We're in Utah but we could be on another planet - the landscape is all red and white and pink cliffs, really beautiful and when a girl in the grocery store asked Eoin where he was from, she said she'd never heard of Ireland, that she'd taken two classes in Western Civilisations and she'd never heard of it. Even when he mentioned St Patricks day, not a spark of recognition. Ha ha ha ha ha!
California
We made our way camping down the central Californian coast, it's lovely there, really green, lots of big state parks, great campsites, lovely. We headed inland once we got to LA, stopped in Beverly Hills for a coffee and a nose around where the rich people live, drove past the Hollywood sign on the freeway and then kept going til we got to the desert. Very different there, not just the landscape but the people, we were in the land of mullets, moustaches and strange body shapes. We stayed there two nights and my planning skills let me down, no shower. Ugh, had to wash my hair using a washing up bowl and a mug. And on the second night we had to sleep in the car due to the high winds. Lovely.
On the upside, it was a great place to see wildlife, some desert tortioses were wandering through the campsite, we saw road runners (meep meep), chipmunks and some owls had nested and had babies in a tree nearby, cute.
Las Vegas
We woke up in the car at 5:30am and drove straight to Vegas where we checked into our desert themed hotel, showered off all the dirt and stationed ourselves in the jacuzzi for the afternoon. I love Vegas!! It is a great place, all the over the topness and glitz and luxury is just brilliant. We didn't do much gambling, Eoin was no fun at all and got all upset when he lost $1 on the slot machines. I won it back for him but I never made it onto the black jack tables, everyone was gambling much higher stakes than Eoin's heart rate could take.
We went to Paris, Venice and New York, watched a pirate show, a volcano errupt, all in one night. We walked for miles and miles - the strip uis really long because all the hotels are inconceivably big. And after two nights there, with the dirt barely out from under my fingernails, we hit the road again.
Grand Canyon
Eoin read somewhere that the Grand Canyon can get so foggy that you can't see it for days at a time so he was just relieved to see it when we got there. It looks just like the photos, only bigger. We spent three days looking at it, walking round the rim and down into it and didn't tire of it. I was amazed how close the trails go to the edge with no safety barriers, you'd think in a country where you can get sued for making apple pies too hot that they wouldn't allow people to fall 3000ft to a certain death just by tripping over on a path. It would have spoilt it a bit though I guess but I wasn't very brave when we got to the scary bits.
To cross the the Colorado river and get 10 miles north to the opposite rim of the canyon, you have to drive 200 miles, isn't that amazing?
Zion National Park
We drove for hours and hours to get here to Zion National Park, another canyon and quite stunning. Not much more I can say about that.
Camping
We are very happy campers, no more poles have snapped. We look like right pros now, we have a tablecloth, a lantern and a campfire. Though it is a mystery to me how forest fires ever start, it takes me so much effort to get the fire going and if i don't pay any attention it goes out.
