....Continued After arriving home from the hockey on Tuesday night, we found Sam fresh from a band rehersal and wanting to further educate us by having us watch the original Blue Brothers movie in Chicago. So we did. And got to bed bright and early on Wednesday morning. This of course necessitated a sleep in, and a morning catching up on couch potato-ism. Pasta for breakfast was the correct start to the day, and we both actually ate shrimp - although we decided that Mark should have most of them cos he actually likes them. While Juliet burned photos to CD [View Full Entry]

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Navigating our way through the myriad interweaving freeways which form the central nervous system of the metropolis of Chicago, we found our way through the dusky skyscrapers surrounding us, and with a little luck and our cellphone travel guide handy, we fought our way through traffic to find that Chicago miracle-of-miracles, a spare carpark at Mark's apartment. Pulling in, we were greeted with hearty welcomes from the balcony above, and like a human cannonball Mark sped down the stairs and administered much needed hugs, and as we wearily and gladly got out of the car our host for the next [View Full Entry]

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Cutting across Kentucky after leaving Tennessee, we found a detour to a pair of long thin lakes, separated by a strip of land just a couple of miles wide, so crossing Lake Barkley, we stopped at the Land Between the Lakes Park for lunch and windshield bug removal. A very pretty area, we just couldn't stay long because of the oppressive heat - over 90 degrees! Moving on we crossed Kenlake (Lake Kentucky) and rejoined the interstate. From here it was just a couple of hours to Illinois, which we entered from the South, over the Ohio River. Mt Vernon Motel [View Full Entry]

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So dragging ourselves out of bed to leave Denver, we planned and plotted our next move. The South beckoned. However sleeping in was much more important, naturally, so we left Denver at around 4 after a lunch of garlic bread..big hugs to our host Matt who kindly burned us some music - boo for dying ipods! We headed South through Colorado, arriving in the agricultural crossroads town of Lamar just as darkness fell. Goodbye hostels, hello motels! Calling it an early night, we settled into our motel room for movies, fast food and sleep. Oklahoma! Keeping to our '5 minutes after [View Full Entry]

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Having driven into the charming mountain town of Durango, Colorado, through various trials and hardships (ok not that many....but we did curtail our drive, the destination of which would have been Silverton, but for icy conditions) we woke from a good night's sleep at the delightful Siesta Motel in Durango to see snow softly falling outside. Our full kitchen unit and fantastic shower were worth what we paid for the motel alone, (not to mention the TV, which brought smiles of delight to Ju's face the night before, as she settled in for an evening of American advertising.) We started the [View Full Entry]

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Well, it was easier said than done. Despite the strange sacharrin-sweet superficial commerciality of Las Vegas, the town was really quite more-ish. And yet the excitement must pall very quickly - when all's said and done there is not a lot more than gambling and drinking to do there. The general consensus was that it's a fantastic place to visit....but to live there full time you'd have to be marginally psycho (or end up that way at least). So we somewhat unwillingly wound it up, and after a rather sugary but extremely satisfying pancake breakfast courtsey of the Hostel, we set [View Full Entry]

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Heading into the glittering array of lights, we pondered the reasons a town built at a railroad junction in the middle of the desert could possibly have for becoming a beacon of showy capitalism, consumerism, and probably every other kind of ism. We couldn't think of any justification, and after a little while in Vegas you realise there isn't any - there's pretty much no reason for any of it, other than because it can. After a directionally challenged map tried to have us believe up was down and south was north, we figured out the way to our hostel was [View Full Entry]

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After waking at Matt and Crystal's in LA to aforementioned pancakes (and Jenny being lovingly woken by Mia the dog sneezing in her face...more fun than an alarm clock!) it took a while to leave the tentacles of Los Angles behind. First there was the obligatory trip to Rodeo drive, where we felt appallingly undergroomed, but then decided we were just stars going incognito - then we contended with the freeways stretching out in every direction, with more and more suburbs and developments - but we managed it at last, and made it through the rows of identical lego houses and [View Full Entry]

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With our usual impeccable timing, we arrived back in LA from Santa Barbara at the same time Matt got back from his morning appointments, so we grabbed a late lunch at In n Out Burger across the street, and headed off to Anaheim! The freeway traffic wasn't too horrific and we arrived at the Timon parking lot at 4pm, caught the connecting Lion King Tram to the entrance, and we were at Disneyland! Juliet immediately decided she was seven years old and set off at a bounce, while Matt guided us directly to Frontierland and the first of our chosen rides. [View Full Entry]

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Waking in the hostel we found we'd left it too late to book another night, and being all excited about our new shiny car, a very new Corolla LE....pretty roomy for a 'compact' car and with all the bells and whistles, we can't decide whether we like cruise control or not...and the car has its own ideas about when our headlights should be on so we've given up fighting it. A 1.8l engine so perhaps not as economical as we'd like but certainly very comfortable to drive. Anyway that aside, we decided it was time to put her through her paces. [View Full Entry]

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