundled off for a late lunch/dinner at the Slickrock Café – now, if you’re in Moab and fancy a smoothy, this is the place to be  We ordered a sandwich and didn’t have to eat for the rest of the day, the food was good. By 3pm we were bored with our day-off (mm, we lasted 4 hours) and decided to head on out on a trail and find a place to camp in the middle of nowhere for the night. We took Kane Springs Creek Road out to Hurrah Pass and did a bit of Chicken Corners Trail, I say a bit as Dan started doing most of it in highbox (at speed) and I wasn’t handling it well after the big lunch! Still, it was getting dark, so after taking some fantastic photo’s and admiring the scenery we headed back down to camp in one of the many marked areas we’d spotted on Kane Springs Trail.

My favourite picture of the holiday so far:

This is the life :-) We weren’t allowed to collect wood and had forgotten to pick some up in town but thankfully, messy campers abounded and we managed to collect enough from used fire rings to have a fire that lasted ‘till 10:30pm. The moon was bright and the stars were out, after all the noisy campsites it’s fantastic to sit somewhere completely quiet. We had a cold night, temp’s down to 25F – I was freezing, but that probably had something to do with not having dinner as I was still full from lunch.

We woke late and had to pick Dan’s bike up, but couldn’t resist trying the proper Kanes Creek Trail which crosses the creek lots of times. It was marked as a difficult, but the Hell’s Revenge hadn’t been too bad, so with promises to turn back if it looked dodgy we headed off. We’d noticed several vehicles in town the day before with lots of red mud – and true to form, even in the dessert we can find mud:

Hehe! Ok, so it was splashy mud, but by the looks of the tyre tracks going in and out it was quite popular. We enjoyed the trail, lots of wash-outs, narrow rocks and tippy sections made for interesting driving, but again, Charlie Camel walked it all with confidence. We got to a section that looked a bit dodgy and both got out to have a look, half the trail had been washed away and built up again with stacked up rocks, with a fall of about 30ft if it collapsed I thought I’d better test it so jumped on the rocks only to almost disappear down the canyon! I won’t be driving the Camel over that then! We found another route over the top, but in involved a steep decent and assent on sand – Mm. Remembering the last time we drove on sand we didn’t think it was a good idea to attempt it encase Charlie got stuck in a v-gully with nothing to winch from. So, reluctantly we made the decision to turn back. Just as we did an older couple in a Rubicon trundled up the trail, the chap was spotting for the lady but not really looking what she was doing and she was pretty much ignoring every instruction… it seemed oddly familiar, lol! They got to the wash out and had a look, they also didn’t really fancy either option but were determined to keep going. Bizarrely they chose the washout route as they didn’t want to risk damaging the skid plate on a rock on the safer trail… err…ok… personally I’d prefer that option to rolling sideways down a gully, but their choice! They did however pick a good route and although the lady pretty much ignored the bloke again and almost run him off the edge of the track whilst shouting ‘coming through!’ they made it unscathed. There’s something to be said for short, light vehicles. Even then, they had put ½ a tyre on the loose rocks, so even though we were tempted, it was pretty obvious Charlie would probably put a *whole* tyre on the loose rocks and without anyone else to help us out should we get into trouble neither of us really fancied the risk. We stayed around to ensure they cleared the obstacle safely as they didn’t have a rollcage and after they disappeared into the distance we made our way back.

Err...

I got to drive this time and was quite proud of myself considering there was some *very* big side slopes, my own personal enemy. It’s all about the confidence.

After we got off the trail it was coming up to 2pm so we decided we really should head into town and pick Dan’s bike up. We got to Poison Spider and the bike was ready and waiting, they brakes had been swapped, but the gears hadn’t been looked at – despite us paying for the work. I left Dan to have a word with the chaps whilst I went off on my Stumpy to look for a shop who may be able to get me some angled handle bars. Mine are great, but without any upsweep they put me quite off balance when negotiating downhill sections. I hadn’t been too impressed with Poison Spider (talking on the phone whilst serving you, you having to wait until they’d finished their conversation about the weekend before asking if they could help etc) so wanted to find somewhere else, ideally someone who’d have some Specalized bars to match my bike (yeah, posy I know). I found my way to Rim Cyclery and wandered in off the street with a filthy bike (it’d been on the back of Charlie) and I couldn’t have found any more helpful guys. I spoke to Johnny who had a ’07 Stumpjumper Hardtail so was impressed with my good taste in bikes, lol! He wasted no time in grabbing my bike, telling me off for it being dirty and using the wrong lube for Moab (in a nice way though!). He got straight too it and tried adjusting the bars as much as possible to try and get me into a better riding position, he put them up as high as possible and adjusted the angle explaining to me all the while what he was doing so I could adjust it myself afterwards. It didn’t quite work though, but not to worry they had several handlebars I could try – from $20 cheapy’s upwards. We tried a set of Specialzed ones that they use on the full suspension Stumpjumper and they worked perfectly  Not only that, they looked like they belonged on the bike. Whilst talking Johnny mentioned enviously the white saddle on my ’08 Stumpjumper, I laughed and said I’d much prefer a black one! It took him about 10 seconds to pull a new body geometry black one from under a counter, the same as mine, only new and black – the deal was on. He also cleaned and lubed up my bike, adjusted my gears and brakes and checked all the vital components before letting me out the workshop. He refused to charge me for labour and threw in some stickers and a water bottle – he must have really liked the white saddle! Needless to say, my bike is transformed, even with the small amount of riding I did this afternoon it feels so much better to be a good riding position and I think it looks ‘awesome’ with the black saddle. As Johnny said – ‘You’ve got to Represent’ … I’ll work it out soon. If in Moab, go to Rim Cyclery – don’t bother with Poison Spider (in my opinion of course).

Now *that* is a cool bike:

Only problem was, I’d told Dan I was just going to go for a quick ride. Opps. Almost an hour later he was getting worried! Still, he laid on the emotional blackmail and didn’t give in until I’d brought him dinner and several pints of beer (from the joint account! - Dan).

After a busy afternoon we settled for finding a campsite to do washing/update the blog and plan some trails for the next day. Now Dan’s bike is sorted and I feel 100% more confident we’re going to hit the first of the trails on the bikes to give Charlie a day off and see if we can last without a trip to hospital. I can’t wait :-)

Heaven and Hell('s Revenege)

2007-10-24T00:22:00.000Z

Today I ikll be mostly writingf the blog with my glovfes on. It’as cold. Ansd dan wil.l. moanm if I SIT too near te fire with te laptop..;. Ok. So that’s not going to work… I’ve taken them off so we’re going to have to make this quick! Lol! :-)

Utah. Amazing. Definitely in the running for my favourite state of the trip so far. Admittedly, it did have a huge advantage. At the joint leaving party and Mikes birthday party before we left, Jez had given us a whole host of contact details for useful people in the US should we run into trouble, he’d also rang his long-suffering friend Rob Hardy, of Portal Tek fame ( Portal Tek, Domination Through Innovation - trust me, this is proper engineering and looks shiney too. Although he laughed at my idea of Purple Portals, lol!) at 3am in the morning to ask if he’d show us around the off-roading in Utah. We met up with Rob at Great Basin Rovers ( Great Basin Rovers run by ‘Uncle Bill’ and his daughter Shaun, lovely people with copious amounts of cool Land Rover stuff and british engineering – including a 1960’s Mini Cooper S, a very wood-rotted Morris Traveler, and a phone box… cool) on Friday afternoon along with a couple of his friends, Jim and Family, Jerrod and one very funny bloke who’s name has escaped me at the moment, how embarrassing. We were closely followed by a 1980 something Rangie that Rob had picked up for $500, lots of new bits, but lots of normal Rangie complaints like rotting sills, no footwells etc. Still, this was to be Rob’s run around for the next few months and off-road toy for the next day’s trip to Moab. Cool.

Jim and family kindly offered us a room for the night, as did Shaun, but we thought it only right we should be going to the workshop with Rob and the others to prepare the Rangie for the next day’s challenge and sort a few jobs on the other vehicles. Rob is currently living in his workshop whilst Portal Tek takes off and I’ll tell you now – it’s a dream come true! None of this working outside in the rain.

So, we spent the night helping Rob out with a few little jobs and got to bed about 2am whilst Rob stayed up to finish off some Portal Tek work so he could play at the weekend, that’s dedication for you.

We had a few jobs to do in the morning, including getting some pipe to replace the blocked sections of the Rangies exhaust and a nut to assist with the putting back on of one of the rear trailing arms as when taking the nut off it stripped the existing thread, it’s always the simple jobs that take the time. Still, those jobs completed and after an excellent breakfast at Dee’s Jim’s car trailer was loaded up (not the kind of trailer you get in the UK!) and we started the journey to Moab.

Jerred had previously told us how you could get all kinds of weather in Moab, all within a day and the journey down confirmed that for us. We went from rain in Salt Lake to snow in the mountains and dust storms as we crossed closer to Moab – wow. That was all in about 2hours!

We arrived in Moab and you could tell what sort of town you were in straight away, the main street was filled with restaurants, bike shops, café’s, juice bars, bike shops, pizza parlors and some more bike shops, all interspersed with Jeeps and a few D90’s. Cool. It’s a similar atmosphere to Whistler but in southern Utah! Jim parked the transporters and we headed in for some good pizza and to meet Rob’s friend Jeremy before hitting the trails. It took us slightly longer than normal to unload the cars as Jarrod had managed to lock the keys in.. and being 17, only had $50 for the whole trip - so no locksmith for us, opps! Jeremy managed to blag a coat hanger from a motel and after using that and several other implements they managed to spring the lock on the boot. I bet he'll never live it down!

It was already dark before we headed out at about 8pm and we were conscious Jim and family were heading back that night, but Rob stuck to the plan and we headed for Hells Revenge. Now, this is our first time on slick rock, it’s dark/cold and Charlie’s fully loaded, let me read you an extract from our trail book about Hell’s Revenge:

Numerous steep climbs and descents over sandstone domes and ledges, excellent traction enables vehicles to surmount inclines of incredible steepness, but plenty of power is necessary. Make sure your vehicle is geared properly. Several tippy spots will test the leaning ability of most vehicles, it’s important to have excellent front and rear approach angles on your vehicle and good articulation. Not recommended for stock vehicles.

Lol! It was EXCELLENT! The trail started immediately with a large fin (think Lions Back) and all we could see was darkness to either side, it was interesting! Climbing up the large domes was initially intimidating, but Charlie Camel excelled himself and chugged up them all in 1st low, awesome. I’ve always loved off-roading the Camel, there’s something reassuring about all that weight he even surprised me that night though taking everything with reassuring ease. When we got to the split in the trail we decided to head out to the Overlook. It was very dark. Here’s the view:

From left to right: Jerrad, Jim, Kerry (mm, maybe Carry, sorry :( ), Rob, Dan, Jeremy
(appologies for miss-spellings or getting names wrong, I'm rubbish with names, you would never think I used to be a teacher)

Lol! On the way back Jeremy was driving the Rangie and attempted to climb a 3ft ledge, it might have worked but after a few attempts it became apparent there was no drive to the rear axle. This may have had something to do with the odd wheels on the back or attempting to climb the ledge, but who knows?! Still, with no drive to the rear axle the Rangie started struggling, so it was hitched up to Jim’s Toyota 4runner and after Jerrods attempt at finding the trail himself failed we lead the way out. I think 6 spot lights, two headlights and a torch were ideal for this situation, don’t let anyone ever tell you roof lights are unnecessary! Even with those it was hard to follow the trail back in the dark, the tell tale black marks on the rock fade as you get close to them and the small white markers aren’t glow in the dark – and oversight I reckon.. mmm, maybe I should move into ‘traffic management’ in Moab?! So, I did my quality co-driver work and jogged/walked about 3,000 miles in the cold and dark, it was actually excellent fun as I got to watch the trucks working as they negotiated some pretty cool obstacles and made me feel less guilty about the amount of pizza I’d eaten :-) It was interesting though, I was using both legs and both arms to climb some of the inclines at several stages, Dan confirmed the steepness by telling me everything fell out of the dashboard.

We arrived safely back from the trail and had a brief inspection of the Rangies back axle– they’d done a good job! Rob had to have a look so a pair of pliers opened the hole and part of several planet gears fell onto the high street.

A quick decision was made and the Rangie was loaded up to go back to Salt Lake with Jim whilst Rob jumped in Jeremy’s Jeep Grand Cherokee to find a campsite for the night. We headed down to Hunter Canyon south of Moab to camp in possibly one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever camped and, more importantly, all had a lie-in in the morning.

Sunday morning started late as we wandered into Moab for breakfast at the Jailhouse (thanks Jeremy!) before convincing him he really wanted to take his nice shiney vehicle out on the trails. He finally agreed, but only if it was a reasonably easy one so Rob picked out Gemini bridges as a more scenic route (although still rated ‘moderate’ in the book, hehe). With the snow on the distant mountains and the red rock this was truly stunning. Although an easy trail we had some fun at the end heading down to the bridges and we spent most of it just enjoying the view.

There was a rather worrying plaque at the top though:

Jerrod assured us he was drunk and drove of the edge – don’t try this at home kids! We had a wander around waved to some Jeep owners at the bottom of the canyon and enjoyed the view.

Spot the Jeep:

Dan and Rob decided to try and stand on the thinnest bits of rock possible ‘just for fun’, completely mad both of them :-) it snowed a bit and we headed back down, Rob suggested with both rode the bikes back down but I had my jeans on and I’ve already got a 4 inch rip in them from doing exactly that, so we unloaded Dan’s bike and I handed the keys to Rob to drive the Camel back to the bottom – it was worth it to see him try to use the gearstick left handed, lol! I think he did much better than I would have done in the same situation.

At the bottom of the trail we waved goodbye as everybody headed back home, I was sad to see them go but there was already mutterings about coming back next weekend. Finger’s crossed :-)

N.B. My hands are so cold now they’re turning purple, so I can’t cross my fingers, but the intention is there…

(P.S. we're a couple of days behind on the blog due to avoiding formal campsites, but will try to upload some more about the last couple of day's tomorrow morning or later tonight.)

WELCOME TO MOAB!

2007-10-21T23:18:00.000Z

Its just like Whistler only you have to pedal up the hills rather than get a ski lift to the top and you can go off-roading as well... Heaven!

Full post to come later, but for now we need showers and beer... and sleep!

Salt Lake City

2007-10-19T16:51:00.000Z

Good morning all :-)

Well, yesterday we took an easy drive up route 89 carefully avoiding the interstates to get from Bryce to Salt Lake City. It is *alot* warmer up this way, which I think is a good thing.

We arrived late last night so havn't seen much of the city yet, other than the fact it is surrounded by some beautiful snow capped mountains. We're planning on having an investigate today and heading out to the salt flats where they used to set all kinds of speed records etc. Apparently the only one of it's type in America.

So far Utah has been pretty cool, some amazing national parks and lovely little villages - alot less of the trailers and falling down shacks than we've seen in other parts of America. We don't really get that in the UK, but I guess that's to do with land availability etc. Why bother knocking the old house down when you can buy 40 acres on the edge of town for $39,500 (about £18,500) - seriously.

Hopefully we're meeting up with Jez's friend Rob over the next few days as he is threatening to show us some good off-roading - wahoo! Then we'll be in Moab until at least the end of October, so hopefully some interesting stories coming up soon :-)

Not long 'till we're back now - make the most of the peace and quiet ;-)

Jen

Bryce Canyon: Not quite what it says on the tin!

2007-10-18T00:45:00.000Z

Today started bright and earlyish and only being 12 miles down the road from Bryce Canyon we had an advantage over our usual mornings. We planned to head down and spend the day investigating this area due to Graham's (Dan's Dad) claims it was well worth a vist.

And Wow. Indeed it was :) It had the advantage over the Grand Canyon of being accessible to mear mortals and full of Hoodoos, formed when ice and rainwater wear away the weak limestone and of course - the catch it wasn't actually a *real* canyon. It wasn't formed by flowing water but by ice wedging and chemical weathering. Aren't I full of interesting facts today?

We visited the vistors centre and spoke to a nice ranger who told us everything we needed to know so we grabbed a hiking map (a bargin at $1.99) and headed out into the Canyon itself. It's hard to describe, full of hoodoos: amazing spires, what seem to be high walled canyons and the beatiful blue sky topped it off nicely. Still a picture says a 1000 words, so it'll save my fingers:

Spot Dan in this one:

After an afternoon of hiking we decided to drive up the park road to look at the 'natural bridge', at almost 9000ft it was bloomin' freezing! So we did a great tourist thing of running from the car snapping a pic or 3 and running back again. Fab. Dan did get stopped along the way by a chap who asked if ours was the Camel he saw around Guildford... weird! Small world. It wasn't us, but we know who's he's thinking of.

We wanted to catch the Ranger program in the evening all about the stars, but that didn't start until 7:30. We checked out the only campsite left open at Bryce, they're expecting -6C (not taking into account wind chill) and 50mph winds tonight, with a 30% chance of rain. Mm. Not much fun! Knowing the average was 22inchs of snow for this month we decided to head a couple of 1000 ft down back to the KOA we stayed in last night. However, we were both still a bit worried as only 12 miles down the road they get pretty similar weather. Although we could camp, it would be a bit freezing. So, we took the opportunity to hire a KOA Kamping Kabin (ARGH I HATE THOSE 'K's'!) and at $40 (£20) for the night for light, heat, a comfy bed and electric it was a bit of a no-brainer.

Only problem is... we still have to walk to the toilets...

As an update, the ranger programme was pretty good, even better the telescopes afterwards, we saw the craters of the moon and Jupiter and the 3 of it's moons visible at the time... coooooool.

Grand Canyon: Does exactly what it say's on the tin!

2007-10-17T04:10:00.000Z

Grand: impressive in size, appearance, or general effect
Canyon: a deep valley with steep sides, often with a stream flowing through it.

..it was indeed a Grand Canyon. Problem is, once you've pulled up and gone 'wow' what do you do then?! lol! Apparently, the average trip to the Grand Canyon lasts 4 hours, with just 45minutes spent looking at the Canyon itself, compared to almost 2 weeks in the 1980's.

You can't walk down it, well, you can, but you'll probably die and it will take you 2 days at least. From the moment we got there we were inundated with stories about people that were foolish enough to think they could walk down and back up again - including a story about a woman who ran the Boston Marathon in just over 3 hours, yet died trying to hike back out the Grand Canyon. That was more than enough to put us off! You can take a mule ride down, for over $600 each, or a helicopter over te top for just over $200 each... Mm. Rafting! Ah! that sounds fun... only smooth water at this time of year though :(

Not to be disuaded we were determined to find something to do and beat the average 4hours stay so we wandered into the visitors centre and read some more stories about people dieing of exhaustion or falling over the edge (cheerful place this). However, we chatted to a friendly ranger and although in true National Park style you can't ride your bike on *any* trails, you can ride your bike along one of the rim roads. We thought this sounded like a plan as there were over 10 viewpoints scattered along the road and the only other way of getting there is shuttle bus. Now, shuttle buses maybe a good idea, but they are a Universe in which all the stereo-types in existance seem to manifest themselves to reality... from the brash rude Old Texan Couple to the loud German to the Japannese tourist with 14 video cameras and, in our case, the tired English couple wishing they were anywhere else but here. So, since Denali, we've avoided shuttle buses! lol!

We spent the night at the campsite in the South Rim Villiage with plans to get up early and get cycling after we'd watched the sun go down over the Cayon - this is a must if you're ever in the area.

Monday morning and we awoke bright and early, I made Dan boiled eggs and soliders in bed with a hot cup of English Tea and a present of a Grand Canyon Fridge Magnet as it was our Anniversary ... he responded with 'is it?!'. It's good to follow tradition :-) We packed up and drove into the village to park Charlie up near the beginning of the road, we unloaded the bikes and made some sandwiches for lunch before starting the ride. 5 minutes in, my legs were aching and I couldn't breathe... Mm. I know I havn't been to the gym for 3 months but it shouldn't be this bad!! Admittely the first 3 miles was one of those killer gradual hills, but the answer was found at the first view point, I hadn't realised - we were cycling at between 6,500ft and 7,500ft all day. Phew! Thing is, with Moab at 4,000ft I hope it's a bit easier, or I might need my health insurance! lol!

By the end of the day and nearing the end of our 16mile ride I was starting to get the hang of it so much so that when Dan made a joke about liking riding behind me as he could go at my easy pace he soon found himself a speck in the distance as I accelerated up the 4mile hill - Hehehe. I love my bike.

Still, it was definatly worth the effort. We traversed all the view points getting our timing almost perfect so we arrived just after the shuttle buses picked up and the easy pace of the ride meant we could enjoy the views as we cycled along.

That evening we booked into the campsite on the furthest east point of the Grand Canyon. We saw a ranger who's comment: 'Nice Defender!' should certainly not go unnoted. It was amazing that for once, Charlie wasn't being called a 'Jeep thing', 'rig' or 'hippie mobile!'. We had a quick chat with him and it turns out he likes his off-roading and it was benifical to us as he recommended a place to go and watch the sunset a couple of 100yrds down from the campsites ampitheatre. Fantastic as no-one ever goes there, true to form, I grabbed a coke and Dan grabbed a beer and we headed on down there to find a truely desserted spot from which you could see the plains, the north rim and the river winding it's way through.

We watched the sun go down and headed back to the campsite to cook and anniversary dinner of beef in red wine/garlic and baked banana's with Cadbury's Chocolate (that Mum had brought over - thanks Mum!), mini-marshmallows and Baileys. Mm. Yum. When the stars came out it was amazing. With a distinct lack of light pollution it was hard to make out the constilations there were so many, pretty amazing. However, it did make me a bit sad, after the excellent evening we'd had with the fire, reading books and looking at the stars I walked to the toilets amid a sea of air conditioned RV's.... every one housed people sat inside watching television. I doubt they'd lit a fire or looked at the stars or stopped to talk to a Ranger long enough to find the best spots. Sad really.

That night I awoke to hear a group of Coyotes howling, it would have been amazing but I really needed the loo and was too scared to get up! lol!

Today we headed on over to check out Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. Zion looked amazing, but again, it was shuttle buses or a 3 day hike... We had a wander around, visited the visitors centre and then realised the clocks had gone forward an hour and we raelly should find a campsite! Desparate for a shower we headed to the nearest KOA, 12 miles from Bryce Canyon so we're planning on spending the day there tomorrow. Hopefully we can do it more justice than Zion.

Vegas... love it or hate it?

2007-10-14T01:59:00.000Z

Firstly, before we get into whats been going on over the last couple of days... Congratulations to Dave and Jules (Jens bruv and sister-in-law)! Jules gave birth to Harry David James Rees at 8:19am on the 12 or 13th... Sorry, we're not sure cos we don't know if the text we got shows the time it was sent or the time it was recieved, something like a 8hr time difference and its all very confusing, so we are just going to drink a beer or six in celebration! We can't wait to meet him :-) Here is the little blighter (sorry about pic quality, its from a text messege!)

Before we got to Vegas we spent the day driving around Death Valley. It's kind of a bizarre place. Nothing lives there apart from the most stubborn mountain sheep, the odd rattlesnake and some small rodents that are meals for the snakes.Vegetation is pretty much non existent. It was originally the home of the Timbisha Shoshone Indian tribe who were a bit miffed when they got kicked out by the white man... same old story really. You kinda get the impression that the native indians of America were poo'd on from a very great height!
Anyway, depsite it being a desolate place, there is something very cool about it too, but its hard to describe. I think its to do with the fact that it can be an amazing place to see, but if you don't appreciate it properly, respect it even, it will kill you! Seriously, its that hot there that people have died when their car fails or just going out for walks, even experienced hikers have gotten into trouble. So we played safe and never went more that a couple of hundred yards from the car.

So anyway, onto Las Vegas. We had booked oursleves into Luxor, the huge Egyptian pyramid for couple of nights so that we could check "The Strip" out.
Luxor:

I came here a few years ago with a couple of mates and spent one very drunken night checking out the hotels and casinos without a care in the world and generally having a good time. This time round was different. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but as I wasn't in a drunken daze with a load of mates around me I paid more attention to the surroundings.
The hotels themsleves are amazing, each with its own theme. We walked for miles on our first night there and before we knew it, it was 1 o'clock in the morning! It's amazing how when you step out of your hotel, everything looks fairly close, but in reality The Strip it well long, the closer you think you are getting to the next hotel, the further away it seems to be... wierd! Also all the casinos seem to be designed to get you completely lost. The plan is that once you are in, you stay there! There are no exit signs, no arrows pointing to exits, only signs pointing to other attractions within the hotel.
The next day we walked The Strip in the daytime and again it took us ages. We planned ahead tho and knew which hotels we wanted to see most. We really wanted to see "The Sirens of TI" show outside Treasure Island (recently renamed TI because its more trendy!). Its a bit pirate ship theatrical show that is supposed to very good. Unfortunately it was too windy that night and the show was cancelled... Boooooo! By 9pm we were both exhausted so spent the next 22hours walking back to our hotel (ok, it didn't take quite that long!).
INSIDE the Venician (first floor!):

Now then, I'm gonna get all moral/boring/analytical now, so those of you that get bored by this sort of thing might want to go and watch Coronation Street or something. There is no denying that Las Vegas, or at least "The Strip" is an amazing place, the casinos are spectacular, the shows entertaining, and the general atmosphere is one of exuberence and excitement. But there are a couple of things that make you think. On our second night there in one of the casinos, I forget which one, we saw a woman in hysterical floods of tears leaving the building rather hastily. We may have read the signs all wrong, but the first thing that went through our minds was that she had made one last desperate attempt to win a fortune, and inevitably had lost, who knows how much! On reflection it could have been a completely different situation, she could have just had a barney with her other half, but whatever the situation it got us thinking about how many people must get lured here dreaming of winning a fortune. Its easy to see how it can happen too, we put about $5 of our own money in the slot machines, just for the experience, the rest that we put in was winnings. We came out about $30 up, there were many more toursits just like us but you could see with some people the temptation to keep going, just in case the next big payout is yours. But we knew when to stop, and thats the crunch point. Many people don't know when that point is, suprisingly, the Casino's don't seem to mind. In our entire trip we saw three small cardboard signs advertising gambling help-lines, scary really.
The second thing that we both found annoying, even disturbing was the touts. Prostitution and brothels are completely legal in Nevada. Las Vegas is well known for it, even to the extent of pciking up the nick-name "Sin City". There is no getting away from it and if you are going to visit vegas, you just have to accept that it goes on whether you like it or not. But the touts almost make any visit here unpleasurable. They stand on every street thrusting calling cards into your hands. They even hand them out to kids who are with their parents and parents who are with their kids, one chap in front of us had to tell his young teenage son to ignore them - they were targetting him too. There are advertising trucks driving up and down the strip. The whole stripper/prostitution thing is thrust in your face all the time, which spoils it for the vast majority of people who are there to experience the less seedy side of what Las Vegas has to offer.
There are essays about the legalisation of prostitution. Peoples free will and the safety of those in the industry should always be paramount but I'm not going to bleat on about any pros or cons of such a system, both Jen and I have our opinions on it and they needn't be written here as it isn't the time or the place.

On a final note, Elvis REALLY is dead, and most of his impersonators, barmey as they are, are completely rubbish!

Jen:
Today we mostly spent the time leaving Vegas, doing some shopping and heading for the Grand Canyon. We passed over the Hoover Dam, which bizarrely was alot smaller than either of us thought. Very high security there so much so that Charlie got pulled over for searching, well, I say searching, it was more of a cursory glance but annoying as we had to open the roof tent and back up etc. I would tell you lots about the Hoover Dam, but it was really expensive to get in - they wouldn't even let you in the vistors centre without paying out. So we decided just to admire the views instead and look it up on the internet when we got to the campsite. I'm so cheap :-) Hehe.

Hoover Dam:

Hoover Dan: (hehe!)

Anyway, now is time to enjoy the finer things in life, I have a hotchocolate with Balieys and mini-marshmallows waiting (I've been swimming tonight therefore earnt it!) so will sign off now. We're in the Grand Canyon National Park for the next few day's so not sure when we can update next, will do it asap.

This ain’t no country club… this is LA.

2007-10-11T04:35:00.000Z

Well, that’s enough of the Sheryl Crow lyrics… it is amusing how everything in LA seems to have a film, tv or music link though.
Did you know that if California was a country all on its own, it would have the 7th largest economy in the world… and Arnie is in charge of it. Scary!!

Having been told by the staff at the KOA that there was an off road show at the “Fairplex” over the weekend it seemed rude to miss out on it, so our first day in LA was spent 200yards down the road from the campsite checking out the American off road scene. We were told that we couldn’t walk there as there wasn’t a predestrian entrance so Charlie had a really long drive 200 yrds to a car park next door to the campsite (and we had to pay to park!). The show itself was probably about the same size as Billing, but with a lot more space and lots of stands in exhibition halls. Unsurprisingly there were no Landies there at all, just a load of American muscle and far too much chrome. Like the bling on the UK scene, some seem to function on the idea it’s not so much about your vehicles capabilities as how much chrome you can stick on it and how tall you can make it.

There were only a couple of bits that really interested us, and I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but it was the jeeps (I’m not, some were really cool – Jen) and the sand racers. It was nice to be able to compare them to what we have back home in the way of 90’s Rangies, and Discos. Neither of us really know the US off road scene and we’d hate to offend anybody, but there was as much bolt on as you’d get on Scrap-iron racing and amongst most stands there seemed to be a distinct lack of innovation. Some seemed to work on the theory whatever type of off road toy you want, you just go buy it off the shelf, then spend a disgusting amount of money adding bolt on bling! One stand we saw that stood out was selling suspension mod kits for Jeeps… at ONLY $10,000! Huh!?! Thanks, but when I can buy a complete kit for a Landy for under £300, I know which way I’d go. However, looking at the sand racers and some of the jeeps was pretty cool, that was where the innovation seemed to be and therefore where we spent most our time, Jen spent a vast amount of it underneath several vehicles with a camera, poor George (JU – e-mail coming your way with some questions! – Jen). We did however manage to pick up a couple of bargains. Firstly a book listing a load of off road trails in Moab… essential reading! Secondly, a rather nice 4ft hi-lift jack… for £27. Bargain! (about £50 to buy at home) :-)

The following day we checked out Universal Studios. What a fantastic time of year to visit these places. Its just out of season, but still lovely sunny and warm, and not too many visitors. We managed to do the whole park before it closed. If you are ever there, check out Waterworld… Fantastic! The park had it’s usual themed shows, (including the Blues Brothers, much to my delight – Jen)

and the behind the scenes tour, which was a bit disappointing from an inside information point of view, but we did get to drive down Wisteria Lane (Desparate Housewives) which was amazing, turning into a ‘town street’ on a backlot is a surreal experience. The best part of all though – they’ve kept the scene from War of the Worlds (the one with Tom Cruise) where the 747 crashes into the neighbourhood.
Wow. That was truly amazing, luckily they stopped there for a while so we could all gawp. At the end of the day, as we were in Hollywood, it was only right we should go to a cinema, so we went to see The Kingdom at Universal Village.

Monday and we were booked in to Warner Bros for a studio tour in the afternoon, can you tell we’re both film lovers?! This meant we had a morning to kill, so we headed to the Observatory in the hills above LA, this has also been used in a few movies! But we really wanted to see the telescope etc. Unfortuantly, it was closed, and not advertised until you get pretty much to the door. Still, we looked at the building (beautiful) and enjoyed the views and for the first time realised the LA smog really does exist! Words can’t really describe what it’s like when you can *see* the pollution and know you have to spend the next few days in it. We drove back down the hill to Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard where the walk of fame is, we parked up and had a quick look, but got bored quite quickly as at the end of the day it’s just some bronze stars in the sidewalk. The Warner Bros tour was one Jen had really been looking forward to and ensured we got right behind the scenes of many TV shows and movies. We saw the old set from Friends and the current one for Two and a Half Men (very popular in the US… and I think its out in the UK too, but have never watched it). We also saw the full set of the mock up of the Chicago hospital used in ER and got to have a good wander around. One of the chaps on the tour was from Chicago and said it felt way strange being at home… but in LA! We also heard a few details of the filming, how they create the Chicago light and rain and how they did the helicopter crash that killed one of the doctors a few years ago… I remember seeing it on television – basically the helicopter fell off the roof of the hospital onto said doctor… how they created it? They hoisted a helicopter 60ft in the air on a crane filled with explosives and dropped it. Lol! That’s Hollywood for you.
Jen got all excited and clappy by the Harry Potter stuff (and to be honest you can’t blame me, they had a ton of props from the movies there including a giant spider (ahh!) and the Triwizard Tournament cup etc. etc). We even got to wear the “sorting hat” in the Warner Bros museum and were both glad to be put in Griffindor. We saw the “Friends” front door and loads of props from the series including the sleeve from the porn video Buffay the Vampire Layer!! Outside the museum were 4 “General Lee’s” that were used in the Dukes of Hazzard film. Unfortunately they were all under wraps, awaiting auction, but being the sad muppet I am I can recognize a Dodge Charger from its tail pipes and wheels ;-) They were filming a movie whilst we were there, the new Adam Sandler one, but I can’t remember the name.

On our last day in LA, we checked out Bel Air, Mulholand Drive and Santa Monica and the famous beaches, including Venice Beach where all them daft body builders pose… errr… I mean work out. What a bunch of posers! One bloke there was in a posing pouch.. You just gotta laugh (but not when they are within earshot)!
We also happened to drive past a house and a school.. anyone recognize them? Jen got a bit overexcited – answers on a postcard…

Waiting in a traffic jam we also got questioned by the fuzz. They wanted to know how long we’d been in California. Apparently any more than 20 days and you have to register your vehicle. Personally I thought this is a load of old cobblers, and my suspicions were confirmed when he pulled up next to us again and said “I only asked ‘cos I really like your truck”. Oh how our heads swelled :-)

After 3 days getting snarled up in the LA traffic, we decided that we needed to get back to what we know, i.e. the great outdoors, so headed out in to the San Bernadino mountains, another National Forest that has plenty of off road tracks and had been recommended to us by a helpful chap at the off road show. As it was getting late though we headed straight for camp, this time at Green Valley Lake National Forest campground.

This morning we got up and were determined to get some off roading done. We planned to be in Death Valley by late afternoon, giving us ample time to check out the trails in and around Big Bear Lake. We started with the easy trails, then tried something middle of the road. As the trail went on it got more technical, big boulders all over the track, steep climbs and drops and a load of axle twisting. A bit later we found out that we’d actually just driven half of the John Bull trail… one of the most difficult! With some careful driving and good spotting by Jen we made it through unscathed and with seriously big grins on our faces :-)

As I type this we are currently traveling along route 18 having missed our turning for the 395. This part of the 18 is actually part of the original route 66. Not much to see here tho! As it turned out, we went back the right way but got caught in a jam behind a fatal accident :-( A huge detour later and we pulled up in Barstow just as it was getting dark, we won’t make Death Valley until tomorrow, but it’s better than driving in the dark.

Big hills with a dodgy gearbox - San Francisco!

2007-10-06T23:57:00.000Z

Dan…
But before that... Napa Valley! This is the home of California's wine region and as we both like wine we thought it'd be a shame to miss out. We had also arranged to meet Jens mum and step-dad here as they had flown over to San Francisco for a holiday.
Napa Valley is actually an area covering about 26miles and taking in 5 main towns, although not all California’s wine is made here, the majority of the grapes are grown in the valley. We started in the southern part, Napa itself and went to the tourist info shop where we were given so much info, loads of money off vouchers, various maps of the region and some personal recommendations.
Having walked out with all the info we could possibly need we headed off to Calistoga where there is an RV/camp ground. We eventually found it tucked around the back of the town and instantly realised that this place was way out of our league. The whole site was chocca block with the enormous palatial coach style RVs that seem to be so popular here. Fortunately there was a state park just down the road, so we checked in there and felt much more at home :-)
That night we met up with Jens parents and went out for a meal at a very nice restaurant, I think we managed to pick the one in Napa Valley with it’s own microbrewery and therefore specializing in beers instead of wines. It was great to see Jen’s mum and Ron and also so nice to be able to talk to someone English again!
The following day we drove down the road to the Sterling Vineyard for a spot of wine tasting and a tour. We sampled 3 white wines and a couple of reds. I’m a big fan of red wine, especially Shiraz and Zinfandels, but after a bit of nosing (that’s what you do to make it look like you know what you are doing!) both Jen aand I decided that their reds were a bit too oaky for our liking. We did indulge in a couple of bottles of white though, and as it’s the most expensive wine we’ve ever bought (at close to £15 a bottle!! Lol! Yes, it’s true – I usually pick them for their money off labels) we’ve decided to save it until our Birthdays :-)

By mid afternoon it was time to head off to San Francisco, an hours drive south. We planned to stay at the cities only RV park, and eventually found it wedged between the San Francisco 49ers baseball stadium Monster Park, and an industrial park. The whole “camp ground” is actually a parking lot and not really very nice. We checked in and we’re given the ‘best pitch in the site’. We then asked the camp ground owner about transport links into the city and he told us that the buses were too dangerous to use around this area, so our only option would be to use the camp shuttle bus at $10 each per day… Sod that! After seeing that the pitch was actually a wide tarmaced parking space next to a container warehouse we checked out and headed back up the 101 and into the centre of the city where we found a decent little motel that had parking without a height restriction. At £50 a night for a comfy room with a flush bog, shower, safe parking and the ability to walk down the road without being mugged it really was a no-brainer!

Having checked in, first job was to drive down to the Land Rover garage to see if they could fit us in for a small service. We’d supposedly had an oil change at a dodgy place back in Burlington, but I’m convinced all they did was change the filter and top up the oil as after 100 mile I checked the oil and it was black as a black thing on a dark night. The Landy Dealer was probably the poshest car dealer either of us had ever seen. It was based in a HUGE old building off the 101 in San Francisco and the show room had it’s own Chandliers. To get in to the service area you drove your car into the building and pulled up next to the service managers offices where they took care of you without you having to walk anywhere! They made room though and fitted Charlie in for an oil change and collant flush, we’d changed the air/fuel filters already and at the rate we’re topping up the gearbox oil I reckon that’s been changed at least every fortnight!
Just encase you didn't believe the bit about the Chandilers:

So after our first night at the motel we dropped Charlie Camel off at the chandelier clad dealership in amongst Jags, Bentleys, Lambos and Landies (somebody really should tell the dealership though that Lamborghinis are Italian, not English) met up with Mum and Ron and made our way down to Fishermans Wharf where we caught the ferry over to Alcatraz!
Did you know that Alcatraz has had a varied history. It was originally built as a military fort, guarding against water born invasion into San Francisco bay. It wasn’t until quite late on in the islands history that it became a prison for the most notorious criminals, the saying goes: ‘You break the rules you go to prison. You break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz’ and was home to people like Al Capone and the Bird Man of Alcatraz. It closed in 1963 and then 6 years later a group of native Indians began a 19 month occupation of the island. The occupation actually fuelled interest in the Indians crusade and gathered lots of public support. But as there is nothing to do there, you can’t grow anything because there is no soil, there is no fresh water and hitting the town in the evening is a bit of a bind, they soon got fed up. In 1972 Alcatraz finally became a state owned National Recreation Area and in 1973, the first visitors began to arrive. Today it’s an amazing place. The audio tours, narrated by ex prison staff and ex-convicts are brilliant, they guide you round the prison buildings and you can pause at any point to have a nose around. It must have been a depressing place, it offers fantastic views of San Francisco only a mile and a half away, just so they could see what they were missing out on. (I tried locking Dan in a cell and leaving Mum and Ron there, but they all managed to find their way back again… sigh. ;-) – Jen )

We left the island mid afternoon and headed back to the mainland to pick up Charlie. All the jobs had been done, we paid the bill and they brought Charlie down to the service area for us… GLEAMING! They had washed and polished him and put that shiny black stuff all over his tyres and wheel arches! LOL… I don’t think we’ve ever seen him so clean… they even cleaned the bikes mounted on the back, although I was quite upset because they didn’t lube them up again! ;-) So, if you are even in San Francisco and need a car wash… book into BMC.

Jen…
We traveled down to Union Square for a bit of other-side-of-the-world-girl’s-shopping-trip and left Dan and Ron in the bar at the Cheesecake Factory which wasn’t quite as good as the one in Baltimore, but still had fantastic Cheesecake – Mm. By the time we left it was getting late and the queues for the cable cars were non-existent, this was much better than the 45 minutes earlier in the day! So we all jumped on and admired San Francisco at night whilst riding on the old cable cars. Luckily Ron had been to the museum a couple of days before so was able to give us our own tour – did you know those things have wooden brakes? Going down the steep hills it was all you could smell! We spent most the night when we returned looking out the Motel window giggling at seeing Charlie so clean, before that he hadn’t been washed since he left England!
The next morning we got up bright and early…well, ok, we had a very comfy bed so it wasn’t overly bright and early, but we were still at the Exploratorium in time for the opening at 10am. This is something we probably wouldn’t have done except for Mum and Ron getting a free ticket in their city passes and recommending it to us and I’m glad we went. They had a ‘free Wednesday’ day, so we didn’t even have to pay, although we did give a $10 donation as we thought it only fair. The whole place is basically in what looks like and airport hanger and is like the ‘Launch Pad’ floor of the science museum back in London i.e. hands on science! Cool! We made smoke rings, bubble rings and a HUGE bubble, made bubbles suspend in mid air... and some un-bubble related stuff to, but that’s un-important ;-) Dan was like a kid in a sweet shop and to be honest I was too, we even learnt some interesting things so it wasn’t completely wasted on us. There was an amazing optical illusion in the restrooms with the bathroom tiles, so who knows, I may now have a hope of getting Dan to agree to re-tiling the bathroom when we get home.

When we were all scienced out (and Dan had brought me a kit claiming to make a bubble as ‘big as a bus’) we jumped back on the bus (hopefully as big as my bubbles now) and headed down to Golden Gate Park. We had to go here for two reasons: a. Dan is a geek and wanted to see where the Klingon Battle Ship was landed in a Star Trek film b. They had a nice Japanese Garden and I like stuff like that. We met Mum and Ron for tea in the Garden and spent a while wandering around being serene and taking a ton of photo’s. We decided to make the most of our muni transport passes and jumped back on the bus to Union Square, I’d realised the Adidas Climalite training top Mum had kindly brought me yesterday was reduced to $22 (£11), them being £30 at home made me want to get another one! Sadly, the other one wasn’t reduced but it gave us a chance to jump on the trolley cars to take us back around to Fishermans Warf where we had to do some pressie buying and wanted to stop for dinner. Pier 39 is in this area and is home to a huge group of Sea Lions, they made it their home after an earthquake in the 80’s and haven’t left yet. It’s pretty amazing as the tour boats and people stand and stare at them from the pier side, they don’t seem to care though and just seem content to swim about in the waters, climb up into the sun and make as much noise as possible! We stood and watched for quite a while.

The Trolley cars are from all over the world and basically a working museum, Ron was telling us about a group of people from England who came over with the express aim to ride every single one, I can think of better ways to spend my time but I have to admit they were fun.

That night we said good-bye to Mum and Ron as they had to be at the airport bright and early the next morning. It was excellent to see them and even better as they’d had a couple of days in San Francisco before us so could give us lots of help and advice – it was nice getting to a city and not having to figure it all out ourselves! Oh, and they brought Chocolate and Marmite – Wahoo! It has made me realise how much I’m missing everyone at home though, especially as I’ll hopefully be an Auntie in a couple of weeks… wish I could give my Bruv and Jules a hug! Mum texted though so it was good to know they got home safely.

The next morning saw the end of Charlie’s rest period as we were due to head down the Big Sur coastline towards LA. We couldn’t let the opportunity go though and had to drive some of the steepest streets and of course the twistiest. Luckily Dan didn’t get chased by the Police so we didn’t need to launch Charlie over any of the crests! They were awesome, especially when you try to run down them in croc sandles and realise you can’t stop. Heading out of San Francisco we went towards Monteray and through lots of little towns and villages, America is busy gearing up for Halloween as there are pumpkin patches everywhere. We stopped in Santa Cruz at Safeways only to find a ’67 Series II Doormobile in the car park – Coooooool! Needless to say we had to park next to it and just as we pulled up Linus, the owner came wandering out after picking up some lunch in his lunchbreak. He was a lovely bloke and a member of the SII club, it was a shame he couldn’t stay and chat for longer as he was on his lunchbreak, but he was talking about coming over to the UK with a SII, so hopefully we can hook up with him then and show him around some lanes etc.

As we headed down the coast the characteristic rocks and blue sea of the Big Sur coastline came into view. It was beautiful, but sadly, it seemed most of the land was privately owned, either by the Navy or private resorts. You could look, but not investigate. Due to this, I think we both agreed, Big Sur has the reputation but Oregon is more beautiful and due to the access it provides, more deserving. However, we did see Elephant Seals which were pretty cool, another animal to tick off the list:

We stopped at a state campsite for the night, next to a mad lady and her 5 cats. She came over in the morning to lecture us about living simply and not causing a lot of pollution, which as quite funny when you looked at her in her 27ft RV and Honda parked next to it. That put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day, I don’t like being lectured at the best of times, but when I’ve only been awake for 10 minutes its not a good thing. We drove down the rest of the coast and into LA. It’s amazing how Mediterranean this bit of the US is. We spent the afternoon doing washing (4 loads!) and Dan sent me to the gym as I was being grumpy – much better now  The best thing though? We are checked in at the KOA next to the fairground and when we checked in the lady said: ‘are you here for the off-road show tomorrow?’ ‘eh?’ we said! It turns out there’s an offroad show here this weekend and judging by the amount of Jeep’s in the car park it’ll be a big one. Guess what we’re doing tomorrow…

P.S. Marky Bloke - saw this and thought of you, this is the colour your Eddie *should* be!

The long wait for the Dairy Milk - and Yosmite

2007-10-03T05:27:00.000Z

Well, it's been a busy one!

We left the motel and headed to Lake Tahoe in search of potential mountain biking oportunities. We came in from the north of the lake past several huge houses, but it was the blue of the lake that was the most eye-catching thing - good job I wasn't driving otherwise Dan probably would have started moaning again... is it really that important you keep an off-road vehicle on the road?! ;-)

We popped into tourist information and got some details on the trails. There was the Flume, the most famous in the area, unfortuantly though, it's a 23 mile trail one way and not recommended if your scared of heights. With my tendancy to freeze when faced with large drops we decided this wasn't an overly good plan and didn't really want to spend the whole day in one area anyway. So we thought we'd try a few others. It was tricky finding somewhere to park, they seem to like to make it difficult unless you're staying on a hotel etc. but as we found somewhere we headed out onto the powerline trail. This was running close to the top of the mountains on the lake and was a pretty sandy trail amoungst the woods, I was a bit nervous considering my last liaison with sand and the problems I had walking for a few days afterwards, but after 10 minutes was getting my confidence back no problem. We cycled a few miles but found the views (or lack of) a bit disappointing, for some reason, it was also very hard work consistent ups with short boring downs, not really greatly technical. We finally figured out cycling at 8,000ft was probably something to do with the lack of breath and struggling so as we weren't really enjoying it we headed back to Charlie and decided to find a campsite for the night.

We were late that night, but managed to find some BLM Land with a few tracks leading down to a valley bottom, this proved to be a peaceful campsite for us, the moon was even low enough for us to see some stars - beautiful! (oh, and it was free - cool).

The next day we got up early and headed south on the 395 to Bodie - the best preseved 'Ghost Town' in California. Over $1bn in gold had been extracted over the years, but the last residents left in the 50's, the majority going when the mine closed in the 30's (IIRC). It was certainly preserved, the state park has done nothing to clean the town up, just prop up a few vehicles and replace some roofs if necessary. There were still cans on the street, plates in the sinks and bottles on the tables - people really did just leave! I'm not really suprised though, Bodie has some of the coldest recorded temperatures in the US at -40F without wind chill and winds of up to 100mph. When combined with the 20ft of snow it was quite a forboding place. It was also known to be the most lawless with a gun fight most nights, one diary of a young girl stated: 'I am leaving you God, for I am being taken to Bodie', you really did expect a stage coach to come trundling around the corner at any minute.

Our next stop was Mono Lake, an alkaline and hypersaline lake south of Bodie, it's one of the most important areas of birds and other animals in the area but probably best known for it's tufa: rock like Calcium Carbonate deposit. Again, a beautiful area:

Finally we headed down to Yosmite, or should I say 'up' as we reached 9,945ft before decending into Yosmite Park down towards the valley. Charlie coped well, we only had to stop once to let him cool down on the way up, which wasn't a problem as the views were worth stopping several times for anyway. The drive down was very promising, about an hour and a half of twisty roads with stunning views of the half dome. We saw several coyotes in the meadows, but we were the wrong time of year to see teh famous wild flowers.

We got down into the valley about 6pm and started to look for a campsite, well, I say started, we spent most the time trying to negotiate the one way system. Paul, if you fancy setting up a consultation service out here I swear we could make a fortune! For a park meaning to preserve nature and prevent pollution there is a serious amount of visitor miles being wasted around there. When we'd found the reservation area we realised the park was full. Mid-week and well out of season. The only option was to head an hour out the valley again, we didn't really fancy that so took the 140 out the park and found a campsite about 15 mintues away, it was dirty and by the side of the road, but it did for a one night stop. The next morning we made a plan so we could attempt to cut down the wasted miles, first stop was the visitors centre. You park 1/2 a mile from the centre and catch the bus in, but we didn't want to waste the time so got the bikes off the back. The ranger was grumpy and unhelpful but we got a list of trails and decided to head down to the waterfalls. We knew they'd probably be dry, but wanted the walk anyway, it was worth it as we saw some deer and beautiful trees.

As the cycle route was also one-way and very limited we put the bikes on the back and drove down to El Capitan, this was a bit of a pilgrimage for Dan as he likes his climbing and he wanted to get to the base. The Rangers and the Climbers have an 'interesting' realationship and as such, there are no trails to even the most famous and popular climbs, so we hiked through the woods and did about an hour of scrambling to get to the bottom - which, to be honest, was far more fun anyway! (until I looked down!) Dan posed for a pic and we climbed back down. El Cap certainly deserves it's reputation, you need to be fit and know what you're doing as that's one big rock!

The last thing on the list for Yosmite was Glacier point, there was a 5 mile hike up there and 5 miles back again, estimated at 8hours - sadly we didn't have 8 hours. This was another problem, all the hikes were either full days or about an hour, nothing in between so unless you had alot of days or were really lazy it didn't really suit. It seemed like alot more could have been made of oportunities there without damaging the park which was a bit frustrating. So, we took the lazy option and drove up to the top to take the little walk. It was a beautiful view though so I'm glad we went for it.

Later that day were headed for Groveland and the oldest bar in California, swing doors and everything - excellent atmosphere.

The next day we headed for Napa Valley, but that's a whole other story and will have to wait for tomorrow night :-)

Sittin on the dock of the bay...

2007-10-02T06:50:00.000Z

Yep, we are still alive and getting very slack at posting up on the blog. To be honest, its not our fault, we got into California and suddenly getting net access has becaome a real pain in the bum! But anyway, we are here in San Francisco.
Will post up the last few days very shortly, but for now a lovely comfy motel bed is calling :-)

Giant Trees, Beaches and colds

2007-09-27T05:23:00.000Z

Why is it that when we get into California we both get colds?! We've spent the past month travelling through Alaska and Canada without a sniffle, but get to California and fall appart! Oh well, never mind, we're still making the most of the holiday, just with lemsips instead of beers.

Following the Lave Beds we travelled back towards the coast towards the Redwoods National and State Parks. We stopped for some shopping on the way and realised, in America, a Defender 110 is classed as a 'compact', classic! lol!

Taking advice from a helpful chap at the last campsite we stopped off at the nothern point of the Redwoods to take a little stroll. These forests are amazing - made up of the Californian Redwoods and the giant seqouia (sp?!) the booklets say you feel like dinosours may come through the undergrowth and that's exactly how you feel! The trees can live upto 2000 years old and the thick ferns on the floors add to the mysterious feeling.

We spent the rest of hte day driving down the 101 taking in the views and hiking a few trails, I decided to take up tree hugging, but not a hope of working with this one. We also discovered there is only 1 type of tree you can loosing a Camel behind.

As the evening drew in we discovered the Golden Bluffs campsite - sigh. It was fantastic! A state park, so it cost us about £7 a night and we got to spend our first two nights in California on the beech. Dan celebrated by practising his Kung-Foo on the beech, lol!

The next day, I was still feeling pretty terrible, so we had a relaxing morning on the beech checking out the views and enjoying the sun. In the afternoon we got a pass to travel down the restricted road to the tall trees grove, it also involved a hike of 1.6miles downhill and 1.6miles back up again, but this is where there really large trees are, the second tallest tree in the world (only by 1ft!), it was peaceful and amazing, well worth the sweat on the way back up.

Today we're heading towards Lake Taho, for a bit of biking before heading down towards Yosmite and into Napa Valley (wine Country) and San Francisco, where we meet up with Mum and Ron for a couple of days - they're bringing Dairy Milk - Wahoo!

This was our first night we couldn't find a campsite where we're staying, so have taken our second motel. Why does that always happen at the end of the financial month?!

Not sure on internet access for the next few days, but will update when we can. Glad to hear seven sisters went well, we were going to annoy you all with Text Messages, but have had no signal for over a week! (back now). Oh, we did a bit of graffitti on the beach as well:

A geology lesson for us all

2007-09-24T02:55:00.000Z

So here we are on our way to the Redwoods National Park on the coast of California. We have pulled into a funny little KOA “Kamp Ground” and opened a bottle of red wine… Yes, we have our priorities right :-) So if this post gets a little incomprehensible later on it’s because we are getting close to the bottom of the bottle. Oh, and it’s one of them big 1.5lt bottles too.

Crater lake… The volcano eruption happened some 7700 years ago and was 150 times bigger than the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens. The lake was formed after the eruption when the top of the volcano collapsed in on itself. The most notable feature of the crater is Wizard Island, a small cinder cone that has risen from the crater. The lake contains some of the cleanest water on earth apparently, but you can’t get to it to try it unless you book yourself onto one of the boat trips that had stopped running when we were there… D’oh! The lake is also the deepest lake in North America and the 7th deepest in the world, averaging over 1900ft deep. The geological features are amazing and you can see by reading the many information boards around the lake exactly how certain features have come to be. As always the visitors centre is the place to start any National Park trip and Crater lake is no exception. There are displays, story boards, videos etc etc that give you the full low down on the area.

The whole lake is encircled by a road with plenty of pullouts, which is a bit of a novelty as every other road in America is just that, a road… no stopping allowed! So anyway, we did half of the lake. I had a stinking cold that day and was desperate to get out and explore the trails, but really didn’t feel up to it, so I just sneezed out of the window every half mile or so!
We left Crater and headed off to the Lava Beds National Park and finally arrived at about 7pm. We camped at the only camp ground in the park. In the morning we awoke to find a gaggle of Park Rangers taking photos of Charlie Camel and whispering quietly amongst themselves. When we finally got up, we showed them around together with half of the camp site. When we finally managed to get packed up and out of the camp ground, first stop was the visitors centre. We grabbed the maps and info from the park ranger on duty and then checked out the exhibits. This is where we sat on a sofa for the first time in 2 months!!! It was fantastic… you lucky sods back home have no idea how lucky you are to be able to sit on a sofa every day! We watched a 10 minute video all about the Modac Indians who inhabited the area before being unceremoniously shoved off their land by the white dudes many huindreds of years ago, and also about the Lava beds and the caves that abound in the park. We got to do some proper exploring today and checked out several of the caves around the park… wow!!
Just be content to look at the pics and then maybe I’ll explain later about Lava tubes, drop offs and Aa, ;-)

Charlie Camels Secret Identity...

2007-09-22T03:56:00.000Z

...is a disgused dune buggy!

We had to give it a go, and at $10 for a pass that last two years it wasn't exactly expensive. We spent the afternoon playing in another recreation area specifically for ATV's and OHV's, in fact, the campsite we're staying at tonight is over-run with all sorts of buggy's and bikes designed to operate effectively in sand.

We arrive at the park and got some advice from a park ranger, to go in the dunes you need a flag that has to be 9ft high - Coooooooool :-) So we brought the most lary one we could and attached it to the back of Charlie. After airing down the tyres we were off! And we did remarkably well :-) We stuck to the main tracks and did avoid any uber-steep hills as we were concious we were relying on Charlie for somewhere to sleep tonight and we'd broken the first rule of off-roading - we were out on our own.

lol!:

We followed the tracks for a good few miles admiring the dunes until we got to a deadend. It was then my go to drive and I jumped in the drivers seat all eager, turned around no problem, driving along no problem... bugger, we're sliding sideways and not going anywhere! I'd made a mistake and instead of following our tracks out the way we came I was following what I thought were our tracks. They weren't. And we were in some seriously soft sand with mud terrain tyres and a 3 ton vehicle! Not the best combination. I did well and paniced as there was a gully getting closer and closer as everytime I tried to go forwards or backwards, we just slid sideways down the slope.

I must be the only person in the world to get cross-axled in sand...

So we stopped. Looked. And got digging. 20 minutes work got us 10 meters further. We could have got the winch out as there was a cluster of trees that would probably have provided enough strength to get us out, but it was across a track that could well be used by some ATV's at any moment and besides, we decided a winch was cheating.

We finally came to a complete stop about 5 metres from the crest of the hill, the digging and branch placing wasn't getting us any further. Then Dan had a brain wave - I know, it was amazing ;-) We hadn't got any sandladders (thinking we wouldn't have the need to use them on a 'road trip') but we did have the leveling blocks we use for the rooftent - they worked a treat. We dug them down into the sand and I hung off the side of Charlie - those cookies must have worked as it provided enough weight for the rear wheel to get grip and propel us triumphant to the top of the hill - wahoo! 5 minutes and a bit of digging later we'd found the wheel chock things and were once again cruisin' the dunes.

Charlie Camel is indeed cool.. and I didn't get lost this time.

We spent the late afternoon driving down the Oregon Coast to find our campsite for the night as all the marked pitches in the dunes were booked (we forgot it was the weekend). The Oregon Coast has been the biggest suprise of the trip so far, it really is breathtakingly beautiful, hills, cliffs, woodland and rocks. We even saw a large number of Marine Seals basking in the sunlight. Still, a pictures worth a thousand words:

We're heading inland again tomorrow to visit Crater Lake... and ...er somewhere else before moving onto the Redwoods.

Hope 7S is going well! Missing you all!

Lava and Sunsets, life on the Pacific Coast

2007-09-21T04:57:00.001Z

As we haven’t had internet access we hadn’t managed to post what was written below, so to update, today we visited Mnt St Helens – the only erupting volcano in the lower 48… Coooooooool! We had to drive along the longest dead-end road in Washington State – 51 miles to be precise and then back again, but the end of it was well worth it. The Volcano is pretty big, but the area surrounding it is amazing. All the trees are still laid flat from the 1980 blast, the river bed still covered in mud slide (up to 1000ft deep in places) and, well, basically it looks like a war zone. We watched both an excellent film and attended an excellent ranger talk. The most amazing thing? There are two Glaciers up in the crater! The volcanic ash reflects the sunlight allowing the glaciers to grow, it’s the only recorded place in the world for glaciers to be forming at present. If you can see in the photo they’re forming around both edges of the lava dome in the centre of the crater. At the moment the volcano is depositing about a truck load of lava every 40 seconds and there was quite a bit of steam at times, as well as constant earthquakes.

We couldn’t walk up to the crater as you have to apply in advance for special passes, so just enjoyed the views from the observation deck before heading towards Oregon’s coastline. We eventually got there about 5ish, completing our East to West Coast – Wahoo! And took a leisurely drive to the next campsite with the sunsetting to our right… sigh… this is the life :-)

Tomorrow hopefully we’ll hit the Oregon Sand Dunes Recreational Area… and according to our sources we’ll be able to see how well Charlie Camel copes with the dunes! Pass us the shovel someone…

Vancouver

2007-09-21T04:43:00.001Z

We arrived in Vancouver on Saturday to blue skies and a campsite that can only be described as an open-air hotel. The drive down from Whistler was beautiful, although completely road-work filled, there is obviously a lot of money ($600 million according to one sign) being invested for the infrastructure for the Winter Olympics in 2010. We have, however, decided we don’t like the 2010 Olympics as they might well be doing away with Whistler’s bike park – BOOO!

Anyway, back to Vancouver, we got there early afternoon, had some dinner and I promptly fell asleep, whilst this was much needed, it turned out to be a bit annoying, as that day was pretty much the only full sunny nice weather day we had in Vancouver. We spent the evening in the campsites hot tub and swimming pool, which was great for the aching muscles we’d picked up in Whistler!

We made a list of things we really wanted to see in Vancouver and set off on Sunday for the aquarium. Based in Stanley Park, the aquarium is in a truly beautiful setting. On the advice of the campsite we got an all day travel pass which allowed us on the sky train, buses and water taxi and decided to get the sky train to the waterfront and walk around to the park… it was a lot longer than indicated on the map, but a very cool walk. We walked all along the waterfront admiring the predictable Gin Palaces and expensive apartments in and around the marinas, but we did find some cool house boats:

Should you visit Vancouver I’d recommend the aquarium. It’s one of the best I’ve seen with interesting exhibits which are especially good for Canada’s coast line. We saw the Beluga Whale’s which were AMAZING, them usually living in the Artic Waters means our chances of ever seeing them are slim, so it was great to see them there. It was also great to see a HUGE sea lion and some dolphins as well as the usual aquarium fare. What I especially liked was that you got to see the research projects going on and explanations as to why they are important, which, in my opinion, was pretty cool.

Beluga Whales:

One of my old favourites:

By the time we left he aquarium the day was already getting short. We walked back down the main shopping streets passing some little organic markets and the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Shop… ok, we didn’t PASS the Rocky Mountain chocolate shop… We made the most of being in Canada and stopped at a pub (probably our last until England now!) for dinner and a couple of beers before wandering back to the campsite.

After realising that Vancouver is actually quite massive we decided to take the bikes into town on Monday as we wanted to investigate Stanley Park. We also managed to re-use our travel passes as we didn’t realise you were meant to validate them in a machine with the date on, so that was a bit of a bargain! Stanley Park is an indication of what Vancouver was like before the building started and although it has been quite badly damaged from a storm a few years ago, is pretty cool. We cycled around the sea wall taking in the tourist favourites of the totem poles:

And the HUGE trees, they reckoned this was 800 years old (we didn’t count the rings so can’t confirm!):

We also spotted an owl asleep in one of the large trees, I’m sure there was a more peaceful place to sleep, but he seemed content to sit there and watch the world go by:

Before getting to the beach for lunch and watching the bit tankers avoiding the little private boats:

On our way out Stanley Park we checked out Gastown, the oldest part of Vancouver and followed that with China Town. Although there was some beautiful parts, including a steam powered clock in Gastown, it’s best to say you should only visit this part of town in the daylight. Still, nothing we had to worry about and Dan got very excited as there were lots of little alleyways ‘like you see in the movies where a dustcart always pulls out during the car chase!’

We then headed back to the skytrain to drop the bikes off back near the campsite as… well, tonight… WAS HOCKEY NIGHT! WAHOOOOOOOOO! I was fulfilling one of my ambitions and after watching the Sheffield Steelers for 3 years (until I moved), I was going to a Canadian Ice Hockey Game! Needless to say, much excitement ensued. Although it was only pre-season (season doesn’t start proper until October) the atmosphere was great. Vancouver Canucks vs. Anaheim Ducks. We got in early to watch the warm up and buy the necessary hats, t-shirts and foam hands (hehe), the stadium was big and filled up quickly as face-off loomed and needless to say the match was very fast and truly excellent  There was only 2 fights (still, they were proper fights!) and Vancouver ended up loosing 2-3, but they did take it to sudden death overtime which was excellent. Again, I’d highly recommend going to a game… it’s somewhat different to Basingstoke Bison’s… bless ‘em*.

We awoke to more rain on Tuesday, which put pay to our plans to go to Capilano Suspension Bridge, we didn’t think it’d be much fun in the rain. As the forecast didn’t look to be getting any better over the next few days we decided to head to Land Rover to see if they could change Charlie’s oil again… but they had a 3 week waiting list and lots of Bentleys, Jag’s and Astons in the car park! Lol! So we did some shopping and started heading south. We stopped the night just north of Seattle on I5, it felt only right that we should visit a KOA. As I’m sure we’ve mentioned before there is something reassuring about KOA campsites, and this one had a decent sized pool and a couple of hot tubs to boot.

After having a dip in the pool we had a burst of efficiency and decided to work out where we were gonna go from here. We want to make sure we fit in as much as possible now that we are on the return journey, and we have several weeks already accounted for as Jen wants to spend a week with Mickey Mouse in Florida (well, at the Keys, Miami, sea world etc. ), we both want to do as much biking and off roading as possible in Moab, and there is probably enough stuff to keep us busy in LA alone for the rest of the trip. So the rest of the month was planned as follows:
19th – Mt St Helens
20th-21st – Florence – Sand Dune Driving!
22nd – Crater Lake National Park
23rd – Lavabeds
24th – 25th – Redwoods
26th – Nevada City
27th – 28th Lake Tahoe/Yosemite
29th – 30th Yosemite
And we are already a day late!

* note: Basingstoke Bison games are still fun, if you haven’t been to Ice Hockey – make sure you go!!

Stat's Update (yawn)

2007-09-17T03:00:00.001Z

Due to popular demand (well, Nige) and having a few days of driving for 10 ½ hours a day I’ve updated the stats. Aren’t you all lucky?! (Correct as of 16 September)

1. Miles travelled: 11,144
2. Average per day: 179
3. Most in one day: 646
4. Mp(American)g: 19, not bad for a fully loaded Camel!
5. Average price per gallon: $3.10
6. Total spent on fuel: $2260 (£1130)
7. Breakages:

* drivers seatbelt, due to mud ingress!
* 2 flat tyres, not bad for over 1,000 miles on gravel tracks though.
* 12” crack in the windscreen
* very leaky gearbox
* 2 front roof tent clamps which hold it to the roof rack departing, must remember to check them whilst travelling on corrugated roads.

8. Number of states & Canadian Provinces travelled through: 26
9. Number of ‘Cheesecake Factories’ visited: 1 (must try harder)
10. Number of ‘Ben and Jerry’s’ pints consumed: 3 (must try harder)
11. Number of times I’ve done the workout I promised I’d do at least 3 times a week: …er.. four it’ll get better when it’s a bit warmer and we have showers though! Honest.
12. Number of miles on bikes: no idea, Dan accidentally reset his computer! Lots though.
13. Number of times we’ve fallen off bikes: Dan: 3 Jen: 5
14. Number of photographs taken: 2,727
15. Most number of wheels spotted on a truck: 50
16. Latest Realisation: Flush toilets are a fabulous invention! Its hard to describe the sensation of a cold draft coming up from the cesspit over which one is squatting, but some are a lot worse than others.

Loads'a'posts

2007-09-16T00:12:00.000Z

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days, we've just been having too much fun! And we haven't had any net access. But now we have and I've just put 3 posts up.

Happy reading folks ;-)

Oily bits!

2007-09-15T23:55:00.000Z

Before we left we had a new gearbox fitted. Since that day what we thought was the Transfer box has been leaking and leaving a steady trail for all to follow. I bought some ep90 when we got here but haven't had to top it up much so assumed that the leak looked worse than it was.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I finally found the leak! You may remember the gearbox oil saga... well, continuing on from that... The oil that Cape Cod put in was a 75/90 gear oil. It looks pretty much the same as MTF94 which should be in the box, and EP90 which is in the transfer box. And seeing as the transfer box sump plate had always had a bit of a leak I assumed thats where it was coming from. AFT, which is the oil we have in the gearbox now is red... very RED! Yep you've guessed it. The leaking oil is red and must therefore be coming from the gearbox... ARRRGGHHH!!!! So anyway, I bought a litre of AFT a couple of weeks ago after realising this and put the WHOLE LOT in! Yep, the gearbox had leaked over a litre of oil since Calgary! So I bought 2 more litres, but fortunately only managed to get about another 100ml in. Now, those of you that know about these sort of things will know that the only place the oil can be coming from is the oil seal on the main gearbox output shaft. To sort the leak will require removal of the transfer box, which I ain't willing to do at a campsite! So anyway, now that we know where the leak is coming from we will just have to keep an eye on it and keep it topped up until we get to somewhere that can do the job for us, or better still, lend me their facilities so I can do the job myself.
Gearboxes.... who'd have 'em, eh!

Whistler, awwwwwwwwesome dude!

2007-09-15T23:22:00.000Z

We pulled into Whistlers jolly expensive campsite after the office had shut, so had no idea how much it was going to be. We figured it wouldn't be too bad as the only space they had left was in a car-park, so thats where we stayed.
I like Whistler :-) It's a nice town... and it has the most AWESOME bike park, dude!

And you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d just walked off the set for “Dude, where’s my Car?” (a classic American teen film!). The town is vibrant and full of people from all age groups doing 2 things… biking and having fun! And they really do call each other “dude” all the time, even old people (like Dan - Jen).
So anyway, we spent a couple of completely cool days in Whistler. Our first day there we had a wander around the town itself. There are loads of "outdoor" type shops there all selling seriously overpriced skiing, snowboarding and biking stuff, buts its cool nonetheless! Then in the afternoon I decided to check out the extreme downhill stupid bike trails. I took an instructor led afternoons biking together with 4 other people (all English!!) and was shown the basics of downhill mountain biking. Dave and Terry, my bikin' buddies... get yourselves over here, its brilliant! You get a ski lift up to the top of the mountain with your bike and then you hurtle back down again. The new bike gave me so much more confidence and on the second or third trip down the mountain I was getting some serious airtime :-) And I only went over the handlebars once!

That evening we went into town with our new buddies who I’d spent the day biking with for a bite to eat and far too much beer.
The following morning we decided to do some more biking, but this time a little less “extreme, dude”, although still a respecttable 'blue' classification. We followed some of the volunteer maintained trails in and around the Lost Lake valley, each trail having a somewhat imaginative name.

Jen managed to fall off and draw blood a couple of times which she thought made her look like an extreme biker chick! (it did, if you're not bleeding you're not trying hard enough! Bruise count: 5, including all of both knees, Cut count: 1, 5 inches, Graze count: 3. I fell off a boardwalk once and the second time was after a huge (almost vertical) smooth rock drop, not problem with the drop, but I was so shocked I made it, the bike dug into some sand on the next corner and I went flying! It was great! - Jen
We pushed the boat out again and spent the evening in the village centre, it was handy as it was only a 10 minute bike ride from the campsite and if you're going into Whistler you need to take the bikes anyway! We had a nice meal sat out on the patio of a nice grill watching the world go by and then went to the square to watch the premier of some ski films, the atmosphere in that town is addictive, shame we couldn't afford (literally!) to stay more than a few days. Highly recommended :-)
We got up this morning, grey clouds everywhere and packed up. We are now in Vancouver, a couple of hours down the road and will be spending a few days here as there’s soooooo much to see!

Miles, miles and some more miles

2007-09-13T23:17:00.000Z

Well, here we are again whacking up some miles. It’s been a fun filled couple of days.
We left the Motel at Tok on the Alaska Highway after a hearty breakfast at Fast Eddy’s Restaurant and continued on towards Whitehorse. This is the section of the highway that we missed on the way up due to someone thinking it would be a good idea to take the gravel tracks instead ;-)
As we crossed back over into Canada at Beaver Creek we noticed an immediate difference in the quality of the road, it suddenly became very bumpy. What concerned us though was every bump we went over caused a loud banging noise somewhere in the vehicle. We both looked at each other each time it happened and decided that we’d best stop to investigate. We wobbled everything, moved stuff about and made sure that all our kit was well secured, and then set off again. As we got up to speed and hit more bumps the banging continued, so we stopped again, checked underneath Charlie, moved stuff about a bit more, wobbled wheels and exhausts, but could still find nothing banging, so off we went again. But the banging continued! Again we stopped, wobbled, re-packed stuff and again we hadn’t solved the problem. Jen had been crawling about inside the car while we’d been driving trying to locate the sound, but it seemed to be coming from a different place each time… weird! Then Hurrah! Jen was watching Charlies shadow as we hurtled along the road… over the bumps we went with a BANG each time! Then she spotted the problem, the roof tent was taking off at each bump! So we stopped again and found that both of the front brackets that hold the tent to the roof rack had come loose and fallen off. Fortunately they had got wedged between either the roof rack and the roof or the roll cage so we managed to retrieve the brackets, but unfortunately a couple of the bolts had disappeared. We managed to make up one complete bracket with the bits we had left and did everything up double tight, then used a mini lashing strap to tie down the other side. Off we went in relative peace and quiet, i.e. no more banging!
We finally pulled into an RV park in Whitehorse at about 7:30pm, had grub and got an early night..
The following day we trucked off to Watson Lake (where the signpost forest is) so that we could pick up the Cassair Highway, route 37. Along the way though we had another flat. We got it changed pretty quick on the shoulder and continued on to hopefully find a tyre shop in Watson Lake. There are 2 garages in Watson Lake and neither could offer us a repair, so with a major grump on we picked up the 500-odd mile Cassair. By 6pm we were at Dease River Crossing camp ground and had the whole place to ourselves :-) As we had a spare inner tube with us (thank you Richard!) I decided to sort out the puncture. The tube that was in there has a lovely big hole in it and couldn’t be patched so the new tube was put in and the tyre inflated using my super doper pump that I got free with my subscription to LRM some years ago.
While at Dease River we had a visitor. His name was John… or at least that’s what we called him as he wasn’t able to tell us what his real name was.

Seeing as there wasn’t another house around for several miles, we guessed he lived with the camp ground owners. But this didn’t stop him spending all evening with us. As we desided to go to bed, so did John. He curled up on Jens chair and went to sleep. When I got up for a pee at stupid-o’clock in the morning he was still there! When we got up in the morning, John hadn’t budged, he was still in Jens chair. But with the obvious commotion of getting up and having breakfast he decided to have a bit of a funny five minutes chasing bits of grass! When we packed up, we said our goodbyes to John who by now had realized that we were going and just sat there looking at us. We both felt so guilty for leaving him. It was like he’d found his new best friends and we just turned our backs on him. We drove off in silence.
At some point in the day our heartbreak was forgotten as we saw a Wolf! It’d been casually walking along the road, but with the sound of a clanky old Defender being caned along it decided to make a hasty escape into the undergrowth. We stopped nonetheless and had a good look from the safety of the car. And there, about 10 meters away was the wolf, watching us, peering through the bushes. It was just as curious as we were and stayed there watching us for a good couple of minutes, adjusting it’s position every now and then to get a better look. It’d obviously never seen a Camel 110 before!
A few hundred miles later we came across a mummy and baby black bear munching away on the grass at the side of the road. They’d obviously seem a million Camel 110’s as they didn’t bat an eyelid, just kept on eating.

Several million miles later we arrived in Stewart and realized that we shouldn’t have been there… We’d taken a wrong turn! Unlike Blighty, you can’t just find another route as generally there is only one road to a town. Think of it like Hamble, but on a massive scale, sometimes with a couple of hundred kilometers between towns. So we had to turn around and retrace the last 60-odd miles. But I’m glad we did go the wrong way. We were treated to some amazing views of Glaciers, and to top it all off, the Bear Glacier.

Having spent an hour going the wrong way and another hour going back again, we had some miles to catch up on. We’d hoped to get to Smithers on Highway 16. By 7:30 we had made it. We decided to grab a Maccy D’s as we couldn’t be arsed to cook and still needed to find somewhere to camp for the night. We found the Tyhee Lake Provincial Park about 20km outside Smithers (just up the road from Burns Lake) and were overjoyed to find that it had warm showers on offer :-) But the real bummer about these places is everything runs off propane… which means no electricity… which means we had to shower in the dark! Hey ho, all good fun, init!
Today we hoped to get as far as Whistler, about 570 miles south from Smithers, so a long hard day of driving ahead, but the sun is shining and we are swapping seats regularly. Its now 4pm and we are still on route 97 with about 400km to go once we reach Williams Lake, so probably another 4 hours on the road yet.
Update: we finally reached Whistler and the extraordinarily expensive campsite at about 9:30

Knew I forgot something! Northern Lights

2007-09-09T15:56:00.000Z

What we didn't realise when staying in Fairbanks was that we'd caught the beginning of the northern lights season - Fairbanks gets this about 240nights a year, not bad eh? We only realised whilst talking to another camper from South Africa - so a couple of night ago we vowed to stay up. We were lucky and managed to see something too! What started of as a whitish glow got greener as it got darker and moved across the sky over the course of about 30 minutes:

We set the alarm clock for 2am, but it had clouded over by then. We didn't see the full on green/red etc. apparently it gets better as the season goes on, but then we couldn't hang around - it was getting colder!

Planes, trains and ...er... dogsleds!

2007-09-09T05:37:00.000Z

Denali is pretty cool.

Slightly annoying though, as appart from the first 15 miles, the only way to access the park is on the park buses! Which take 8 hours to do 90 miles!! There was only one 5 mile bike track and other than that it was proper back country hiking (which we don't have the kit for). After sitting in a car for the last week getting to and around Alaska, the last thing we really fancied was sitting on the bus all day, so we checked that exchange rate and wandered off to find one of the 'flightseeing tours'. Wow! (again!)

We managed to get booked on easily as it was the end of the season (in fact the park closes next week) and took off on a 10 seater plane with Fly Denali. The flight was 75 minute long and I spent 72 of those minutes trying not to be sick! Still, despite the sickness, it was a pretty amazing flight. We flew right up to Mt McKinley, North America's tallest peak at over 20,000ft and around it looking at the Glaciers and the wind blowing the snow from the top of the mountains. Apparently they've 'lost' 5 people on the mountain already this year, a plane seems a much more sensible idea than a 3 week hike!

We landed safely and wandered off to find our campsite at Denali National Park, apparently they've had 3 bears in there recently, but we survived another night, despite AGAIN being next to a railway line much to Dan's delight! :-)

This morning was one of my favourite so far! We decided to take one of the ranger lead talks..to Denali's Dog Sled kennels! Wahoo! As the national park laws have designated a large proportion of Denali a Wilderness area no motorised vehicles are allowed so the Rangers rely on the dogs in the winter to help deliver supplies, break trails and service the park. The dogs are bread for this sole reason, their long legs help with the deep snow, they have amazingly thick coats and bushy tails so they can curl themselves up and breathe through it to help warm the cold air. They clearly loved their work and in the winter can run upto 100 miles a day... that'd keep you busy walking one of those guys!

I expected a good demonstration but what we got was very cool! We got to spend half an hour in the Kennels beforehand meeting the dogs (if they wanted to talk to us, it was run very well) and then we got a demonstration of them at work and a good explaination before meeting the dogs again, Dan got on very well:

Oh - and the 8 week old pups! I tried to steal this little girl, but didn't get away with it :-(

We spent the rest of the day heading east on highway 8 the Denali Road and heading to Tok. We're about 90 miles from the Canadian Border tonight and it was windy and rainy so we took the oportunity to try a Motel! Luckily it's very good, clean and had a fantastic resturant, I spent an hour in the bath and Dan's already snoring! I can't believe it's a novelty to walk around without my shoes on....

Can we join the Artic Circle Club?

2007-09-07T06:15:00.000Z

Yes, I know you guys did it in Norway, but Alaska counts too right? :-)

Well, I hope we can because it took some driving to get there! Well, by Dan, I was -snoring in the passenger seat. Hehe. (to be fair, this was only for about an hour of an 8 hour trip, but I know he'll take the mick if I don't mention it). We had another day of driving up and down some serious gravel tracks in the artic tundra and amoungst the fabulous colours on our way up there. This really is the time to visit Alaska (with heated seats) as the colours are amazing :-)

Dan found some rocks and as usual, had to climb them:

Disco Rob, the travelling Landy Bear:

Charlie behaving impecably, Dan kept trying for 6th gear as we were flying along! Unfortuantly, someone else travelling the road was quite inconsiderate and flicked up a rock putting a nice 12" crack in Charlies windscreen... still, after about 1,000 miles of gravel tracks we havn't done bad if that's the worst that happened.

We got to the Artic Circle about 2pm had some chicken soup and bread and headed back south again! Still, it was worth it.... wasn't it?! :-)

One for J of the U:

Denali National Park tomorrow, seem's strange to be starting the 'south' and soon 'east' part of the trip already, but as I'm loosing the feeling in my hands typing this I have to say I'm looking forward to California!

Hope all of you going to 7 Sisters have a good time. Missing you all.

Jen

Cheesy Artic Circle pic to go with the Alaska cheesy pic:

Brass Monkeys!

2007-09-06T05:51:00.001Z

Well, we have made it to Alaska! YEEEHAAAAW!!

We crossed over at the most northerly border crossing, Poker Creek, population:2

After driving the Top of the World Highway. This was a beautiful drive, blue skies, mountains, amazing autumn colours... just WOW! We managed to find some tracks that went off into the mountains, we were consious of our time slipping away, but had to try a few:

We are currently at the Rivers Edge Camp ground in Fairbanks... after getting a little lost and ending up at the airport, whoops! I really must learn how to read a map one day ;-) And Jen deserves a medal for putting up with me telling her to "go the other way!"

So, tomorrow we are heading up the Dalton Highway with the hope of reaching the Arctic circle... Yes, we are slightly barmey as its been getting progressively colder over the past week or so as we've been heading north. Today we encountered a freak snow storm while travelling up the last bit of the Alaska Highway, and temps have already dropped down well below freezing at night time. But hey, never mind! We have heated seats for the day time and hotty bottles for the tent! It's only about 200 miles to the place we want to get to so with an early start we should be able to get back to Fairbanks and prepare ourselves for Denali :-) Denali looks like an interesting one, you have to enter a lottery a year before for a pass to take your vehicle in! However there are other options, the bikes, a bus ... and helicopters or aeroplanes ... mm, what's the exchange rate looking like at the moment?!

We'll end with the obligatory cheesy pic, Disco Rob is glad to be 'home':

Up, up and away

2007-09-05T02:02:00.000Z

We just seem to keep going up!

After leaving Charlie Lake we continued up the Alaska Highway. By the end of the next day we reached Muncho Lake Provicial Park and found a groovy camp site right on the lake shore. It was beautiful! But alas, we couldn't stay up too late as we wanted to get an early start the next day.
One for Jez:

And so we did. After a not so early night having beer with the neighbour, we managed to hit the road by 8:45ish. Within a couple of hours we'd finally managed to get to Watson Lake, the home of Yukons famous Signpost Forest. It a pretty amazing place which has amassed over 60000signs... I'd hate to be the poor bugger that has to count them all. We couldn't leave without putting our own sign up, so in true Land Rover fashion we cable tied one of Charlies number plates to a post and then added a ShireLRC sticker for good measure. So if you are ever there, from the bottom of the steps, go left into the second row of signs and there you will see our plate :-)

From here we took the Cambell Highway (highway 4). A mere 370 odd miles... on gravel! Quite what we were thinking when we set off I'll never know, but we made it in about a days driving. In the first 3-4 hours of driving we only saw 5 other cars. Along the way we found "Yukons best kept secret", the town of Faro, population 370. It reminded us of Thornhill... on a bad day, so we turned around and left. I can't remember if it was the burnt out petrol station or the nasty looking 3-storey flats that made the place so appealing!
There were quite a few flies (understatement of the century), so we had to keep finding rivers to use to clean the windscreen, which worked quite well:

Not to worry though, the views are worth it :-)

Anyway... further points of interest along the way... at mile marker 150 we saw a Moose... and followed it as it tried to run away from us down the road... not the brightest of creatures, but cool nontheless! :-) And another black bear watching the world go by, and a Porcupine. I tell ya, the only way to see the wildlife here is to get off the main highways.

We awoke this morning to a frozen tent and it was blommin' cold! We later found out it was -1C in the nearest city at 7am this morning, so what it was in the mountains last night I don't know. Late this afternoon we finally made it to Dawson City, in the heart of the Klondike Gold rush country, passing the Dempster Highway. The Dempster is a 470mile dirt road ending at Inuvik. It has a reputation for killing vehicle tyres. Even the locals take 2 spares. At the beginning of the Highway is an info board which we thought we'd pull up at and read. We stopped, I got out the car and heard a hissing sound... the back offside tyre was deflating rapidly! and we had only been about 50metres up the Dempster! That was scary enough, we changed the tyre and headed off to Dawson a few miles up the road. So here we are, at a coampsite in the middle of town... quite literally! :-)

So here we are in Dawson City, in the middle of town... gonna go for a bite to eat now. Tomorrow we hit ALASKA!!! ONLY 67 MILES, WOW!! :-) (and a ferry ride! ;-) )

...anyway, I really must go and clean the bikes...

There be Bears here!

2007-09-01T23:25:00.000Z

Well, here I am in the passenger seat blogging! We left the KOA bright and breezy this morning, our plan to get some miles done, and hopefully reach Dawson Creek. We picked up highway 40, 1 km from the camp site, which leads allthe way to Grand Prairie. But just before the road turns north, there is an unpaved road leading up to Goodwin Corner, so we decided to take that instead. It was a bit slower going than the tarmac road and at just over 100 miles long it took us a good 3 hours. But it was worth it, along the way we saw Coyotes, Deer… and a Black Bear!! You’ll have to forgive me for the picture, but I wasn’t gonna get out the car and go pat it on the head!

We went through some places with weird names… Frying Pan Creek, Misery Mountain to name but two!Then, all of a sudden there was a junction in the road… with no signposts! Hey ho, lets go that way says Jen. A truly brilliant bit of navigational guesswork and 20 miles later we came mud splatting into Grand Prairie :-) First stop, an Esso gas station as we were by now running on vapour in the main tank. But for some reason this station didn’t accept foreign cards. After a quick detour to a KFC we found a Fast-Gas full service station and managed to get 74l in the tank. It’s only an 80 litre tank, dontyaknow, so we were pretty low!

We then trucked on to Dawson Creek who’s only claim to fame is that its where the Alaska Highway begins, Mile “0” as they call it.

As it was only 4pm, we decided to head on a bit further, aiming for Fort St John, another 70-odd km up the road. On the way we went through a place called Taylor. Again nothing very exciting happening there… except a bridge over a deep gorge. It’s an old steel bridge with a steel grating type affair for a roadway. I looked out the window to see that I could see startight down to the river below! Whooping and cheering I explained this to Jen who was driving… not a good idea… she doesn’t like heights at the best of times, so she just buried the throttle peddle!

Anyway, we’re about 10km from the Charlie Lake Camp site and have pulled into a Super 8 Motel car-park to upload todays blog… aren’t we good to you lot!
More picy's later folks :-)

It's been a busy week!

2007-09-01T03:20:00.000Z

Well, firstly apologies for not updating the blog over the past few days, unfortunately Banff and Jasper National Parks didn’t have a top priority to provide wireless internet access at their campsites! Unbelievably poor planning if you ask me ;-) So, this will be a long one:

Sunday: Off-roading with Calgary Land Rover
We woke bright and early after another night in the Travelodge (it was cheap) as we had strict instructions to be at the dealership by 7:45am, not good for Sundays! Never the less, a free breakfast lured us both out of the very comfy and warm bed. The day was planned by Rich Ellis, who was originally from York and wanted to take the customers out for a bit of off-roading to show what the vehicles can do. An easy greenlane day was the description which suited us with the loaded Camel and still another 15,000 miles to go on the trip.

Everyone at Calgary Land Rover was very friendly and welcomed us with open arms despite the fact we hadn’t purchased a vehicle, should you every need Land Rover parts in the Calgary area I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them. As predicted, our comrades on this trip out and about were mostly LR2’s (Freebies) and LR3’s (Disco’s) with a Rangie (brand new, 3 weeks old IIRC) thrown in for good measure. Griff and Lisa had a Disco 2, it turns out Griff was originally from Poole and used to work at Land Rover Experience! Small world, he tore himself away though to live in Banff, it’s a hard life :-)

We started with a quick run down to McLean Creek, you’ll love this: An ‘Off Highway Vehicle Forest Land Use Zone’ … i.e. a massive free playsite! I think you should all write to your MP’s at home and suggest we have some areas like this. Rich had been up a few day’s earlier and ensured the tracks were clear with his chainsaw. The tracks were mostly a combination of mud and solid bedrock through the trees which was perfect for the shiney’s … only it had been raining and was still raining when we got there. The easy greenlanes quickly turned into areas with not a lot of grip! 15 minutes in and we were assisting a LR2 up some rock steps before helping change the first of quite a few blown tyres. Luckily everyone had spares. I have to say though, it was a superb trip, although we had to stop quite a bit to ensure the vehicles and drivers were ok on the zero grip everyone had huge smiles on their faces and were laughing their way around. Credit should definately go to Rich who, in his own words: ‘won’t have to go to the gym this week’ lol!

Charlie Camel kept the old Landy side up well, even weighing about 3 tons with both mountain bikes on the back! The engine breaking on the TDi with a bit of assistance on the brake pedal kept him safe through most parts and a bit of courage to chuck him over one big ledge with no grip on the other side got us through (my patented method of keeping both feet on the floor of the footwell and screaming was just what was needed!). Joking aside, when you see a LR3 struggle and require some spade work to prevent it going over the edge of the cliff and knowing your next is just what I love about off-roading :-) I think the weight being low down in Charlie and the MT’s helped a bit. Still, the spade work made a good channel for the others who all managed to follow safely, again, all with HUGE grins. Sorry, no pics of the scary bits, we both tried our hardest not to get involved, but by the end of the day we were spotting people down the last few rock steps.

Many thanks must go to all at Calgary Land Rover for their hospitality and company, we really enjoyed the day.

We ended the day with two invitations to dinner and/or a bed for the night, so thanks to Rich and family and Griff and Lisa, but as we’d hung around another day to go off-roading and were still failing dismally to catch up the week we lost at the beginning we thought we’d better head off and try to get some miles under our belt. We made it north of Banff… and then decided that was a rubbish idea and no matter how late we were running we couldn’t miss Banff, so on Monday… we headed back.

Monday: Banff
Figuring Griff and Lisa were probably at work it being a Monday morning, we decided to strike out on our own and see what we could discover about Banff. Wow. What a beautiful place. As we’d driven in to the national park yesterday it was raining and grey and the clouds had obscured the mountains from view, but as Monday progressed we were treated to more and more.

Our first stop was a bike stop in town to see if they could change Dan’s brakes around to prevent him flying over the handlebars quite so much (boo!) …but as he has fancy brakes they didn’t have the bits and couldn’t do it (yay!), more entertainment for me! ;-) They were very nice people though. We decided to have a look around the town and had lunch in a lovely little café/restaurant called Coyotes, I’d highly recommend it if you get a chance to go there, very good food and normal portions – Wahoo! We spent a good few hours afterwards wandering around town, they’re digging up the high street but it didn’t spoil the atmosphere and the number of outdoor clothing shops kept me entertained for hours, especially as I got a $250 fleece for $75, no more feeling cold  The town is surrounded by some fantastic mountains and glacial turqiouse lakes and when I say turquoise I mean turquoise. The only colour the glacial sediment doesn’t absorb is turquoise which means it’s reflected back with stunning results.

We found a nearby campsite for the night and as we had both been cold for a good few days now we spent the night up at the Banff hot springs watching the sun go down behind the mountains and the moon come up. We headed back to the campsite feeling all warm inside and smelling slightly of sulphur… :- )

Oh, and took a few pics on the way home, this is the moon:

And the plough:

Tuesday: Lake Louise
Having had this poster on my wall since well before I went to university, to say I was looking forward to seeing Lake Louise myself was a bit of an understatement. Sadly, we awoke to another cloudy day, albeit a little bit warmer than it had been (i.e. I could feel my fingers). Still, being English and used to such weather we didn’t let it deter us. We arrived at Lake Louise and yes, it was stunning. As predicted, it was also thronged with lots of people so we took the advice of all the guidebooks and went for a walk. Yes, I know, but there was no off-road routes and no cycling, Dan refused to give me a piggy-back so I was left with little option! ;-)

The route we chose was upto Mirror Lake and an old tea house, originally built for the posh first tourists in 18something. 2.5miles there and 3miles back didn’t sound too bad, but it was 2.5miles all uphill! Hehe. Still, good for the bum. And again, some fantastic views.

At the top we discovered the old tea house which had turned into ‘home’ for a tribe of ground squirrels, we were good tourists and didn’t feed them but that didn’t stop them trying! The supplies for the tea house are flown in or ridden in by packhorse and the guy and his girlfriend that run it live up there during the year. That’s dedication. Needless to say the walk back down was a bit easier than the one up there, but defiantly worth it for the views. We would have liked to do more trails, but a visit to the information centre informed us the minimum number for a huge number of the trails at the moment is 4… because of the bears. We won’t be messing with that then.

We found our next campsite for the night at Lake Louise, we were planning on heading to Mosquito Creek as recommended by Griff, but by the time we realised what the time was it was 7pm! Time just flys by here. I wish we had pushed on though, Lake Louise was certainly an experience! The whole site is surrounded by 7,000volts of electric fencing and ‘texas gate’ (cattle grid) which is also electrified because of the number of bears that were cutting through the site! If you were camping outside this fence (RV’s only) you were advised not to walk around after dark on your own and if you have to walk in groups of at least 4 and make a lot of noise/carry bear spray! Lol! This all sounded very comforting until we got handed the leaflet about what to do if we found a bear inside the fencing… I didn’t get up for a wee that night.

Wednesday: Columbia Icefield and the Athabasca Glacier

Today we decided that as we’d spent 3 days in the southern section of the national park we really should start to head north towards Jasper continuing up the Icefields Parkway as sadly, AGAIN, there were no off-road trails. It just so happened on the way was the Columbia Icefield and the Athabasca Glacier.

Double WOW! I really want one of these Snocoach… 66” tyres running at 15psi… 6 wheel drive, 250bhp 4cylinder diseasel engine (sure it could be changed for a V8) apparently causing less of an impact than a stiletto heal. Imagine one of them turning up at a play-day! LOL!

Anyway, back to the touristy stuff. When you get off the bus you are only allowed to walk a few meters from the “bus-park” as there are huge crevasses in the ice, covered with a couple of inches of snow. Some of these holes go down 1000ft. Yes, there is the right number of zero’s there. The Glacier is deeper than the Empire State building is tall (excluding ariel)! By ‘eck was it cold! The wind coming down the valley was something else, the Katabatic wind is so cold there it freezes the sap in the trees further down the valley meaning they only grow on one side. But it was an amazing experience. Some parts of the ice look so clear, you can imagine seeing the bottom.

We then visited Athabasca falls.

We stopped for the night just outside Jasper in one of my favourite sites so far, whilst we were making dinner we were treated to a small herd of Elk wandering by, closely followed by a rutting stag (avoid, big antlers!) – absolutely stunning. Luckily they didn’t fancy the look of the Camel. We also met up with Jon, a BMW motorcyclist who is travelling from New York to Alaska, he’s doing some similar roads to us so maybe we’ll catch him along the way, he was a very nice chap who owns a Disco as well.

Thursday: Jasper Tramway

We got up bright and early to our first sunny day in the Canadian Rockies (it had to happen sooner or later!) so we decided to make the most of it by visiting the Jasper Tramway. The tramway takes you up Whistlers mountain from 4279ft to 7472ft, that’s my idea of hiking! At the top the ‘upper station’ is surrounded by people, seriously, when we got there there was another 250 apparently at the top.. needless to say, most being American tourists we only had to walk a couple of miles to be rid of them all ;-) Sadly, it was a couple of miles up to the summit so REALLY hard work, especially at altitudes of 7500ft +, but the view made it more than worth it:

I am missing my gym membership less than I thought.. ;-)

We spent the rest of the day carrying on up the Icefields Parkway and visited Maligne Lake, close to Jasper, the largest lake in the Canadian Rockies. Again, another beautiful view, you can’t look anywhere around here without being amazed. We pulled in at our final National Park campsite in this area, it made you feel all welcome by having a bear trap by the front entrance!
Friday: ‘Wasting’ a day for a KOA!

Well, our park passes had finally run out so we had to make our way out the national parks. Sadly, the dirty washing had also pilled up and we’d noticed a significant shortage of laudrettes in Canada. Not to worry, there’s a KOA Kampsite (I HATE THAT USE OF THE LETTER K – ARGH! …anyway…) about 15 minutes outside Jasper National Park (Hinton). We decided to therefore use today to finally get on the bikes, we’d been getting frustrated that the trail closures (due to bears) and weather had prevented any cycling so far so we were determined to get some miles in no matter what.

We drove past the KOA on the way to the track we were aiming for in Brule, just outside Jasper N Park.. only to see a ‘park full’ sign… eh?! KOA’s are never full. That was when it dawned on us, it was Friday… and Labour Day weekend, the last ‘proper’ weekend in the camping season. We quickly (as fast as a Defender allows) turned around and headed back with an idea to beg for a space for the night, but no need as they only meant full for RV’s. We booked in and headed for the trail head, which was pretty easy to find as Brule only has one road! What awaited us was a fun ride to Ogre Canyon along some seriously rutted dirt roads and sadly, some roads that had recently been ‘repaired’ with stone, lots of stone. I kinda wish I’d gone for a full suspension bike now! Lol! We followed the single track that lead to the Canyon for a while but as the trail started to disappear we started to doubt we were heading along the right path. As we’d headed through lots of berry patches and lots of warnings in the guide book about bears we didn’t want to go too far off the trail no matter how much noise we were making, sprays we were carrying and did you know? Stumpy my Stumpjumper even has his own bear bell now, they had one in red that matched perfectly! Sad eh? So regrettably we turned back around.

Dan had been getting in a mood all along the trail as due to the rain it had involved some serious puddles, now I love puddles, but was wearing Dan’s new North Face soft shell jacket as my waterproof coat is about 4 sizes to big for me now and therefore not really perfect for bike riding. Dan’s brand new jacket is now a bit muddy. Hehe. Still, I made up for it as I tried to circumnavigate one of the deeper trenches up the sideslope of the bank and my mud filled tyres slipped sideways. This gave Dan ample opportunity for laughing at me as I sat in the puddle! I was good though, and didn’t get up until he’d had time to take a photo:

I wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was still about 7.5km back to Charlie…

So, we got back, had a warm shower (the first in ages!) and treated ourselves to a Pizza from Boston Pizza in Hinton. I’m currently sitting in the laundry room having washed all our muddy gear trying to escape yet more rain.

We’ve planned the route to Alaska, starting off on the Highway 40 up to Grand Prairie then the 43 to Dawson Creek, here we start mile 1 of the Alcan Highway and head towards Watson Lake (home of the signpost forest) then pick up route 4 gravel track to Carmacks and north on route 2 towards the Dempster Highway. Here we’re going to reassess how we’re getting on and either head north on the Dempster to try to get to the Artic Circle or head into Fairbanks and head north from there to the Artic Circle before then heading south to Dinarli (sp?) and some more gravel track. For those who are interested in an update on Charlie’s progress, he’s doing well! He, like all TDi Landies has an aversion to high altitude cold starts, so looking good for Alaska then! Lol! But getting 3rd is a lot more successful than it has been, now it’s only taking a couple of minutes every morning before he’s working as he should.

Ok, so we might be signing off for a while again, but will try to update everyday if we can. I’m hoping we’ll find some motels with free wifi and a car park! Lol! Missing you all, so much so, I felt at home when I saw this in the laundrette!

Love to Jo and the kids.

Bubble's sticker...

2007-08-26T03:49:00.001Z

...is not stuck in properly because I want it for my Series IIA :) JU, will send you a proper pic of it in Alaska :)

A lesson in gearbox oils... and another change of plan!

2007-08-25T23:19:00.000Z

Well, our trip to Land Rover Calgary didn't go quite as we'd hoped, but it wasn't all bad. The engine oil change was done no problem, but the gearbox oil...
I wanted it changed again as ever since we had it changed in Cape Cod, the gearchange has been a bit crunchy. I wasn't 100% satisfied that they'd put the correct oil in the box, so this time I made it completely clear that I wanted MTF94 oil. They came out having changed the oil and said they'd put 75/90 in as MTF94 isnt available in north America or Canada. Thanks to Dave Ashcroft at Ashcroft Transmissions, I knew that if MTF94 couldn't be found, then Dexron 3 would be ok to use, but EP75/90 or or EP80/90 should not be used. The technician at Land Rover had done his own investigations and found that Land Rover had released a technical bulletin about MTF94, but decided that the 75/90 would do the job as thats what they use here. I must admit, I do wonder how many gearboxes get changed here unneccessarily. We had a good old chit chat with the technician and I told him I wasn't happy with the oil he'd used as having seen the job card I realised that they had used the same oil as Cape Cod had used. So they agreed to put Dexron 3 in for us... and hey presto, smoother gear changes!
Anyway, while we were there we got talking to a chap called Rich, originally from York, who works there and is an avid Landy Fan. He organises off road jaunts into the Rockies for their customers and asked us if we'd like to tag along! Errrr... hello, is the pope even a smidgen catholic? Yes, we'd love to tag along thank you very much! So we are now back at the Travelodge as we need to be at Land Rover by 7:45am for our free breakfast :-)
I doubt that there will be any seriously strenuous off roading, after all most of the vehicles there will be shiny LR3's (Thats a Disco 3 to us), LR2's (Thats a Freelander) and Rangies, all very new, all very shiny, and probably all destined for a life of grocery store trips and school runs. But it will allow us to explore some tracks that we probably wouldn't find otherwise.
We'll report back as soon as we can with pics, but for now here's a couple from Glacier National Park.
A real life Glacier... although its getting smaller every year. They reckon in about 20-30 years time there will be none left here :-(
I apologise for this pic, Jen made me put it in... something to do with our good friend JU!

Nice weather we had!

...we may be gone some time...

2007-08-25T04:26:00.000Z

Well, our relaxing is at an end, Calgary is a lovely city, huge gardens, a river and a good pub :) But we're off first thing in the morning to get Charlie's engine oil changed (again, we're racking up the miles!) and hopefully the gearbox oil if they decide they have the right fluid. Fingers crossed this'll ease the problems when the transmission is cold.

THEN we're off to Banff! We're going to get Dan's brakes changed around on his bike as his been over the handlebars twice already (hehe) and then we're planning to make best use of our new book: 'Backcountry biking in the Canadian Rockies' Wahoo! The book also mentions some off road 4x4 tracks, so fingers crossed Charlie'll be getting his wheels properly dirty... finally :)

However, we're not sure how many wifi spots we're going to find in the Rockies and there's a significant lack of KOA's (which is probably a good thing as we'd like to do some 'proper' back country camping) so if you don't hear from us for a while be safe in the knowledge we're just enjoying the Icefields Parkway and Banff and Jasper :) We'll update again with piccies and I'll try and get one of Dan as he parts with his bike... ;)

Jen

A quick and boring update...

2007-08-24T00:36:00.000Z

Hey there Blog-pickers!
We did Glacier National Park in North Montana today. It chucked it down all day :-( But the views were fantastic.

We then trucked on to Calgary, a good couple of hundred miles up the road. We have booked Charlie Camel in to have his gearbox oil changed again at Land Rover Calgary as lately it's been a bit of a bind to get third gear, especially when cold. So we have checked into a Travelodge for a couple of nights. This will be our first night in a proper bed for nearly a month!

Andy & Jane...

go on, you know you want to! We'll let you know when we plan to be there ;-)

Yellowstone: Sounds, sights and many, many Smells!

2007-08-21T01:36:00.000Z

Wow. Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow. (You get the idea!)

If you have never been, I suggest you book your air ticket! Now! ...c'mon, stop reading this and do it!

We've just stopped at our first campsite with showers for four days in Montana, more importantly, our first campsite outside Yellowstone and we're both sad :( It is truely an amazing place.

We started our first day (Friday) early with 100 miles to go to get into Yellowstone, we thought we could knock them on the head quite easily and get to the campsite we'd chosenby lunch. Getting to Yellowstone wasn't a problem at all, we'd driven up the first bit of Rockies with only minor overheating problems (well, it was 90 something F and we're in a fully loaded 110!) and arrived at Yellowstone at about 11ish, it took us until 3pm to do the 50odd miles to the campsite! You really can't help it, there are so many places to stand and stare, walk and look and cycle and gawp! Still, we made it too the campsite and due to it nearing end of season there were still plenty of spaces. We completed our first day by driving some of the main loop road looking at the fantastic lake and view of the mountains and booking a western-style horse back ride for Monday afternoon. We also visited West Thumb Geyser Basin, our first foray into the bizarre world of Yellowstone, it is honestly like some prehistoric world. If you want an explaination as to how these form and you can even see them on a webcam visit: Old Faithful Webcam

We spent most the night looking at the stars and made the mistake of having a beer.. not usually a problem but the temparture had also fallen to a (bloomin freezing it felt like!) 4 degrees C and our bodies decided they didn't need the water they'd been retaining.. needless to say we spent most the night getting up and going to the loo - for the first night in proper Grizzly teritory this was terrfiying! (but we survived!)

Saturday started bright and early because we were both hyper active and raring to get out into the park proper. We're doing everything at each location in an order whereby 'if we were forced to leave tomorrow what would we have wanted to do?' so needless to say, we did the touristy thing and went to see Old Faithful and the other Geysers in the Geyser Basin... and pulled into the car park just as it was finishing! Oh well, there were plenty of tracks that lead to some smaller, bigger and prettier places so we did them first and promply got drenched in the thunder storm. We got back just in time to grab a seat for Old Faithfull to go up and watched it go with a huge thunderstorm in the background, the lightening really added to the effect. Most Excellent.

As it was raining and cold, we followed the true Shire Holiday tradition and went to get an ice cream :) We watched the storm from the terrace in the Yellowstone Lodge with a couple of rocking chairs all to ourselves and in true mountain style it blew over within about 30 minutes. We took a few walks up the Mountain (it's amazing how the number of tourists decreases when the sign say's it's a long way!) to the observation point and some more Geysers. By the time we got back to the car it was about 4pm... As you're not meant to hike or cycle after dark and the weather was somewhat changable we decided to do a few of the loop drives that are off the main loop road. We drove around Firehole Lake

and Firehole Canyon

Both stunning!

Sunday started with us finding a new camspite as we also wanted to investigate the north of the park. We went for a cycle upto Lone Star Geyser. We couldn't cycle quickly as there was a worry due to the rounding a corner and finding some wildlife but this meant we could enjoy the ride and play in the splashy puddles! Again, we arrived just after the Geyser had finished (what is it with us?) but as this had a wait of abou 3 hours we decided not to hang around and cycled back instead.

We left the north of the park and found a campground at Slough Creek... this was no accident. It happened to be in the Lamar Valley, home to Yellowstones largest Wolf Pack. COOOOOOOOOL! Although it is summer and as all the books say, it's very, very rare to spot a Wolf in the summer - that's why none of the Wolf watching tours were running :( It was also a fantastic campground, one you drive up 3 miles of gravel track that would be at home at 7Sisters to the middle of nowhere and post your money in a little box in the middle of a Valley in the Rockies. Stunning :) We completed our day by deciding to drive out to Yellowstone's own Grand Canyon.. we were quite happily driving down the Lamar Valley road when I caught a glimpse of brownish red out the corner of my eye. Dan simulated ABS in Charlie (lucky no-one was beind us!) and that was it, we'd spotted our first Wolf! Way bigger than a coyote with small ears and a large face, long legs and about 6ft from tail to nose, it was definatly a Wolf :) We rushed to the nearest gift shop so I could confirm it wasn't a Coyote (I knew how much I wanted to see a Wolf and didn't want my mind to play tricks on me) and I was still convinced it was a Wolf. We admired the Grand Canyon and Dan found a Ospray nest from our outlook and visited Tower Fall, again stunning scenery:

Nest

On the way back we went to the Mud Volcano Area, this looks like a cross between Richard's Hottub and a Shire LRC Playday! I know most of you would have loved to drive through it, but the acidity levels of pH1-2 (about the same as a car battery) would have disposed of the Landies quicker than Guy Shepard driving carefully ;) Hehe. Only joking Guy. Here's where I wish we had smell-o-blog as the place smelt wrong, very wrong! Imagine some egg mayonnaise that's been left for a week or two and you'd be getting close. Certainly a place to have to visit to experience but here's a pic anyway:

Then headed back to Lamar Valley, I wanted to drive the length of it before returning to the campsite as I knew the Wolves we most likley to be out between 6pm and 9pm on a Summers evening, we drove approx 2 miles past the campsite, very close to where we'd seen the Wolf eariler only to find several cars parked up on thhe side of the road. We pulled in an asked an old Texan couple what they'd spotted - the Druid Wolf Pack, all walking up the hillside in a line! WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW! It was fantastic, the guy reckoned he'd counted about 22, I'm not sure it was that many but thanks to the nice old lady who lent me her binoculars I got a good look - a mainly black Wolf pack with a couple of grays and an almost pure white one taking up the rear. They stopped on the hillside before finally continuing on - this has made my mind up that I'm a: Buying some binoculars and b: returning to Yellowstone in the winter for their Wolf Watching tour. We were amazingly lucky to see what we did. It took me ages to get to sleep that night! I think I annoyed Dan with my excitment! :)

Monday:
We awoke to perfect peace and quiet in our seculded campsite and packed up before heading out to join our Hose riding tour. We had a bit of time to kill so visited the Petrified Tree (or angry bush as Dan calls it). We also saw a Coyote on the way which allowed me to confirm the Wolf we saw yesterday close up was definatly a Wolf :) Extra cool.

Arriving at the Coral (oo, very Western!) we were asigned two horses, Dan had Russel (lol!) a Stawberry Roan Gelding and I had Crow a coloured Mare. I'll pass over to Dan now for his first horse riding experice:
Mounting the beast! The less said about that the better!
The first hour of the trek was fantastic, I really enjoyed it. We were able to get out into areas of the park that we woundn't have seen any other way, and all without using any energy at all... thats my kinda trek ;-) But as time went on, I could feel this ache all down the inside of my legs. Muscles that I never knew existed were telling me that I either shouldn't be doing this, or that I perhaps need a tad more exercise. I must admit that when we came over the crest of the hill and I saw the entrance to the coral I was infinately relieved as I was by this time in some agony! Getting off the horse was nearly a disaster, but I managed to stop myself landing arse-first in a big muddy puddle. Then I tried walking. OUCH! The pain lasted for a couple of hours, but no lasting damage was done, which is a good thing, 'cos I'm now looking forward to having another go... after doing some inner thigh exercises!
Athough it was a brief relationship, I grew quite fond of Russell and his quirks. In some ways he was a lot like me, had a mind of his own and kept falling asleep! I'll miss him.

Wildlife pics:
Bison (don't mess with these):

Millions and millions of chipmunks:

Ravens:

And now it's time for some gratuitous Camel Pics:

Coyote:

Elk:

As it is, we're now in Montana and by the end of tomorrow we should be on the boarder of Glacier National Park. Life is Good.

Thanks again for the messages, Farter, they are getting through loud and clear and we did get to Devils Tower, I just forgot to write about it! Thanks for the message Becky, hope all's well with you and Mike :) JU, yes, I know, Dan agrees, there's still time ;)

Next lot of postcards should be hitting the post in the next couple of days. I'll pubish this now and try and put the pics in before the laptop runs out of juice, but if they're not here now they will be tomorrow. Missing you all, Jenx

P.S. I am the firestarter...

Bear Necessities

2007-08-21T01:32:00.000Z

Warning: Parents and immediate family members may not want to read this bit!

Don’t worry folks, we are still alive after 4 days in Yellowstone, thanks to Jens research into being prepared for Bear Country!
We stopped off at the first Ranger Station we came to as we entered the park (which also just happened to be the oldest Ranger Station in the country… another amazing fact brought to you by Yours Truly!) and asked the oldest Ranger in the country what we needed to do to prevent being eaten by bears. His first question to us was “Are you ready to meet a Grizzly face to face?”. I laughed at this point and said “You’re ‘avin a laugh guv!”. He just looked at me. Jen gave a more sensible response and the conversation continued. At the end, the Ranger said “You folks are the best prepared people I’ve ever met.” The reason for this is that we’d done a fair bit of reading up. Bears have an amazing sense of smell so even the tiniest scent can attract them. We therefore invested in some ziplok bags and airtight boxes to put all our smelly stuff in… and I mean all. Food, bug sprays, shampoos, jens girly stuff… literally anything that had a smell. Unfortunately they don’t do ziplok bags in “Dan” size, so we just had to risk it!
We also bought some bear spray, essentially pepper spray adapted by a bloke who just about survived a grizzly attack. The idea of this is that if a bear does charge you, you squirt this stuff in its face when it’s about 15-20feet away from you. That means that if it charges, you have approximately 1.5seconds to react, to get the canister in your hand, remove the safety catch and squirt! Kinda scary!
The Ranger also had a nice ‘paw print’ cast from a grizzly (HUGE… each claw is about 4” - 6" long) and some real life stories that left us both quaking, so we followed the rules to the letter! The basic rules in bear country seem to be:
Anything with an odour should be locked in a air tight container or zip lock bag and either left in a vehicle or hung from a tree at least 14foot in the air (although black bears can climb!)
When walking (or in our case cycling) keep talking and making a lot of noise, bears will only (usually) attack when surprised, so let them know you’re there! This is actually really hard to do, talking is easy, but when you have to you immediately run out of things to say!
Never leave anything that you cook with out in your camp.
If you’re going out on the trails don’t wear cosmetics or deodorant or even wash with scented soap.
Don’t take the clothes you’ve cooked in into your tent, change and put them in an air tight bag.
If you see a bear back away slowly talking calmly but assertively to it (!), don’t look it in the eye and don’t turn and run. If the bear is going to charge it will put it’s head down, ears back and snarl, at this point you should still be backing away calmly talking (lol!) when it charges get your bear spray out and aim at it’s face, this should make it back away. A charge may also become a “bluff”, where it vears off at the last second, probably because the smell that you have generated from your pants is too much for its sensitive smell! If it doesn’t and it decides to eat you, apparently you’re not meant to scream as it makes you sound like a wounded animal which makes it want to eat you some more!! As a last resort you should apparently fight back… if you have any limbs left! Ok. I’ll remember that!

Needless to say, we had no problems followed the rules and walked away smiling. We didn’t even see a trace of one (apart from some HUGE claw marks in a tree) so the rule that they’ll hear you coming and go away must be true, but we’ll be sure to keep following the rules as we head up to Alaska… although I’m more worried about the mosies… apparently they’re the worst in the world! Still, good training for Ladoga.

Big rocks 'n' big heads

2007-08-16T00:23:00.000Z

Did some more of the Badlands today. We had planned to bike it, the shortest route being 17miles long, but when we got up it was just soooo hot, we worked up a sweat just gettin our breaky ready! So instead we drove the "loop". It made my day as we finally got to drive some dirt tracks :-) And we saw some Prarie Dogs.

The Badlands are a fantastic place, the colours vivid, the landscape... errr... spikey! We took a drive up to Sheep Mountain, an unvisited uncommercialised gravel track thats a dead end. As hoped, it was deserted, not a soul in sight.

We then headed off in search of some big ugly blokes on the side or a mountain... Yep, Mt Rushmore. A word of advise if you ever come out here... take route 16A, Iron Horse mountain road. The views are stunning and the drive almost like something you'd find in the Alps. And there is the most wicked bridge things going on :-)
Also, unless you are particularly interested in the history of the place (most of which is avaialble in books like the Rough Guides anyway), don't bother with the visitors centre. You can get the views of the mountian from the road just as clearly and save yourself $8 :-)

We are now at yet another KOA campsite, just down the road from Mt Rushmore and are just off to the bar for a bite to eat and a beer or 6. In the morning we are heading to Yellowstone so don't expect to hear much from us over the next week or so 'cos we'll be going "wow!" a lot in some pretty remote places... or at least thats the plan!

Badlands, bad (?) Charlie!

2007-08-15T14:32:00.001Z

Well, yesterday we had another big day of driving planed to get from Soiux Falls over to Yellowstone, but I guess Charlie had got a bit bored of it and by lunchtime had decided he wanted a rest. He communicated his intentions by getting a bit warm and leaving a nice puddle of water underneath the engine when we stopped at a rest area. Lifting the bonnet it was obvious this was coming from the P-gasket. Yay. After checking the water level (he hadn't lost too much) and that we had a new water pump gasket and P gasket in the back of the truck we decided to push on carefully to the next campsite and finish early so we could allow the engine to call down and replace said gaskets. We found a KOA in the Badlands, which wasn't a bad place to stop anyway! And went for a swim whilst the engine cooled down. I think Dan was a bit worried about working on the engine in the middle of nowhere (as we had realised there was no Landy dealers in the next 3 states) as he was doing his usual 'I'll just do this' and 'this is really important that I do this first' ... so I decided to do it myself :) That soon got him looking over my shoulder! :) After a couple of comments to 'make sure I put the bolts back on the things I've taken off' and 'be careful because that might be hot' we discovered three of the bolts were loose, so we decided to have a go and just tightening them (why take apart things you might not have to) and put everything back together. The test run to the 'shop' (in a town called Interior, population of 67, 5 miles up the road) went well, so fingers crossed that'll be problem solved.

We had planned to go out at night to see the stars, but as we ate dinner a HUGE storm rolled in. Lightening every couple of seconds and a sky full of cloud put pay to that idea, but it wasn't too bad as there was a fantastic view from the rooftent :) We'd also planned to go on a 23 mile bike ride loop thing this morning (before it reached 100F +), but it's 8am and I'm sitting here typing and already sweating buckets! Maybe it's not such a good idea.

A few pics from our journey through the Badlands yesterday:

For those of you that don't read all the comments my Step-Dad Ron had this to add to the Stat's section: 'Some further stats for you, your journey today is the equivelant of Southampton to Aberdeen, 195 trips to the Jolly Sailor (I like this one! - Jen), or,if your poison is Guiness or Grolsch, Dublin to Amsterdam!! :-)'. Thanks Ron :)x

Just so I remember, so far people have guessed we have been from:
Australia
Germany
Canada
New Zeland

Charlie Camel has been called:
A Jeep (predicatable I guess)
A 'Unit'
A Rig
A Toyota (?!)

...and yes, someone asked if we had 'driven here from England'... Dan said "Yes, the bit under the water was fun"... the bemused american chap didn't laugh. Oh dear.

Wish you were here?

2007-08-14T14:06:00.000Z

Well now you can be with our fully interactive blog.

a. Sit on your washing machine or tumble drier (this will simulate the diesel engine and mud terrain tyres)
b. Stare at this picture for 5 hours:

c. Should you get bored, you may stare at this picture:

d. Stop for lunch and stare at this picture of the Mississippi (admittedly this was quite nice) for 20minutes:

e. Repeat stages ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ for another 5 hours and 30 minutes.
f. Try to find a flight path to sleep under, preferably close to a motorway.

Special note: You may occasionally dance in your seat to music on the radio, but only if you can find a companion to give you a humiliating look whilst you do it.

…and you too have now experienced a day in the life of Dan and Jen’s Travel’s Across America.

Admittedly it wasn’t the most exciting day ever, we started off in corn fields and pulled up 10 and a half hours later in ..well, they can only be described as corn fields! Still, we made good progressing knocking another 585 miles on the head and everyone had warned us this part of the trip would be the most tedious. Hopefully one more day of it tomorrow and we should intersperse that with the Badlands, the first of our National Parks and the Mount Rushmore Monument. With any luck the day after we’ll be knocking on the metaphorical door of Yellowstone… NOW I’M GETTING EXCITED! :)

P.S. Nige (you should have mentioned Toronto! We've read your blog too you know..) and JU, this should mean more good piccies as well :) Rich, thanks for the news update. Mum - yup, it's a spare wheel! Glad to know the DLander and Max are famous, someone buy me a copy and I'll settle up on my return, don't want to miss it!

One for all you Stat's Fans:

2007-08-14T14:04:00.000Z

I didn’t want to waste my time in the passenger seat today, so worked out some ‘interesting’ stats for you all: (correct as of 13th August)

1. Miles travelled: 3377
2. Average per day: 225
3. Most in one day: 585
4. Mp(American)g: 19, not bad for a fully loaded Camel!
5. Average price per gallon: $2.95
6. Total spent on fuel: $524 (£249)
7. Breakages: 1 – drivers seatbelt, due to mud ingress!
8. Number of states & Canadian Provinces travelled through: 18
9. Number of ‘Cheesecake Factories’ visited: 1 (must try harder)
10. Number of ‘Ben and Jerry’s’ pints consumed: 1 (must try harder)
11. Number of times I’ve done the workout I promised I’d do at least 3 times a week: …er.. twice  But 9 and 10 should be taken into account for extra brownie points 
12. Number of miles on bikes: 40.5 (will improve as we get to national parks, crossing interstates doesn’t do much for biking)
13. Number of times we’ve fallen off bikes: Dan: 2 Jen: 2
14. Number of photographs taken: 892
15. Most number of wheels spotted on a truck: 50
16. Latest Realisation: MOT’s are really a very good thing.

Things to remember and just for Nige

2007-08-13T12:55:00.000Z

As it's 7:50am here and we're all packed up ready for a day of full-on driving across the Dakota's and Dan's eating Weetabix (sp?!) I thought I'd take the opportunity to write down a few things I found amusing and want to remember, especially as I've started to forget things already!

* Satalitte Dishes outside RV's and the RV that was towing a Hummer H1! (obviously the sensible run about car)
* Excellent mpg advertised on a Honda .... (26)
* Loads and Loads and Loads of Scooby's! :)
* The fact you don't need anything more than a normal car license to drive an RV. Even if it's the size of a coach!
* The massive disparity between the rich and poor, the amount of homeless here is scary. One side of the street = deralict, the other very rich.
* You can by a 5 bed, 3 bath and 3 garage home in 1/2 an acre for $290,000 (£145,000).
* ..however, the avergage house price in Manhatten is $1.5 million... most 1 bed flats go for $1million.
* The state of the Highways! (you'd love all you EBC people, it's c*ap!) We changed lanes only to find the right hand lane 3" below the level of the one next to it.
* Getting waves from lots of Jeep owners and a little SIII almost coming off the road in the effort to wave and beep at us! lol!
* Truck with the most wheels so far: 32

Oh, and also wanted to put in a pic of Charlie Camel for Nige as he was complaining about the lack of Charlie pics! This is one from the Salt-Flats on Cape Ann, hopefully we'll start getting more pics as we get West, more off-roading, more rough Camping = more opportunities to take Charlie Camel pics! :)

P.S. Was there a Shire event yesterday? Only guessing on the amount of missed calls on Dan's phone! :) Missing you all and the Landy-ing.

Plans are afoot...

2007-08-13T02:55:00.000Z

But not the original plans... we are changing our route. Having sat down over a beer and a pot of ice cream tonight we have decided that from here we are going to head accross South Dakota instead and into the Badlands, then to Yellowstone for a few days. We were originally going to head up through the Canadian Great Plains, but the guide books starts with the following joke... Why do Canadians cross the Prairies at night? Because the view's better! YOIKS! We reckon this will help us get back a few of the days we lost at the beginning of the trip. Fingers crossed!

Sweet Home Chicago...

2007-08-13T02:20:00.000Z

After the noise of the KOA Railroad campsite, we decided to check out the Illinois Beach State Park, just north of Chicago. We'd decided to drive up there and to take a drive through "the Windy City"... and that we did. Michigan Avenue runs straight through the centre of town. It looked like a really nice place too, a less busy version of New York. All along the promenade there were things going on, including stages being set up, probably fro the weekends entertainment. We have added it to our list of places to vist again one day.
Anyway, Illinois Beach State Park. Sounds nice. But this has to be the worst state park we have stayed in. If you are ever planning to camp outside Chicago, don't go here! I particularly liked the notice on the beach that said "Beware of the Asbestos" and the startling views of the power station!!
We were allocated an alcohol free pitch... where the logic of having alcohol free pitches stems from, I'll never know as the pitches behind us definately didn't have this restriction. As we went to bed, the Army started playing soldiers a couple of miles down the road, there was explosions, gunfire and all sorts of other wierd noises. Hey ho, all good fun. Then at about 2am a major storm whipped its way through the camp site. Pretty much anybody who was in a tent packed up and went home! We braved it tho and survived :-) This morning we had a quick look around and there were a few trees down, so it had obviously been a pretty big storm.
Anyway, today we'd decided to have a day off as we've been on the road for 2 weeks now. We went to Six Flags :-) What a crackin day! Now, those of you that know me well will remember that some time ago I nearly lost the will to live as I had all of a sudden become scared of roller coasters... well, never fear.... I am cured :-) I seem to have passed it on to Jen tho, who after second coaster nearly honked :-( However we have planned some serious roller coaster therapy as we bought VIP membership to Six Flags, which allows us free entry to all the parks in the USA :-)
So after a few more gentle rides we decided to check out Hurricane Bay, the water park... WOW :-) What a completely cool place. By the time we'd knackered ourselves out it was gone 6pm. A truely awesome day, but we now need another day off to recover from the excitement.
We are staying at another KOA site tonight. As we pulled in we thought "ahhhhh... nice and quiet". A lovely site it is, but unfortunately it's right next door to a live music heavy rock club. Normally I'd be right up for a bit of headbangin', but tonight I'm knackered, so I think I may go over there in a mo and give all those roudy bikers a bit of what-for, don't ya know!

Rock'n'Roll, It'll poison your mind kids!

2007-08-11T02:09:00.000Z

After Niagara we continued west and headed for Toledo and the Cedar Point State Park at the far end of Lake Erie. We decided to detour along the way and check out the Cleveland Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, on the recommendation of a fellow camper. We checked it out in the ever faithful Rough Guide and it sounded promising. Cleveland hasn’t had much of an influence on Rock and Roll, so it seemed a bit odd to have what is advertised as probably the finest collection of memorabilia in the USA. Apparently the phrase “Rock and Roll” was first used here by the DJ Alan Freed… well that’s just grrrreat pop-pickers!
Given our past experiences with cities we were a bit hesitant about going, but for once the signs were good and there was parking pretty much right outside, so things were looking good. The Museum is a bit pricey at $20 per head… and you are not allowed to take cameras in… something to do with rock stars not wanting people to copy their instrument designs. It wasn’t too bad a place, (in fact I can think of several people reading this that would have had to take advantage of the 2 day pass, there was some fascinating stuff, like Madonna is actually tiny (judging by her outfits and Mick Jagger is really tall! – Jen) but the recurring theme is that rock stars get famous, have a drink or drug problem, then either die or come to some amazing realization that they are not invincible and go on to write politically influencd music and get in trouble with various African governments! Ok… maybe it’s not quite that simple!

So we then left Cleveland, a city that seems to be basking in the delights of economic development, unlike Buffalo that we drove through a few days ago which was a bit of a hole.
We arrived at Cedar Point State Park at about 6pm to find that it was chockablock... Shame as it looked like a really nice place, so off we went to find the nearest KOA (aka Butlins) some 20 miles up the road. We checked in and immediately went for a swim in the outdoor pool as it was a bloomin warm evening. The pool was small, but much cleaner than the scanky swamp at the Holiday Inn in Baltimore. Of all the unlikely places, we also found a Series I landy… It’s a beauty and Jen being Jen, she had to buy it.

Downside to this campsite… it was right next door to a railroad crossing and, I reckon American trains only have 2 controls, one to make the train move, the other to blow the horns… which they did consistently through the night (Jen reckons it was worse than my snoring!).
It’s 300 miles to Chicago, we have no cigarettes, the sun is shining and we’re wearing sunglasses!! (for the uneducated amongst you, thats a take off from a classic Blues Brothers saying ;-) ) … so we need to get a move on. We hoped to get a hotel and spend the night there, maybe check out a Jazz/Blues bar, but everything is very expensive unless you stay at one of the hotels at O’Hare airport. But we can’t find any information about how easy it is to get Downtown, so we’re just gonna drive though and have a look before heading out the other side to the next campsite.

I love it when a plan doesn't come together...

2007-08-10T15:05:00.001Z

Mm. Well that didn’t work! We made fantastic time heading to Toronto until we hit the half way mark… then a tractor trailer decided to fall over on the interstate blocking the whole thing ahead of us. In two hours we completed about 8km and decided that there was no way we were making it to Toronto for the evening, even if we were lucky we would have been pushing it to make it there for 9pm. The prospect of spending money on a hotel for a couple of hours in the evening didn’t really appeal, the only one we could find with a Charlie-sized car park was just over £100 a night, so with a sigh we decided to head to a campsite instead. As it turned out we got to drive down some of those amazing roads that just go on and on and on and …you get the idea, into the horizon and ended up at a campsite beside a river again. We had a peaceful night playing frizbee (aren’t we cultured!) and made plans to head into Toronto in the morning.

We got up bright and early and followed the interstate down to the edge of Lake Ontario. Toronto is a pretty amazing place, you think you’re in it and then you feel like you’re in the Countryside… then you think your in it again… then Countryside – in reality it’s the large parks and open spaces they’ve designed into the city. Combined with the glimpses of the Lake really seem to take away that suffocating city feeling. We didn’t really get a chance to stop (we are still aiming to make up time) but we saw the HUGE tower which I believe is the tallest free standing structure and I must say, it is pretty big. We were clear of Toronto by mid afternoon, so decided to push onto Niagara, it’s only about a 90minute drive around the edge of the lake… I’ve been thinking about this next bit for a while… how can I adequately describe Niagara to those that haven’t been? Well. It’s Big. Very Big. (those A’s at GCSE’s were fully deserved don’t you think?!).

Seriously, it’s not the biggest in the world, but it is pretty amazing. We approached from the Canadian side, the famed horseshoe falls being on their side of the river and I really annoyed Dan by going ‘Oooo! Look!’ ‘Wow, that’s amazing’ ‘Nooooooooo WAY (in my best American accent)’ as he was attempting to negotiate the traffic. We parked pretty easily in the Canadian state park and the best thing about the falls is both the American and Canadian sides are protected along the edge, so at least the hotels and tacky shops are kept back to a semi-respectable distance. I’m never going to be able to describe what they were like and as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words so:
'Disco Rob' @ Niagara:

We also went on the Maid-of-the-Mist tour in a boat to the bottom of the falls. Wow! Lol! Basically, you’re taken to the bottom past the American Falls being given a commentary about the more interesting aspects of the history and they they ‘park’ right in the middle of the horseshoe! Now, the boats pretty busy and we were on the top deck (it would have been rude not too!) with nothing to hold on too… Simon our sea-faring friend may have been right at home but that boat doesn’t half get buffeted! Still, it’s more than worth it and again, will have to go down as one of the most amazing experiences of my life. When you’re in the spray (which reaches up about 170m from the surface) looking up at the 52m high horseshoe it feels like the suns gone out and it’s *proper* raining, needless to say we both came out drenched but grinning like loons. It was the perfect solution to the 33 degree temps that day. Here are some pics from the boat, they may be rubbish but it’s a hard situation to take a photo in!

When we’d had our fill of making ‘Oo’ noises at the waterfall we decided to head off and find a campsite. We crossed back into America with no problems, the Customs & Immigration guy was quite fascinated by what we were up to, but let us in so that’s fine. The campsite we found was about 12m from the falls and a ‘KOA’ campsite, we’d seen quite a few of these already and decided we should check it out as it was already 6pm. It turns out they are a network of family campsites in America and Canada… think Butlins on a Campsite with yellow t-shirts instead of red coats! lol! Actually, that’s a bit unfair, it’s not that bad, but you get the idea. They worked out cheaper than the other private sites we’d stayed at and for $16 we joined up getting us a 10% discount each time we use a site. We’d both prefer to use the State Parks where possible, but it’s not always, so this will offer a cheap, clean, safe and modern alternative (and most have wireless internet ;) ).

The guy at the sign in desk was well up with his local knowledge as you would expect and told us about the free fireworks at the falls every Wednesday night… Me and free fireworks are a good combination! So we had a hasty dinner and headed back to the American side this time to see the show. The American side means you don’t get that picture postcard view of the horseshoe, but you can get very close to the edge of the American Falls. We watched the show from between the American Falls and the ‘Bridal Veil’ Falls, with the lights on the falls it was a whole alternative experience, and I’d certainly recommend going back at night if you ever visit. One more pic, I like this one:

We finally made it... BEN & JERRYS!

2007-08-06T23:02:00.000Z

Well, today’s the day that Jen has spent her whole life waiting for… It’s BEN & JERRY’s Day!
We awoke this morning to rain… and lots of it. The campsite was awash and our lovely view of the lake was somewhat obscured by mist. But hey, it was still a view nonetheless.
We finally managed to get packed up as the rain died off for 10 mins and headed off to B&J’s just up the road… It rained some more. We arrived and were directed to park by the raincoat clad employees right outside the “Flavour Graveyard”. This is where all the flavours that don’t sell too well go when they stop making them… quite touching!
We legged it to the factory and got our tickets fro the tour… a whole $3 each (about £1.50). It’s only a half hour tour but its worth it as you get some free ice cream of a flavour they haven’t released yet at the end. You get to see all the stages in aking the ice cream from a room above the factory floor. The tour also gives you some of the history of B&J’s… did you know, for instance, that Ben & Jerry decided to make ice cream because the ice cream machine was cheaper than a Pretzel maker and they learnt how to do it through a $5 correspondence course! They aren’t really business minded blokes at all. Anyway at the end of the tour we had cinnabon flavour ice cream 

We then went to the souvenir shop and Jen spent our entire holiday budget of a load of bits’n’bobs! Actually some of it is quite cool so I’m not complaining.
We then made tracks and headed to Canada. Jen was really worried about us getting into Canada with the Camel, me, I just played it cool ;-) As it happened the border crossing was a doddle although they chappy did have to make a phone call to check up about a UK registered car. We whooped and cheered our way past the people who were being searched (attracting a lot of unnecessary attention to ourselves) and made our merry way into Canada. This place really messes with your mind! There are still all the American things all over the place, big trucks, stupidly huge pick up trucks, clap board houses with porches and rocking chair, but… everything is in French… and the landscape even looks a bit like Northern France… but you know its not!
We’re starting to notice the week that we lost waiting for the Camel already, so we’ve decided we need to make up some of that lost time. We are just outside Montreal at the mo, and rather than going back to spend a day there we are going to peg it down to Toronto instead and try to get a Motel/B&B near town so we can have a wander round tomorrow evening. At least that’s the plan! By Wednesday we hope to be at Niagara Falls.

Mountain Bike Mayhem

2007-08-05T22:57:00.000Z

Today we got up really early… about 8:30am which is mighty impressive. Our plan today was to be on the road by 9. Hahaaaaa! About 10:30 we rolled out of the campsite.
We headed out to Attitash. This, we had been assured, had some more interesting biking trails. What a place. During the winter months it is a ski resort. When the snow melts they use the ski lifts to transport bikes and riders to the top of the slopes so they can get their fix of adrenaline. We asked at the bike shop and were told that the routes were all either hard-intermediate, extreme, or double or triple X-treme! YOIKS! So after all the ‘mountain bike’ trails we’d been on that turned out to be paved roads, off we went thinking that the hard-intermediate would be a good level for us. HA! Within the first 2 minutes of riding I’d gone over the handlebars and Jen had managed to graze her leg. This was more like it! We’d been told that it was possible to get to the bottom of the route we chose in around 15 mins! We did it in about 40…. LOL… And I went over the handlebars again. It’s worth noting here as you all think that we took ages, a lot of the intermediate routes could only be accessed by riding through XX sections, I love American planning!
I decided to have another go and this time managed to get all the way to the bottom without falling off, but I REALLY need to get the brakes swapped over, cos they are all american and back to front at the mo.
We then had a go on the sled things… a bit like bobsleigh, but with wheels… very cool.
After a massive pizza over the road at Matty B's, we headed north west and checked into the Little River state park campsite in Vermont… Another cheap and cheerful with good amenities and a magnificent view from the rooftent. The reason for being here is that we are about 2 miles from the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream factory near Montpelier. I don’t know what Jen is gonna do with herself once we’ve been there, it’s all she’s been lookin forward to!
As the night drew in the stars came out… WOW… it’s a lovely clear night and you can see more stars than you could ever hope to see at home. Steve’s telescope would have been handy, but eyesight is good enough… within 5 minutes I had spotted a load of satellites going over.

2007-08-04T03:32:00.000Z

Wow... I'm touched.. There have been so many emails and comments from people, kinda make ya go all squiffy! So in answer to some of the many comments:
Blippie... It did rain here too...once! ;-) But apparently we are in for a big storm tonight.
Margery... Smarty pants... the brakes on my bike are hydraulic. At the moment I have no idea how to bleed bike brakes, it's probably the same principal as Landy brake, but at the mo they work... if I mess with them, well, who knows!
Dave, my bikin buddy!... Yeah, got a new bikin jacket, some padded shorts and all sorts... its so cheap over here.
Dad...Did you shut the windows when you left? ;-)
Mum... Yep, Jen is here with me, she's live and kickin! She very rarely lets me take pics of her :-( But heres one, taken tonight at the camp site in New Hampshite, in a town called Conway. We splashed out tonight and got an expensive camp pitch with our own access to the river and everything!

There also seems to be an abundence of exceedingly large camper vans here... I mean, check this puppy out...
I mean, this just ain't camping, is it. That thing has gotta have its own zip code (post code to you lot!) and more square footage than my entire house!

Heavy day of biking tomorrow (hopefully), thanks for the comments, keep 'em coming.

Nighty night ;-)

Hersey's Shocker!

2007-08-04T03:19:00.000Z

I couldn't believe it! I found some Cadbury's Dairy Milk!!! ...but no. It was made by Hersey's! What mean and evil fate was that?! Luckily, I checked the back after a bad encounter with some Rolo's. I am sad, but my waistline is not ;) :D

From 'old' to New Hampshire...

2007-08-04T02:18:00.000Z

Well, it's been a busy few days!

As rightly deserved though, the first paragraph of this blog will be dedicated to 'Stumpy'. I can do that as I've got the laptop. Hahahaa. Stumpy is a most excellent (in true Bill 'n Ted style) mountain bike that I happened to have purchased with all my hard earnt overtime money :) For those who know about these things and to bore those who don't here are a few facts: He's an M5 Alloy Hardtail, Fox F90 Front shocks (with lockout), Avid SD-5R cantilever brakes (will upgrade this having tried Dan's), SRAM X-9 rear derailleur and X-7 Gear levers ...and now Dan's nagging me for getting geeky, so here's a link: My bike

And a piccie from Cape Ann :) (yes, I know the saddles horrible and I've already changed the peddles as I'm too much of a wimp to ride with clips!)

We left Cape Cod on ...er.. I've no idea as I'm on holiday! A few days ago anyway, and headed up the coast a little to north of Boston. We'd heard the Whale watching was fantasic in this area of the world, so decided to spend a couple of nights in Gloucester (isn't it just enough to make you feel at home :) ) next to Manchester (on-sea lol). We had a couple of jobs to do on Charlie Camel, namely checking all the oils and changing the rear brake pads as we'd forgotten to do them before we left home. We could combine this with the Whale Watching and not have to rush off to find a site afterwards. As it was we found a lovely site on Cape Ann with our own little wooded area adn campfire facilites - toasted Marshmallows all 'round :)

The Whale watching was, quite simply, amazing :) We weren't expecting to see an awful lot as we thought it was probably quite hard to find them, but the trip consited of (from memory..) 9 Humpbacks, 3 Fins (the 2nd biggest animal in the world) and 4 Minke's. Wow. The first lot we saw we pulled in close and it was a Humpback 'tail slapping', apparenlty the marine experts are still unsure why they do this, but in this case it looked like communication as there was another doing the same thing about 300m away and another even further in the distance. Later on, we saw these four together which is apparently also unusal! The trip consisted of tail slapping, water spurts, feeding and waving! lol! That's something I don't think we'll ever forget.
Tail Slapping:

For a little perspective!:

Feeding:

Today we rose bright and early (nothing to do with the quarrying and explosives going on down the road... and headed for New Hampshire and Maine. Maine is somewhere I'd always wanted to go as due to my sick facination for easy-reading horror I wanted to visit some of the sites from the Steven King books! (yeah, I know, but it's my holiday!) Ogunquit proved the closest and from one of my favourite books - The Stand (as I know some of you reading this will know) the 'home' of Fran Goldsmith and Harold Lauder. The Rough Guide also said it was a beautiful town with a 3 mile sand spit for a beach... and it certainly was :) Typical New England boarded houses, temps of 98 degrees white sand and crystal water, it was a hard afternoon ;) :)

After that we were itching for some of the true Land Rover type holiday stuff, so I now find myself writing this blog in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (and hoping there is not a big black bear behind me...). We spent this afternoon stocking up and tomorrow we'll be heading off into the National Park for a few days of 'proper' camping, trail finding and Mountain biking. If we don't get eaten by bears hopefully I'll be updating this in a few days! ;) :)

A quick thanks to everyone who's sent comments, it's great to hear from you all :) And for your info Mum, ok, it wasn't 98p in the Nike shop, but I still got 3x pair of trousers for less than £20! :) And for everyone to whom I promised postcards, they are written (in some cases like JW's there's several!) I just can't find a post office :( Will send asap.

Jen

Its a bit fishy round 'ere

2007-07-31T02:06:00.000Z

Ha haaaa... we be in Cape Cod! Right at the end of the land bit, a nice town called Provincetown. It's a bit like Brighton, but with New England style houses.
So, today we popped into the Land Rover dealer at Cape Cod. Charlie, having had his gearbox replaced just before we left and now having covered just over a thousand miles was due a gearbox oil change. The chaps at the dealership were amazed. Most had never seen a real live 110, let alone a Camel, so after lots of picture taking, they finally got on with the wrong job... they changed the engine oil, D'oh! No worries, I pointed out that it was the gearbox oil we wanted changed and they jumped into action again, but this time without the photo session.

We also popped into a bike shop near a place called Mashpee (tee hee... I love that name!!). Here I found a lovely bike for me, and Jen ordered the bike she has been after. With the exchange rates the way they are at the moment, we have both managed to get excellent bikes for a lot less than the UK value. Only trouble is, the brakes are round the wrong way... I tried to pull a skid and nearly flew over the handlebars instead. LOL.

So we are here in Provicetown (where the pilgrims first landed) at the Dunes Edge camp site, until tomorrow afternoon when Jens bike should be ready. In the meantime, she's gotta ride my old boneshaker. We are planning on taking in some of the dunes here in the morning before heading back towards the mainland.

The last couple of nights we have spent at State Park camsites. These vary in quality but are remarkably cheap, about £7-£8 per night. The private camp sites like this one here are a little more pricey... about £15 - £20... and they charge you a quarter for 3 minutes in the shower. Back to the State Parks tomorrow then ;-)

Gotta go, the midgeys are lunching on me big style despite the jungle formula insect repellant and Jen is giving me "eyes" 'cos I'm using the lappy!

Night night everybody :-)

We're on the road!

2007-07-29T15:50:00.000Z

Wahoo! Finally :)

We picked Charlie the Camel up on Friday morning and it looks like he came out the container unscathed which was excellent news for us, only thing was all the little 'Land Rover Spiders' (part number AEU28570) had loved having the 110 all to themselves so the little hoover Nan and Granddad gave me came in quite useful for getting rid of all the cobwebs! :)

We hit the road... and then turned around! Dan had left his phone on the seat of the car which belonged to the nice lady from the container transporting company! A quick phonecall from the office later and she returned (very kind of her) to Dan looking sheepish. The people we have dealt with regarding the shipping have all been very friendly and tolerant so for that we are very grateful.

When we finally got on the road again we decided to hit the intersate. Having spent 2 weeks in New York/New Jersey and Maryland we wanted to start heading north. Luckily the interstates are easy to understand and we soon found ourselves heading for the first campsite in Andover (lol!) New Jersey, Panther Lake. A private site with lots of lovely lakes and stuff, but more important - BLACK BEARS! I couldn't belive it, I thought we had at least a few weeks before we reached bear country, but apparently not. I spent so much time organising getting here I really should of done more research into what's actually here. Still, the frige is air-tight and we followed all instructions so got through the night without being eaten ;)

After 2 weeks of lovely weather it's only right that I should tell you it poured down all night! Massive thunderstorms and pathways that turned into rivers, but being in the rooftent we had no problems :)

The next day we headed off north again, taking the local roads this time. We also managed to find a mall in which i brought excellent lighter trousers (Jeans not funny in this weather) and nike stuff for about 98p... :) The scenery's lovely, the houses amazing and last night we also discovered the joys of State Park campsites :) Clean showers and toilets with beautiful scenery all for £8 a night for both of us. Bargain. Will try to use more of them.

We're spending today doing some scenic trails and driving towards Cape Cod which we aim to hit tomorrow as we were told it was best to avoid at the weekends. Either tomorrow of tuesday we're getting our Mountain Bikes (as nothing's open today - Sunday) so we can do some of the lovely trails we've aready found.

We've discovered all Holiday Inn's have free internet and are handily advertised everywhere, so should be able to update the blog with relative frequency, will sort some pics out for next time too :)

The end is near...

2007-07-26T21:08:00.001Z

Of our wait, that is. Had a phone call from Bridget this afternoon, we will be getting picked up at 10am from the hotel lobby tomorrow morning and taken to the warehouse to collect Charlie Camel! So please excuse me while I go all American for a moment... WHOOP, YEAH, OH MY GAAAAAAD, WHOOP!!! :-)

The cities we've been to have been fantastic, but we hoped to be on the road a week ago, so we are kinda looking forward to tomorrow!

The temperature here in Baltimore at the mo is about 88, so we're off for a swim before going out to celebrate :-)

..The Cheesecake Factory! Oh, and Baltimore..

2007-07-26T01:24:00.000Z

We tend to avoid the 'chain' resturants if we can, but we've heard people talking about 'The Cheescake Factory' around here so we thought it would be worth checking out :)

It was. The food was excellent and there was a huge choice, it's the first time since we've arrived that to be honest, it would have been satisfactory to order one main meal and a side salad for both of us. We've got by so far by only having breakfast and one main meal but even that today was far too much. Luckily enough, the waiter guy Jeff was a good man and put the rest of the lovely cheescakes we'd ordered for pudding in a little carton for breakfast! lol! Cheesecake for breakfast. Perfeck. (note to self: Go to gym tomorrow)

As for Baltimore, we arrived back this afternoon to the news that Charlie had cleared customs - WAHOO! Just got to wait for him to be transported to the collection area now, which with anyluck will happen tomorrow and we can (fingers and toes crossed) pick him up on Friday.

We explored Inner Harbour tonight, there was a baseball match going on but being more of a basketball girl we avoided that and took a stroll instead. Lots of streetside entertainers (including an excellent Doo-Wop group and a little Dave wannabe playing with fire). Lovely atmosphere but we'll head back there tomorrow for a better look and trip to the aquarium during the day.

2007-07-25T02:16:00.001Z

...and what's wrong with Harry Potter books?! :) ...

Last day in DC

2007-07-25T00:34:00.000Z

Everywhere I look people are reading Harry bloomin Potter books... on the trains, on the buses, at the stations, in the street... everywhere!

Got up late today as it's our last full day here in DC and eventually made our way down to the Space and Aeronautical museum. Its free to get in dont'ya'know :-) Now, I'm not really a museum person, but this place kept me busy until they kicked us out at 5pm.
We then thought we'd get the Metro over to the Pentagon, take a couple of pics before heading back to Foggy Bottom... Bit of a waste of time as you ain't allowed to take pics of the Pentagon and from ground level it just looks like any other office building. Hey ho, back on the Metro and back to the Froggy Bottom pub for a bite to eat and another couple of beers... I'm gonna miss that place.

All the sunshine we've had, I've now got burnt ears! LOL :-)

Busy bees...

2007-07-24T00:43:00.000Z

Wow... what a day! Last week we had a call from the US shipping agent who needed us to sign the US equivalent of a Carnet de Passage. So today we were up bright and breezy (7am!!) to get the train back to Baltimore. We hopped onto the Washington Metro to Union Street Station and caught the commuter train to Baltimore. Then picked up a cab to the Dartrans office where we met Bridget for the first time. It was good to meet her and she was very re-assuring about the progress of our container. Then it was down to business... The bill needed paying! Dartrans normally do business with other US based companies so don't take credit cards. Not a problem, says I, we'll leg it down to Dartrans bank with my credit card, their bank account details and a total amount and bobs your uncle! If only it was that simple. The first branch of M&T bank basically said we couldn't pay the money. So when we went into the next branch I tried a different tactic which completely confused the bank clerk (I think she had an IQ of about 2). Eventually, after explaining about 4 times that we wanted to pay money into Dartrans account from my credit card, she finally twigged. The transaction took for ever, but we finally left the bank with a reciept showing that the money had been paid into the Dartrans account.

After all that rushing between cities we needed beer, so stopped off at the Froggy Bottom Pub again for a bite to eat and some light alcoholic refreshment... Several pints later we staggered the 3 blocks back to the hotel with the satisfaction of a few good jobs done... hick! ;-)

Washington's National Mall - wow

2007-07-22T23:55:00.000Z

What an excellent day :)

The sun was shining when we woke up, temp in the high 80's all day today which made us think of all of you in Billing's mudbath (still would have loved to have been there :) ), Berkshire even made 'the weather channel' this morning (my new favourite past time!), the flooding looks scary! Hope everyone's ok and Hampshire isn't too affected.

We decided to spend the day walking around the National Mall (not the shopping kind). On our way there we stumbled across the National Treasury and figuring the US of A has lots of money we thought we'd ask if they'd fund the next Flying Spanners trip to Ladoga... but they wouldn't let us in.

Not to be perturbed we completed the short walk to the White House (we're staying on the same road don't'chaknow - it's alot smaller in 'real life') and thought we'd ask the President if he could spare the cash... but they wouldn't let us in there either. Sigh. At least we tried :)

Shortly after that there was a security alert which meant we were all rushed from the gate as the fire engines and Police cars came rushing past, we're hoping it was nothing to do with dodgy people with Russian t-shirts on looking for money....

We completed our walk down to Capitol Hill, looked at the building (no sign of Will Smith or giant Alien crafts) and the free botanical gardens (very relaxing) and walked up the National Mall to the Washington Monument (very big, 555ft actually), past the WWII memorial (very moving), reflecting pool (very green) and up to the Lincoln Memorial (very marbley). Stunning scenery and a lovely relaxing day after the hustle of New York.

Sadly the excellnt pub we found yesterday called the 'Froggy Bottom' (in Foggy Bottom) wasn't open, so we settled on a TGi's (because it was there) before heading back for an early night before rushing back to Baltimore tomorrow.

Tracey - that sun cream you recommended is excellent, I know because I forgot to put some on a bit and that bit's now very red! lol! P20 for anyone who's interested.

Welcome to Washington DC!

2007-07-21T23:17:00.000Z

WOW! You should see this hotel room! It makes the Milford Plaza in New York (the one we just left) look like a stinky old hole... We have just arrived at the Melrose in Washington DC. The sign on the back or our door says that this room normally goes for $499 per night! Thanks to Expedia, we are paying about £58 :-)
And to make matters better, I'm updating this blog on the back of somebody's unprotected wi-fi connection, so I don't have to pay the $9.99 that the hotel wants per day :-)
Had breakfast in New York, now just about to go out for dinner and beer in Washington... aren't we just the little jetsetters!
Mind you, we still can't wait to get Charlie Camel back, then the holiday will really begin.
Thinking of you all having a fun filled funky time at Billing... kinda wish we could be there, sort of, in a roundabout sort of way, maybe ;-)

(lack of) Shopping in New York!

2007-07-21T00:30:00.001Z

...Mm. Forgot I'm not really a shopping person! :) Lasted a whole hour before I thought it best to get on and see some more sights. Admittedly I couldn't find the 6 story 'Nike' shop and if I could it would have been a whole other story!

So, popped into the Grand Central Station, part of it was still shut off due to the huge steam explosion yesterday, but saw most of it and it was stunning. I love the buildings here in New York, they've been a really pleasent suprise, lots and lots of history for such a 'young' Country.

Got another call from the shipping agents ... they were suprised the Landy was in a container! Which suprised us due to all the conversations we'd had with them about the Container!! We now have to head back to Baltimore to sign more papers (the equivalent of a Carnet), despite already sending quite a few back. Still, these things have to be done and tbh I'll do anything to get Charlie through at the moment!

Oh well. That's life. A lovely Italian meal helped calm the nerves and I finally managed to pick up a bit of New York cheescake on our last night in New York before we head off to Washington tomorrow...

Good Things and Bad Things

2007-07-20T12:45:00.000Z

Good Things: Ben and Jerry's also make smoothies. This I did not know. But it makes me happy :) hehe.

Bad Things: Shipping! Grrrr.

Well, we flew out on the 15th, Charlie originally been promised as arrived and ready to go on the 16th.. then we were told there had been delays, no worries, this gives us time to 'do' New York, Arrival expected by the 24th.... now we're told he will arrive by the 22nd (maybe) but will need 5 days to clear US customs. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!! I apprieciate it's not the companies faults, but it is frustrating :) Not being a 'hotel' or 'city' person, I now find myself in a hotel in a city... for another week. Poor Dan is bearing the brunt of it, but doing well (I think he keeps switching his hearing aids off :) ). I can hear Canada and my lovely shiny new bike calling, but at the moment we seems to be confined a bit!

Still, not to be perturbed (sp?!) we've booked in to a hotel in Washington (yet another great deal from Expedia who always seem to beat the pants of everyone) until Wednesday when we'll make our way back to Baltimore (maybe) to hopefully pick Charlie up. We've gone for the train option this time so if we get the call saying he's ready we're only a 40minute train ride away.

The cities are amazing, but I can't wait to get on with the 'proper' holiday :)

Well, having spent all morning sorting that little mess out, it's 12:51 and we've yet to have breakfast, more importantly, it's 12:51 and this was my shopping day! Oh well, I've now spent all my money on hotels anyway, hehe. Off to Grand Central Terminal and the Library again, then going to see what bargains I can hunt out - we're getting over $2 to £1 on the credit cards at the moment, excellent news :)

I'm starving. More New York Pizza anyone?

Jen

New York.... err, New York

2007-07-20T01:00:00.000Z

Well, since the last entry the battery on the Laptop went flat. This was when I realized that A) we didn’t have a vehicle to plug it into to charge it up B) we didn’t have a US mains plug for the lappy… D’oh! I asked in one of the dodgey computer shops that lines 7th Avenue and they wanted $60 for a power lead. If you read any of the travel books, they all say to be careful in these shops. Boy, they ain’t wrong! As soon as you walk in, they know you are a tourist and try to flog you stuff you really don’t need or want. I was strong enough to resist the power of the dark side and walked out empty handed :-) We eventually found the lead we needed in a shop called J&R’s for $8.99. So now we can update the blog!
We left Baltimore on Monday and caught the Greyhound bus to New York. This is by far the cheapest way to get around if you don’t have your own vehicle. We got a return ticket each $70 (about £35). Train was over $200 and plane nearly $300. But you can’t be choosy about where you sit, just grab a seat! Jen sat next to a Martin Lawrence look-a-like New Yorker called Shawn. Sounds like he was a bloody nice chap who gave loads of really helpful advise. Me… well, I got some overly camp bloke! He was ok actually, but he was very loud and insisted on shouting “oh my gaaaaad!” everytime I said anything (Shawn and I found it most amusing - Jen).
We are staying at the Milford Plaza on West 45th street (1 block from Times Square and Broadway… it’s not too bad, but the maids aren’t overly good at cleaning… there are bogeys on the bed side table! And the wi-fi internet access is $11/day! But, mustn’t grumble, its cheap, comfy and we have air con (even if it is the loudest in the world!)
So anyway, here we are in New York, with a few days to kill. It’s manic here, think of London on a busy Saturday night, multiply the buzz by 10 and you still ain’t quite there!
We bought sightseeing bus tickets (thanks for the tip Eric! Jen) that included entry into various attractions and headed Downtown. These buses are frequent and you can hop on and off as often as you like so are a great way to get around if you are new in town. The guides on the buses are full of useful local knowledge, not just about the usual attractions, but about things that you probably wouldn’t normally try.
Downtown is the lower half of Manhatten Island, where the twin towers used to be. It’s a really weird feeling being there, kinda hard to describe. I know we never knew anyone there or that was directly affected by 9/11, but we both still left the area with big lumps in our throats!
We then got another bus and did the “Brooklyn loop”. Jen really liked the brown stone houses that typify this area of New York. (but then I would, they sell for over $1million and that’s just the ones in Brooklyn!)
Finally, in the evening we ventured up the Empire State building while it was still light and stayed there until it got dark.
Next day we headed “Uptown”, the area north of Central Park. Checked out the American Museum of Natural History… very cool. Everywhere we go is like walking in a movie set, the Natural History museum from that Tom Hanks Film and in Friends, the subway from various movies, times square, empire state, Ellis Island from Hitch… We then walked back to Time Square via Central Park. Luckily we missed the Steam Pipe explosion on 41st St, only a few blocks from us, apparently there was flames and mud and street flying everywhere! Some impressive pics in the paper and one lady died of a heart attack, but luckily no more deaths.
Today was the day for catching the Circle Line ferry over to Liberty Island and Ellis Island, we started well by walking to the wrong port! 2miles later and we were back in times Square to catch the subway downtown again, still, it was good as it meant I got to ride the subway. Statue of Liberty is bigger than you think! Ellis Island was interesting and again some fabulous old buildings.

Tomorrow we are having a “shopping day” interspersed with Grand Central Station and another visit to the Library – we went on Tuesday, but didn’t get time for a proper look around and it looks excellent! (and is the one in Ghostbusters which is just cool!)… then on Saturday we head back to Baltimore to meet up with Bridget at Dartrans and hopefully get Charlie Camel out of his container. The news here is that the boat maybe ahead of schedule. A last minute hiccup with paperwork not being sent through from Kingstown was sorted (hopefully).
I will be speaking to Dartrans again tomorrow to make sure that everything is tickerty-boo. When we get Charlie back, this is when the proper holiday will start!
Thanks to everyone for the text messeges and posts on the blog :-)

We're here!

2007-07-15T22:33:00.001Z

Wow, what a day! We were up bright and breezy this morning, Moo gave us a lift to Southampton Parkway railway station. An hour and a bit train ride to Woking and then a coach to Heathrow. Total journey time about from leaving the house to checking in just under 3 hours. With the flight not leaving until 1pm we had some time to kill so splashed out on probably the last full english breakfast of the year!
We boarded the Boing 767 and the flight took off about 15 mins late. I'd forgotten how boring long haul flights can be, but the in-flight entertainment system was quite good despite there being a dodgey headphones connection!
We landed at Baltimore and the cabin crew made an announcement that approximately 100 bags had been left behind at Heathrow. Fortunately for us, ours weren't in amongst that lot :-)
So anyway, I've just switched my phone on and got a text from Brookies Steve (Cheers matey!!)
It's about 32degrees C here, so pretty warm :-)
The light tram system got us from the airport to the hotel in about 20 mins, and here I am in our room, on the 7th floor of the Holiday Inn... WOW!! Its just coming up to midnight back home, 7pm here. Jen is in the shower, and I stink, so I'm going in next. Gonna grab some grub and a beer then I reckon we'll end up getting an early night.

WOW... We're in America!

Farewell Parties, hangovers and cleaning!

2007-07-14T07:53:00.000Z

Well, 'tis the morning after the night before 08:54 and I'm sat in the garden on the laptop whilst the rest of the house is snoozing :) My habit of recent weeks of waking up at 5:30am after having nightmares about the huge list of things to do was only slightly modified to 6:45am after a 3:30am bedtime...sigh. I think I'll sleep for a week when I get there, but still - I certainly can't complain!

HUGE thanks has to go to Richard and Tracy for being daft enough...er... lovely enough to let us all invade their house last night to save the nightmares of cleaning today (the wonders of owning a dishwasher), I really, really apprieciate all the effort they went to to set the house up/clean out the garage and the huge amount of cleaning Tracy Rhodes did.

The celebration of the going away and Mike's 32nd Birthday also ended up being a celebration of Kev's birthday (although he didn't tell us until 5 minutes before he was leaving) and Crine's birthday (on Sunday) so ALSO and without a doubt we have to thank everyone who turned up :) Dan's Dad and Sister Bab's who travelled down from Colchester, Marky Hankin (git) who surprised us by turning up from Somerset after pretending he had to work (git git), Tim and Lou who didn't turn up until almost midnight after being sat in traffic for 3 hours on their way down from the midlands and Jez/Zuz who travelled down from Basingstoke, which admittedly isn't as far as the others but is still a fantastic effort in a rented van! Thanks also to everyone for the good wishes/cards/pressies and alcohol :) We ended up with a huge assortment from SLRC ladies tops and wind up torches to an excellent mix-CD full of songs about places in America and Russian Vodka (which I think is now going to Billing!). Very cool.

An excellent party ensued; Steve ended up in the hot tub (fully clothed), JU brought much Bubble happiness, Little Dave played with fire, various experiments happened with the Chocolate fountain and the 'boys' spent all night sat in the garage... they feel safe in there. Bless. Pics to follow when Bab's gets up and I get get back in the lounge to get the Camera!

The list of 'things to do today' is still huge... I've tidied the bedroom already and finished packing, so: one more lot of washing, dusting, hoovering, getting tyres on my new Mini Wheels (Mmmm.... white superlite :) so he has a hope of passing the MOT on our return), cleaning, waxing and making sure Mike and Becky know where the keys are then paying cheques in, posting t-shirts to Jules, dropping the HSE back to Moo, picking lots of stuff up from Richard and Tracy after last night, buying pillows for anyone using the house whilst we're away and checking I've got all the paperwork in place... Ah. No worries.

Help.

The waiting game

2007-07-11T21:05:00.000Z

With not much to do now, other than pack bags and have a going away party, all the stresses and strains of the past couple of months seemed to have been whisped away. I'm sure they will return tho as we still have to get Charlie through customs when we arrive in Baltimore. But for now my mind has started to wander a bit... We have a container on a ship called MSC Christina, operateed by the Mediterranean Shipping Company... What can I find out about that vessel? So armed with the internet I get to work! Anybody who is bored by ships should probably switch off now!!

I initailly used the google image search thingy and turned up a multitude of pictures of people called Christina! Amazingly enough (for me, anyway), google-ing the vessels name turned up a couple of photos from http://www.shipspotting.com/. The Shipspotting website is the nautical equivelent of train spotting. You may mock this sort of stuff, but it can be amazingly useful when you want information. Anyway, thanks to Stan Muller in the Netherlands, I now have 2 photos of the vessel carrying Charlie Camel. And judging by the time they were taken, I'd even go as far as saying that our container is in those pictures somewhere! How cool is that! I would have sent him an email, but his profile on the shipspotting website lacks any sort or contact details.

Having a quick scout around on the MSC website I found out she was built in 1998 and has a gross tonnage of 37,579. I have no idea if thats a lot for a container ship, but I'd guess it would hurt if it ran over your foot!

Rather worryingly, I also stumbled accross this little snippet... It appears that MSC Christina was involved in a fender-bender in May 2005! I hope she has a better driver now!

Oh so quiet...

2007-07-10T20:08:00.002Z

Since we delivered Charlie Camel to Felixstowe, things have been pretty quiet here. I had news today from the shiping agents that the vessel, MSC Christina will be sailing tonight at 2300hrs. So if anyone fancies running down to wave goodbye...

Without a vehicle to prepare, we have spent the last week sorting out paperwork. The never ending list of things to sort out seems to be, well, never ending!

Bye bye Charlie Camel

2007-07-03T21:47:00.001Z

Today we loaded Charlie Camel into the container at Felixstowe!

After spending an age cleaning and polishing the car before being shipped, it chucked it down with rain on the way to Felixstowe, so we thought we'd better get him washed again, just to be on the safe side. Then we pulled into the container yard to find that it was covered in muddy puddles!

Our container was delivered by the coolest fork-lift truck type thing that could lift and manouver the containers around with such ease. It was positioned in the yard and I drove Charlie camel into the container. Then we watched as Martin, Kingstowns main man for loading cars, secured Charlie using chocks, rope and some metal poles! Apparently he hasn't lost a car in 40 years of loading then into containers... thats a pretty impressive record I think :-)

We were advised that the container would be delivered to the quayside later today and loading of the ship would start on Thursday ready for the sailing on Sunday. Then if all goes according to plan with Dartrans in Baltimore, we should meet up with Charlie Camel again around about July 24th.... Can't wait!