April 2006

The last days in the OC

Well, here we are, time is running out on our Californian holiday. It's been fantastic, and this will be my last blog entry before the flight back to the UK tomorrow.

The margaritas of last night took their toll, so our morning started slowly. But the weather was fabulous, and after a breakfast of cheesecake leftovers we headed out for a picturesque walk to a waterfall. The road to the trail was classified "suitable for most vehicles", and as most vehicles in the US are monster trucks I suppose this was true. Unfortunately we had to abandon Jim and Gen's small SUV (bigger than any car you can buy in Britain) before the water filled potholes became waist deep, and take our life in our hands as we dodged mad drivers testing off-road vehicles that drive up freeways and to malls 6 days out of 7.

The walk was lovely, in hot sunshine, but we gave up when we got to the second river crossing and couldn't be bothered to take our shoes and socks off again. The great outdoors is fine as long as it doesn't get too uncomfortable. So an hour later we were sat in an exclusive coffee shop by sea, eating cookies.

Hannah and I then wandered down to San Clemente beach for an evening stroll. We came back via the supermarket for a final stock up on junk food, and enjoyed a dinner of even more leftovers from yesterday's dinner and a discussion about politics. It ended in agreement over the futility of it all. That sounds like a good sentiment to take back to work on Tuesday morning.

Orange County isn't all irrigated deserts. Here's some water not stolen from the Mexicans

Hannah assesses her options at our first river crossing

James, in Californian hiking gear

The eventual solution to the river dilemma (just before a monster truck stormed through and soaked Gen)

James follows...

Defeated at the second river crossing

Down on San Clemente beach

The pier

Looking back at San Clemente

The Pacific ocean. It's big

Ahhhh...idyllic beach view

Arty shot of palm trees. I'm quite pleased with that!

Today's cute furry creature: Gen, rarely seen outside of her normal shop habitat. Note the designer distressed jeans and handbag, useful as a pouch to carry provisions

And that's it! It's back to rainy Newcastle tomorrow, via Paris where we have one-and-a-half hours to make it across the airport from one terminal to the other. So thanks to Jim and Gen for being such wonderful hosts, and an especial thank you to my assistant, navigator and photographic model Hannah.

And to my international readership (of three?):

Home on the strange

Southern California did not disappoint in its strangeness! After a somewhat broken night of sleep in a motel in Yuma, Arizona, (the next door room was full of students on "spring break") we found ourselves at the official centre of the world. It's in a place called Felicity which has a population of four, two being the mayor and his wife. They've constructed a stone pyramid to mark the spot, are slowly building huge rows of granite slabs on which the entire history of civilisation is being etched, and are also putting together a church on a hill behind all this. Oh, and they have a section of stairs from the Eiffle Tower.

But the lady who ran it (the mayor's wife) was lovely, and showed us around even though it was meant to be shut for the off season. We watched a DVD on the place, and left with certificates proving we had been there. We can now re-visit for free for the rest of our lives (not bad for $2).

We drove west from there, through huge rolling sand dunes and then across green fields, irrigated by Colorado river water. Finally we reached the mountains, on top of which sits the Jacumba desert tower. It was built in the 40's to allow people to view the surrounding landscape, and across the road the huge boulders that cover the hills around there are carved and painted into strange shapes. The place houses its own museum, with displays ranging from stuffed animals to historic linen bags for carrying water.

Driving west again, stopping only for a Subway sandwich, the land went up and down until we took a detour north through rolling hills that wouldn't have been out of place in England. It was all very rural, with farmhouses seilling their own produce out of their back doors and horses everywhere. An hour later we were back to the ocean's edge, following the Pacific northwards. The week's total mileage was 1,094. That was enough!

What better way to celebrate our return to San Clemente than a trip out with Jim and Gen to "The Cheesecake Factory"? I ignored warnings to skip the starter, and none of us could finish half of our main courses. So we ordered pudding, got it all boxed up, and left with six doggie bags worth of food. That's all the meals for the rest of the weekend sorted. I still feel a bit ill from all the eating...or maybe that's the three margaritas we each enjoyed during the evening.

Down by the border. They have various checkpoints along the American highways too, but if you're white they wave you through with no questions...

We were getting excited by this momentous occasion

Here it is, the pyramid at the centre of the world. You get to go inside too!

Here's Hannah, being congratulated for standing at the official centre (she's facing true north, of course)

And here we are, proudly displaying our certificates

These are the long granite prisms. You can see their church under construction in the background

This has all been hand etched onto polished granite!

Oh yes, and here are the Eiffel Tower steps, because the pyramid and the granite slabs recording the entirity of human history aren't enough for a town with a population of four

Jacumba desert tower

The amazing view from the top

Hannah pets some of the local wildlife

This display was something about Native Americans...

One of the carved boulders, opposite the tower

Hannah in one of the wind-eroded "caves"

David on top of the world

James enjoying a light snack and a mango margarita

Cute critter of the day: a desert squirrel that enjoyed sharing our lunchtime sandwiches

Enough weirdness. I need to get home to nice, normal Britain.

Hoover and Havasu

We left Vegas and the Golden Nugget behind, having stolen as many free soaps, pens and shampoos as we could, and headed south. Las Vegas is a nightmare to drive in, and after being repeatedly beeped by a huge van the driver pulled alongside, opened his window, and asked where we were trying to get to before giving us directions. Perhaps it's not Sin City after all.

We finally made it to the Hoover Dam. It's mind-numbingly huge. They've basically stopped the Colorado river and filled the valley it runs through (just down from the Grand Canyon) with 350 million cubic feet of water. The electricity it produces, together with the water in pipes and aqueducts keeps the entire southwest corner of America lit and hydrated. Mexico, where the Colorado river traditionally flowed to, now receives a trickle after the "water rights" of the US have been satisfied.

Speaking of things stolen from the people, we made our way on to Lake Havasu City. This is the final resting place of London Bridge, brought here stone-by-stone in 1974. When the man who did this couldn't find a waterway the right size for it to span, he built one. The result is Lake Havasu, which exists for nothing more than water sports and boat trips around and under the bridge. Everyone acts as though it's completely normal to find an English stone bridge in the middle of the Arizona desert.

Having had enough of the fake English pubs, tea and gift shops we drove across the sweeping plains of Arizona and into Yuma, 20-odd miles from the Mexican border. It's a bizarre town, where I enjoyed the fusion cooking delight of tagliatelle in a Cajun sauce with char grilled chicken for dinner. Our hotel is pretty scrubby, but it does come with free Internet access. The students who were having a loud party next door have headed out now, but we have our free Air France ear plugs at the ready for their return.

 

One side of the Hoover Dam

The other side

Give this water back to the Mexicans! But not all at once - that would be disastrous

Mohamed and his family, from Scotland. Their camera wasn't working, so I took their photos and promised to email them. Little did they know I only wanted them for my blog! Hahahahaaa.

Liberal bumper stickers!

Yep, it's the real one...

...but what is it doing here?!

The Thames

Another typical London scene

Traffic and roadworks. Even in Arizona, not much has changed for poor London Bridge

David and a friendly cactus

It's still pioneer country out here - up to 30 minutes drive between branches of McDonalds

Creature of the day: a fish in Lake Havasu

Tomorrow we head back to San Clemente, through southern California: the heartland of American weirdness.

Vegas by Night

This place really is a sight to behold. From the King Arthur style of Excalibur to the Luxor's massive pyramid and the Mirage's erupting volcano, it's amazing what casinos will do to get you inside and spending money. There aren't many people walking on the street because most of the complexes are linked by travelator or monorail! We left the hotel at 6pm and didn't get back until 11.45pm, only managing to see a handful of the attractions. Mind you, two nights in Vegas is enough for me, with or without a timeshare presentation in the middle...

The Excalibur - all knight entertainment

Turrets above the Excalibur casino

Hannah, a knight, and a fruit machine

The entrance lobby to the Luxor

We're really in New York!

Now we're in France!

Now we're in Rome!

Inside Caesar's Palace, in the shopping mall (150+ shops). This is their famous spiral escalator

The pirate show outside Treasure Island (the ship sinks at the end)

Us in the mirror in Wynn's, the newest and poshest casino in town

A waterfall in Wynn's, just to look at while you drink in their coffee shop

Thieves everywhere

Our Grand Canyon tour was cancelled! The aircraft couldn't land because of fog. After an hour wandering around the airport terminal, avoiding buying fake Indian trinkets, we were back at the Golden Nugget.

So we decided to go to a timeshare selling presentation. This was the one sold to us yesterday as we walked into the hotel, with endless promises of free show tickets or gambling vouchers. It sounded fun, so at noon we were on an air conditioned coach with a dozen other suckers and taken off the the remotest outskirts of Las Vegas.

We were assigned Orsche as our personal representative for the day. She was from Hungary, and had met her husband in a dry cleaners. This we found out during the "look, I'm really a normal person and want to be your friend" stage of the sales pitch. And would you believe that we'll spend over $100,000 dollars on holidays during our lifetime whereas if we bought a timeshare in Vegas the increase in real estate value alone would be between 3 and 12% a year! Wow.

After two hours of this, and a look around the apartments, it was time to talk money. The price for the one week timeshare started at $33k. As we'd come to the presentation, she could offer it to us for $30k. We still weren't sure. She thanked us, and got a manager just to finish off the presentation (good cop/bad cop style). Who would have thought it - he authorised her to sell it to us for $25k plus two free weeks a year! Hmmm...we weren't convinced. But as we were obviously intelligent people he exclusively allowed us an opportunity that normally is only available to employees of the company. That brought the deal down to $10k. We explained that we just weren't at the right place in our lives to take advantage of this yet, and were thanked and ushered to the "corporate" area where they wanted our feedback on the presentation. There, would you believe it, the big corporate man was able to slash the last offer in half to a meagre $5k!!

So we signed up. No, of course we didn't, but left clutching vouchers for $100 of gambling. Thinking we'd have to devise a system to launder this through the roulette tables, Hannah took the vouchers to the "24 Karat Club" (of which she is now a valued member) and they handed her an $100 bill! She asked for them to split it into $20s, and grinned all the way back to the room. So she's celebrating our Las Vegas "winnings", but it's the hardest 3 hours I've ever had to work to earn $100.

The closest I got to the Grand Canyon

The Stratosphere

New York New York - they're building New London for 2010

The gateway to timeshare hell

Our air conditioned courtesy bus. It cost $500,000! Allegedly.

What a happy place to receive the hard sell. They did free sandwiches, though.

Who wouldn't want to live in a place like this?

Hannah remains unconvinced the the face of extreme salesmanship

Somebody's happy with their "winnings"

Our celebratory drink

My 24-hour Internet access runs out at 10pm here, but if you're lucky there may be another entry. If not, we're off to see the big casinos on the Strip tonight, via the world's largest gift shop!

 

Death Valley and Vegas

We've just done TOO MUCH today! It started with me trying to take pictures of the stars at 5.20am (no street lights!) and then, as I was awake and had woken up Hannah, driving into Death Valley to watch the sun rise. Realising that we had no water, under half a tank of petrol and 60 miles to the viewpoint we stopped and turned around. Instead we headed to Topeca Springs where Hannah enjoyed the natural mineral baths while I went for a wander.

Then, with water and fuel, we headed into Death Valley. It really is a strange place, full of cracked mud and salf flats. But, true to the form of this holiday, it started to rain while we were there. They only get an-inch-and-a-half a year, so I suppose we should be honoured.

After visiting such sights as Badwater and The Devil's Golf Course we drove out the other end and towards Las Vegas. The landscape changed completely as we went, and soon we were driving through canyons of red rock where Joshua Trees were growing.

Vegas appeared out of nowhere. It's just bang in the middle of the desert, with its towers coming into view around a mountain. After hours of desert driving the city streets weren't much fun, but we found The Golden Nugget where we're staying and checked in. Checking in included the hard sell for a coach tour that would take us to see some prime Nevada real estate (free lunch and tickets to one Las Vegas show), but sadly we're going to the Grand Canyon. I know it's obvious to say, but it's all about the money here. Still, we enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet for dinner and a wander round some of the casinos. Now Hannah's filled in the joining form for the "24 Karat" slots club which apparently gives here $10 free gambling. We're off to find out!

Death Valley at 5.45am

On a hill, above Topeca Hot Springs

No jobs going, sadly

David, alone in the desert

Death Valley is also home to Oompah-Loompahs. This one looked like Hannah

Now in Nevada, with some Joshua Trees (not the things that look like telegraph poles! They're telegraph poles)

This is our hotel in Vegas

Hannah, doing a Hello style pose in our room

An Elvis wannabe

The man himself (just don't say the word "impersonator")

Hannah and the pirate ship at Treasure Island

Hannah and the actual Golden Nugget, inside our hotel

The slots, which we will shortly be losing on

I didn't see any fluffy creatures today, but here's a cactus

UPDATE: We took Vegas to the cleaners! Hannah signed up for the slots club and got her $10 free play. We won $7.75, got two complementary cocktails, and then she found another quarter on the casino floor. Luck is definitely with us. Tomorrow: roulette.

High desert

Today was a day of driving through deserts. Just as you became impressed by how massive one endless plain of sand and scrub was, another even larger one came along.

The day started the same as last week, with a trip to Albertsons to stock up on junk. This time Twinkies were purchased, with 50c off thanks to Gen's incredible coupon collection. We then headed up the windy mountain route 79, before hitting the Interstate and bidding LA's smog-covered valley goodbye. The land got less irrigated and grass gave way to sand.

We stopped for lunch at "In 'N' Out" burger. This is the fast food joint that McDonalds wishes it was. All the fries are made on the premises from REAL potatoes!

We then broke the journey at Calico Ghost Town. The guides describe it as "unsympathetically restored", which is being kind. The place was an old mining town, you have to pay $6 for the privilege of going in, and it turns out to be little more than a themed shopping mall with every other wooden shack housing a tacky tourist shop. The best bit was the "ATM Inside" sign carved in wood.

After that we turned off the main road and drove straight into the Mojave Desert. I've never been anywhere so quiet! There's a lot of flat barren ground, and then plateaus of black volcanic rock (complete with the bubbles left in when it cooled). There are meant to be wild tortoises that live there, but we weren't lucky enough to see any.

We drove from the edge of nowhere to the absolute middle of nowhere, which is a place called Shoshone. It's a genuine one-street town, but it does have a swimming pool fed by a natural hot spring that rises here. The motel has only four channels on TV and no wireless Internet access! I've grown accustomed to Orange County living standards...

That's a Double Double on the bottom right...

Could I be any more Wild West?

Authentic historical reconstruction at Calico Ghost Town

More of the same...

Hannah down the mine

Driving into the barren Mojave reserve

All cars look small in the desert

Clicheed desert road shot

The world's tallest thermometer in Baker, CA

Hannah enjoying a night time swim in Shoshone's natural hot pool

Today's cute furry critter: desert chipmunk thing

I'm now enjoying cream soda and a Twinkie as a bedtime snack. Tomorrow brings Death Valley, Vegas, and the Elvis-a-Rama

A typical Sunday

It was a day of two halves. I was abandoned by the others when they dropped me off at Saddleback Church for the 11.15am service. It's a "megachurch", with a congregation of 22,000. There were only about 1,200 people at the service I attended, which was one of four going on at 11.15am, which is one of six times they have services on the weekend. And it was slick! Cinema screens, multiple TV cameras, multimedia preaching...it wasn't as nutty as many services I've been to but they know what they're doing. I was offered a CD of the service I'd just attended as I walked out the door.

The others worshipped the god of consumerism (the god of America?) in the local malls, and we headed to Ruby's Diner for lunch before...more shopping.

Feeling vaguely guilty, and wanting to work off the breakfast of donuts Gen picked up for us, we went for a walk around Talega (where Jim and Gen live) this afternoon. The whole place would be desert if it wasn't for the water shipped in via aquaducts. As it is, there are automatic sprinklers every few feet to keep the green stuff green. We wandered up the hills behind the development, but failed to see any coyote or mountain lions. I may have to go on a solitary treck tonight to see what I can find out there. If this is my last entry, I've had a fun time.

A quiet service at the Saddleback megachurch

Slick production values. This is the praise leader in full swing

The church complex is massive. They beam the service to various locations throughout, including the coffee shop. Double espresso and God to go?

Off on our walk, after convincing Gen that we didn't need to drive to the start of the trail

It's wild country out here, once you get off the manicured estate

Steep hill climb, in terrain reminiscent of North Wales (if you close your eyes)

Hannah surveys the scenery

So does James

At the top of the mountain

More triumphant poses

A hummingbird! Unfortunately they move too fast

David with replacement hire car

The famous tame ducks of San Clemente

Neither James or Gen could be convinced to chuck a sickie and come on a road trip with us, so we're off to Death Valley on our own tomorrow. Then, Vegas!

Pancakes and malls

It's the weekend, so what can we do but eat and shop? So we loaded up on pancakes before heading to several different malls. My obesity target was helped by the endless refills of whipped butter and the half-pint of syrup. Mmmm.

After a lunch of smoothies Hannah and Gen disappeared into shoe shops while Jim and I moved between the Sony and Apple stores. We finished the day with a Mexican meal and six Margaritas.

Oh yes

Gen's omelette was larger than her, and came with a side order of pancakes...

Hannah went for a small helping of blueberry pancakes

This was my breakfast

James and me, rehearsing for our retirement

Hannah enjoying a liquid lunch at the small mall that was attached to the massive mall