PS and Grand Canyon to Chicago

---

PS - Australia
When we left Australia Kev was hauled off to speak to customs because he had overstayed his visa by two days. A visa lasts for any period of three months in a year - I was alright because I had popped home for Christmas. Kev was informed that he would be allowed to board his plane, but would not be allowed to return to Australia for three years. He is determined to complain - as a tourist he has spent a lot of money in Australia and what difference does two days make/

PPS - Las Vegas
I never did get to play on the roulette wheel or play poker or 21's. The sum total of my gambling was $8 and I kep back $5 from my winnings - net loss $3.

15th March - Grand Canyon
The last afternoon I spent some time in the History room at Bright Angel Lodge, learning about Fred Harvey ('the civiliser of the West') and his Harvey Girls. Fred was an English immigrant who, repelled by the food provided on the railways, set up proper restaurants with good food, table settings and an excellent waitress service. He trained girls of 'moral character and good schooling' and employed a matron to guard their dormitories. Girls from the East, where the Civil War had decimated the availability of young men, flocked to staff his restaurants and agreed to remain single for six months. Western men could visit them, provided they removed their guns, and could accompany them to church. Fred died in 1901 but his company continued to provided good hospitality centres across the south west, and also employed mary Coulter, a female pioneer architect who designed hotels using local materials so they blended into their surroundings.

Thoughts while waiting for a cab to go and see sunset over the Canyon:
I like to read local newspapers while I am away to try and catch the flavour of the country, and at the moment the progress of the Demoncratic leadership is on the front page of every paper. I still don't really understand how the voting system works (though I'm asking everyone I get into conversation with), but I'm not convinced that two people slinging mud and accusations at each other is going to enhance the party they both stand for. Why don't they battle it out in private before facing the nation with one strong leader? After all this high profile abuse, neither of them is going to look as if they could run a public convenience, let alone a party or a country.

I'm really irritated with myself - I left my wonderful creamy shower creme and expensive facial wash, tucked behind the shower curtain at the Grand Canyon hotel. Now I'll have to buy some more, and I was hoping to finish both of them before i leave the US so that I can downsize my luggage. I can't even comfort myself with thinking the chambermaid will be able to enjoy them - I had decanted them into smaller bottles - she'll use the body shower creme as handcream and condition her hair with the facial wash. I'm now stuck on a train for 33 hours so will have to borrow Kev's shower creme till we get to Chicago.

15th March
we left the Grand Canyon early evening in a bus that took us to Flagstaff where we found a convenient hostel next to the station. They had just reopened after the winter and had one room left as they were expecting a large group of backpackers. Wonderfully, they had internet, and I left Kev trying to find us a hotel in Chicago, while I walked up to the Lowell Observatory. This is the observatory that discovered Pluto and I had a very enjoyable couple of hours there. It was too dark to see the Pluto Walk - a full-scale model of the solar system, but I looked through two telscopes at the moon and Saturn, had Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetlejuice) - a red star - identified. It's above Orion's belt on his shoulder - or at least it was that night - it will probably move and confuse me again. I weighed myself (My, I'm getting heavy) and had it converted to moon weight (25lbs) and Mars weight (57 lbs) and watched a film abouth the contellations that are visible this month. Fascinating stuff, and I will return to see the Pluto Walk and the meteor crater that is only 25 miles away. Next time I come I'll have an RV, there's so much to see in this south western area.
The train journeys are good for seeing the surrounding countryside, the sightseeing car on the upper deck has large picture windows with chairs set facing the windows, We have a sleepliner cabin for this journey, a tiny carriage of two seats that converts into two bunks. It's quite cosy (read - cramped) and we only have a view from one side of the train and I worry that I might be missing fascinating views, so I'm happier sitting in the sightseeing coach. I was up there for a while and went back to our cabin to find Kev had put the bunks up and was asleep. He'd had very little sleep the night before as the group at the hostel had been partying for most of the night, so I left him to it. Three times I went back and the third time I discovered it wasn't Kev, I'd been going to the wrong carriage. Several more times during the journey I did this, I'm sure the bloke in there thought I was trying to steal his effects, or was after his body. If I didn't arrive there, I'd end up right at the back in the staff carriage, it was a very confusing train.
We passed desert scrubland, mini versions of the Grand Canyon, rolling woded hills and farmland interspersed with small towns. There were Indian reservations in New Mexicowith many shacks and adobe houses, even an adobe caravan. Missouri had more clapboard houses. We crossed Kansasm, snipped a corner of Iowa, crossed the sluggish Mississippi and drew into Chicago to a damp and chilly afternoon.
Travelling is always interesting, either chatting to others (we were sat with other people at mealtimes), or observing them. There was a large group of Amish on the trai going back to Pennsylvania. They look quite distinctive - the men have beards under the chin with no moustache, pudding basin haircuts, and wear black trousers and waistcoats with a plain coloured shirt. The women have long plain dresses and wear their hair in a bun under a bonnet, and some of them wear aprons.

Chicago - cold, damp, windy and the only hotel we could find was seven miles out of the city by the airport and a major road. The amenities were sparse - no hairdryer or coffee machine, a few thin towels, no bath mat and the TV was tuned to a porn channel. Kev, switching it on without his glasses on, thought it was a cookery programme until he'd got focused. Upstairs were a couple of insomniac elephants who weren't happy with the disposal of the furniture. I wouldn't have minded if the hotel had been cheap - we'd booked it through Expedia for $120 a night, and the hotel would only have charged us $80.

We spent some frustrating time booking hotels for our next stops, then tried to buy the rail tickets and found all the trains were full. Everyone wants to go to Memphis for Easter it seems. We couldn't bear the thought of another four nights in that hotel - so we managed to get on the train for Niagara, and are limiting our tour of the east - and cutting out Boston and Washington.
Chicago has grown on me and I'm looking forward to spending another tow days there after Niagara. The overhead railway system and stations are quaintly old-fashioned and well-preserved in this city of glass and steel. There are about fifteen tilt bridges that go over the Chicago River, street musicians play blues on brass and men walk about with big coats on - very necessary in this weather. I've had to buy a hat - a powder-blue woollen hat with a peak. kev reckons I look as if I'm riding in the 3.30 at Haydock, but I don't care - it keeps my ears warm.
A bus tour of the northern part of the city showed us where Al Capone lived, overlooking the river that brought his whiskey in; the site of the warehouse where the St Valentine's day massacre happened - now a children's playground; and various skyscrapers. We went up the Sears Tower, now the thrid tallest building in the world and were lucky enough to have a sunny afternoon for it, the previous day the tower had been in cloud. I just love looking down on cities from a height, and each direction here has a different aspect - freeways criss-crossing each other, railway tracls stretching out, low-rise areas in the familiar grid pattern and individually shaped skyscrapers artistically arranged with Lake Michigan as a backdrop - enchanting by day and by night and the pictorial history of the city was fascinating.

We've travelled through a lot of states - California, Nevada Arizona and Illinois where we've spent some time, then whisked through New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas Missouri and Iowa. Now, on our way to Niagara we've been through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania before reaching New York state.

20th - 23rd March - Niagara
We stayed in a warm motel on a bus route from the falls and two minutes walk from a Bob Evans restaurant - good food and open for breakfast and dinner. Niagara Falls are magnificent and we walked over Rainbow Bridge into Canada to get a better view of them. The lower Niagara River is frozen so the 'Maid in the Mist' boat tour under the spray is not yet operational, nor are the cave toura, so one day at the falls was enough and the other we spent sleeping, going to a designer shop outlet mall (a dress and top from Banana republic), and going to the cinema ('Vantage Point' - don't bother, though William Hurt and Matthew Fox are always worth looking at).
It's apparently much colder here at the moment than it usually is, in the 30's rather than the 40's. There's certainly plenty of snow around still, most of it has been cleared from the roads and the driveways, but not the pavemnts, so pedestrians, ie us two, have to climb over piles of snow at every driveway or carpark.
Yesterday (23rd) the train from Niagara arrived at Buffalo at 1.30pm and the connection back to Chicago was not due until midnight. We decided to take a bus into Buffalo for the day - we realised not a lot would be open as it was Easter Sunday but we didn't realise quite how dead the town would be. We eventually found a TGI Friday that was open and spent a happy couple of hours in there, but everything else was shut.
I thought the town was rather sweet, though on its uppers and rather gone to seed. Lots of attractive weatherboard houses, though several were boarded up and three were burnt out. Some of the civic buidlings were imposing and a tramline ran through the middle of town with music playing from each station, heaven knows why, there was no travellers to hear it. There seemed to be a surfeit of war memorials too - WW2, Vietnam, Korea, Civil war and the Irish famine.
the waterfront overlooked Lake Erie where a man sat on a stool on the ice fishing through a hole he'd made. we met another on his way there with a huge plastic corkscrew contraption.
The train was an hour late - it arrived at 1am and we slept fitfully on coach seats and arrived back at Chicago this morning at 10am. For once we're in a good hotel, we found a great site and have a hotel opposite Bloomingdale's in the centre of the city, with a spa and jaccuzzi and I'm going to sign off now and go and enjoy them.

---