Las Vegas Encore....and meeting Mel Gibson!

Matt & Cathy (Matt's my cuz) met us back in Vegas and were ready to party! The first night we ended up playing roulette with Mel Gibson...well Matt did while we all watched...! It was kinda weird how no one really recognized him - he was on his own when we first saw him and Matt shook his hand - so we kinda turned into his stalkers...! He had some kind of guard that made a point of not letting Cathy and I take pics no matter how discreet we tried, but here (in one of my snap attempts) you can see his ear and bald patch next to Matt leaning across the table. Ha! Matt and Chris regularly reminisce about the many Braveheart annecdotes they should have cracked out.

The next day we took a trip up the Stratosphere which is the highest tower in Vegas. It gives you an amazing view of Vegas and the desert, and at the very top is the highest thrill ride in the world which shoots you up another hundred odd feet into the air which we all just had to conquer. (it seems we've seen/done a lot of 'most in the world' things this trip - but I guess it makes the trip all the more epic...!). They caught the funniest picture of us 4 on the ride that we all laughed about for days. Chris was trying to overcome a hangover when we got on it and so his 'on the brink of death' face will get you everytime.

Then that night Matt & Cathy had got us a VIP table at the nightclub Tao at The Venetian. It was one of the craziest nights we've ever had. It was the bizarrest, the wildest and the most fun time, including a personal security guard, waiter and lingerie clad server, state of the art toilets, girls in bathtubs, escorted toilet queue jumps, two of the largest bottles of Vodka we've seen and, of course, Donna's boobs...! She was our server I mentioned, but her chest was truly a thing unto itself. We excuse ourselves to our parents for the news and pics on this night but it was so mad that we had to give detail about this landmark night out. And if its any consolation, Donna was actually the nicest, sweetest girl who was amazing at her job. This pic cracks us all up on so many levels...!

Chris and I had a night either side of Matt & Cathy's visit and so we mixed it up a bit and stayed in a couple of different casinos along the strip. We stayed at Sahara, Imperial Palace and Circus Circus, but The Wynn that Matt & Kathy stayed at, by far outstripped them all in elegance.

Yosemite National Park & Death Valley

Once again, we're a little behind on the blog. There's a lot to fill in on - firstly here's some pics of Yosemite where we headed to from San Francisco. You can't compare it to Yellowstone in terms of beauty as they are very different and both very beautiful, but we really loved Yosemite and would love to come back sometime. The national park 'system' and rules are the same, but its far more laid back, it was less busy, less expensive and Yosemite Valley, which has the biggest rock cliffs in the world, was stunning.

We saw a bear!! It was so lucky as they're so rarely seen near the roads and villages, but this one got himself stranded on a crossroad near a village!
After a couple of nights camping in Yosemite, we headed to Las Vegas via Independence (where we caught some locations of where Electroma was filmed) & Death Valley - the hottest place on earth. Its a very dramatic desert landscape. Very beautiful. We hit it at 6pm and it was still 43 degrees when we left at 9pm. We kept getting out of the car just to experience it. Again, there was a strong breeze but it was really hot too! At midday in the summer its average temperature is 47 degrees!

San Francisco

We've been spending the last few days here in San Francisco catching the sights. Just outside San Fran, we drove down through the Napa Valley and did a wine tasting. Its like an imitation of southern france with the most authentic looking decadent houses plonked in the middle of the rolling hills of grapevines.

The weather here is like the UK - its so fresh and cool, which is a nice comforting change from the heat of the last couple of weeks. There's this weird fog here that you can see sweep over the hills into the sea and that whole interaction (which is something to do with condensation) means that you'll have over cast 5 minute patches that cover a few streets, followed by hot sunny patches, followed by windy patches.

Its very european in atmosphere and appearance. All the houses are like pretty painted townhouses and there's pockets of tiny independent stores and cafes around. I'd describe San Fran as a big gay, friendly, bohemian seaside town. Here's a sea lion colony that live on some rafts by the pier. Its like a soap watching the 'families' and the guys fighting over territory etc.

We're staying here tonight with Speedy and Katrina. Speedy is Chris' old friend from back in his travelling days in South Africa. They have a beautiful house on the hills with lots of forest and wildlife about. Here's Chris and Speedy (aka Michael Cain - what an ace name) in front of 'The Crookedest Street'

Everyone thought they were brothers when they were travelling cos they looked alike - apparently they both had short curly hair then. I can see the resemblance! but Speedy has a very broad northern irish accent so you'd guess they weren't related pretty quick!

Reno and the Bonneville Flats

A couple of days back we set off on our 2 day drive to San Francisco stopping by the Bonneville Flats and Reno. Here's a couple of pics of us at the flats. They're huge vast salt plains, which once were lakes but have dried out over probably thousands of years and the salt has crystalized. So its like a desert of hard crumbly salt. All the land speed records have been broken here. I think Top Gear have staged various stuff here too. It was so bright - you couldn't take your sunnies off. You're allowed to go for a spin on them so we tried to get a bit of speed but even 40mph felt so fast on them so we bottled it. Chris did some skids then we headed over to Reno.

Reno is like a mini Vegas and its where I bought my wedding dress!!!

Yellowstone National Park

Finally getting you up to date with our antics, here's a few pics from our stint at Yellowstone. It was very lush and green so very different from other parts of the road trip so far. There is a lot of thermal activity here so we saw a lot of Geysers and caught Old Faithful Geyser going off, jetting about 100ft in the air. The whole place is like a big safari where everyone s looking out for a big wildlife moment. We managed to get up close to a lot of Bison and deer, saw an Osprey and her chicks on a ledge and saw a bald headed eagle which was pretty cool. The danger of bears and bison is very real and they drum it into you with several signs and loads of info about how to cope with bears and prevent an attack. We didn't see one unfortunately, although there were moments when I just hoped we wouldn't. You're only allowed to sleep in the designated expensive campgrounds inside the park, but you can wilderness camp at a couple just on the outskirts. As we drove into the camp that night there was a sign saying High Frequency Bear Sightings and to take all precautions when camping: we decided to sleep in the car...! Just running to the boot I was terrified.

We're back in Salt Lake City now and tomorrow we're going to visit the Bonneville Flats on our way over to San Fransisco which should take a few days. Hopefully we'll get back online sometime then.

Monument Valley & Utah

Heading north after visitng the Grand Canyon we took a small "dinosaur tracking"tour of a desert flat. There were loads of dinosaur footprints, fossils and we even saw a full size dinosaur skeleton in the sand. I was like "why isn't all this in museums, but reading about the area apparently there's tons everywhere and we did end up seeing more footprints on a walk later that day - they're everywhere!We'd both been well looking forward to seeing Monument Valley and, as you can see, it didn't disappoint. We camped at a campsite on a ledge looking over the national park on the first night and then took a horse trek into the valley in the morning. (You'll see in the pic we accidentally bought a junior tent thats even too small for me to lie straight in! But luckily it'll only have to do for a few nights!) Unfortunately the battery ran out on the camera before we got to the best bits on the horse trek! Nevermind. If you've been following my progression (!) I finally got to gallop on this trek! Quite a bit actually cos we wanted to get in as much of the valley as poss and there were only 4 of us on the trek. It tired us all out cos the heat was blazing. My white horse (along with my white shirt) had turned orange by the end.

After visiting a Navajo Reserve and seeing their crafts, later that afternoon we drove through Southern Utah to make our way north upto Salt Lake City. Totally unexpectedly it was stunning - we travelled through several plains and canyons (including The Valley of the Gods where Thelma & Louise was filmed) that had immense rock mountains and formations and some of the bizarrest landscapes - sometimes moon like. When we stopped and read a little about them, it was crazy to learn that some bottom layers in the rock were over 100 million years old. At one point we were walking along a ledge hundreds of feet up at a viewpoint when we spotted a big rock that had tide marks on it from when the sea had been at that level...! That and all the dinosaur stuff just makes you feel so insignifcant in the grand scheme of things...

Las Vegas & The Grand Canyon

Tracing back about a week now we landed into Vegas, checked in at the Sahara and had a couple of nights enjoying the madness. It's like a huge adult playground full of OTT indulgence....but we loved it! The hotel casinos on the strip are just too huge to comprehend. Ours was one of the medium sized ones and it had 1700 rooms!! All trip our body clocks have got us up early mornings (which, as you know, is good for us!) so we've really made the most of all our days, but in Vegas its really really hot in the daytime (about 40degrees), but its dry heat so completely different from when we were in the humidity of Thailand at similar temperatures. Most people are up and about early evening till late at night but we managed to check out most of the famous casinos during the day and go on the New York New York rollercoaster; then we got dressed up, saw the Bellagio fountains and Chris played some poker that evening.

Excalibur

The Bellagio Fountains

A few of the displays inside the Bellagio conservatory

In Vegas you can visit, Paris, New York, Venice and the Sahara all in a day! This is Paris Las Vegas that has a half size replica of the Eiffel Tower you can go to the top of.

Just after picking up the car the next day, we headed over to the Rio. Every year we watch the World Series of Poker Main Event on YouTube (cos they wait months to air it on uk tv..anyhoo) and coincidentally it turns out that it was/is on while we were in Las Vegas! Its a $10,000 buy-in tournament that lasts for 10 days where all the pros, some celebs (and some lucky amateurs) play for a like a $9m pot. Geeky as we've got following poker, we've come to know and respect some of the big players so it was like a star safari for us. We were there on day 5 and there were 1,000 of the 6,900 entrants still playing - it was spread over a couple of huge rooms but we managed to get up close and watch some cool players.

A couple fo hours down the road we visited the Hoover Dam. It was a good sight to see but the temperature was unreal. It was 42 degrees so just opening the car door and letting the heat hit you was an experience in itself. There was actually a breeze but Chris accurately desrcibed it as like when you open the oven door cos it was the hottest most surreal wind. 4 hours drive later we turned up at the Grand Canyon and wilderness camped for the night. The next day we had a good tour around the south rim and took in the enormity of the place. Here's some pics. Spot Chris in one of them

There's still loads to tell on Monument Valley, Utah and Yellowstone. I'll try update when we get to San Fransisco in a few days.

Catching up with the cousins

After saying farewell to Alex and Jules, Chris and I jumped on a train to Conneticut to stay with Anthony (my Cuz) and Estrell for a few days. We met AJ (their new bundle of joy) for the first time, visited Mary Ann and Sanjay (and their beautiful kids) in Philadelphia and all went to a water/theme park for the day. It's always awesome catching up with the cousins. We're always guaranteed a great time and late nights! And there's still more to come as we meet up with Matt & Kathy in Vegas for a weekend, then go back to Ohio with them later in the trip. Chris and Anthony went for a spin on the motorbikes and we fit in a trip to the casino and the outlet village too. All in 2 nights...phew! We're planning to pop back up and see everyone again before we head back to London.

I have to get off the net now as someone's waiting! But i'll be back with an update on Vegas and the start of our road trip when we can next get online. Hopefully not too long. P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY FIONA!

Sorry for the gap...!

Hi All. Sorry for the long gap in posts. There's too much to fill you all in on.....! Firstly, Glastonbury was awesome. There was one morning where it rained pretty heavy and so brought the sludgy mud, but I thought it was a bonus as we had the best of the mud for one day and the best of the blazing sun for the rest! And although it was really sad hearing the news about MJ, every artist and DJ at the festival tributed him from the minute the news got out which was touching. Looking forward to another belter next year working with Silent Disco again.

Then there was New York.....Jules had joined us at Glasto so we quickly zipped back to MK, re-packed our bags, were picked up by Alex and all headed over to the Big Apple the next day!

Here's us all at Times Square. Our hotel was here and the window looked directly out onto the big screens so we always felt in the heart of things. We fit so much in...where do I start? In amongst some shopping and gorging our faces at delis every day we visited Top of the Rockerfeller Building, the Museum of Modern Art, Central Park, we walked the Brooklyn Bridge, took the Staten Island Ferry, had a night out in Little Italy and Soho, and Jules and Alex fit in a trip around the NBC studios. I'd love to elaborate but there's too many stories and not much time! Newlyweds Tony Boy (my cuz) and Myra joined us on the last day which was ace. Also, our last night was the 4th of July so there were fireworks on the hudson river all down the side of Manhattan Island. We were sitting in a restaurant when they started live on the tv. Understandably, others wanted to finish the meal that we'd just been served, but Jules and I were like, sod this, wolfed some food down and legged it over to the fireworks in flipflops! Another crazy super quick story: a few weeks back I got chatting with a girl at the small Tango lesson in Buenos Aires and it turns out she works in a restaurant on Times Square that we ate at one night - we were both like "What the Hell?!"