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This was a squeeze to see how much of the Western United States we could visit in two weeks. Ben thought we could make it all the way to Mexico, but the more realistic route took us down the Pacific Northwest Coast, and across as far as Las Vegas before heading back north via Death Valley.
Working our way around the Olympic peninsula, we encountered our first cultural highlight of the trip. Wandering into a hardware store in deepest Washington, we stumbled across the gun aisle and were horrified to see rather large assault rifles lined up against the wall, with no one apparently guarding them or the ammo that was stacked neatly nearby. Ben asked the checkout clerk whether those were actual machine guns. She raised an eyebrow and said, “Yeah, although people are more surprised that we sell Tommy guns here...”. We raised eyebrows at each other, looked for the nearest exit and made a run for it.
The coast through Washington and Oregon was as beautiful as it was windswept and rugged. The weather was stormy and brooding and we encountered hail and snow all the way down and into California. The big redwoods were dizzying
to look at, and a bit difficult to hug.
San Francisco was beautiful and sunny and we spent a day and a half roaming the city's hills and looking at people's houses.
From there, we dashed across to Yosemite to experience the big walls. We arrived to find that the campgrounds were already full with waiting lists so we settled for a chilly tent cabin in Camp Curry. We would have been happy cozying up in Vince the Van, but Yosemite has a strict “no sleeping in cars” policy. While this might seem like a ploy to direct you to the park's rustic yet somewhat pricey forest accommodations, I gather the real reason is that the bears in the park are quite accustomed to humans and see cars as a source of food. The first thing you must do on arrival is empty your car of everything remotely food like or smelly (including you), right down to your toilet paper, lip balm, and empty water containers. Otherwise, you might return to find your car missing its doors or the roof peeled off like a can. I've heard stories from climbers on the big walls who thought their food
was safe hanging above the first pitch, only to discover it had been shredded overnight. Apparently, Yosemite bears can climb grade 21 in the dark...
We were convinced by a random kiwi running a saloon in the middle of nowhere to go to Las Vegas. The bright lights were calling and so we made the dash Southeast and into Nevada. On the way I had another brilliant cultural encounter. The conversation went like this:
“So where y'all from then?”
“New Zealand”
“Noo Zeeland... with the seahorses”
“Seahorses?”
“Yeah, you know those funny fish and they have heads like horses”
“Um, we're from New Zealand, you know, New Zealand - next to Australia?”
“You know, we're, like, in the South Pacific Ocean. Australia and New Zealand”
“... you've got the seahorses right?”
Las Vegas was madness. A crazy carnival, all bright lights and everything over the top and done to excess. We drank Margaritas, ate at the buffet and hung around in the casino long enough to gather free drinks, lose money and people watch. We stayed at a hostel that seemed to run on opposite hours. Everyone slept during the day and the place was empty at night. In Vegas we saw an “Only in America” advertisement on the top of a taxi:
"Visit the Gun Store!
Shoot your own Fully Automatic
Take home your target for free"
I'm not sure there would be much of a target left after firing a fully automatic machine gun at it.
On the way back north, we dropped down into Death Valley. This place got its name after settlers heading towards the California gold rush got lost and stumbled down into the valley. Unsurprisingly, some of them didn't make it out the other side owing to the harshness of the landscape and the ridiculous heat. Furnace Creek sits 190 ft below sea level and the bare rock and salt flats bake under the sun. The hot air rises up the valley walls and is somehow dumped back into the valley again, compressing the air below and creating a vicious cycle of heat. The record temperature here is 56.7 degrees celsius. It was a stifling 40 degrees in the shade at 5pm when we drove through. That was hot enough for me.
The valley has some really cool animals that have adapted to the environment. The Kangaroo rat doesn't drink a drop of water during its lifetime. Instead, its body has evolved to metabolise water from the food that it eats, and absorb water from the humidity in the air. I can't say I was quite so accustomed to the heat, having left the winter snow about 3 days before and it proved to be a sweaty drive out of the valley, with Vince struggling to cope with the temperature. The Van sucked 3 litres of coolant and 2 litres of oil in about two hours and we looked on enviously at others driving in the comfort of their air conditioned cars.
At our camp that night, we were met with yet another “only in America” sign. The campground information sign had a note attached to it: “No shooting in the campground”. I couldn't help but wonder whether they had actually had an incident of someone shooting guns in the campground, or whether it was merely in anticipation of such an event. We eyed our neighbours suspiciously, however the camp was mostly occupied by RVs driven by men sporting walk shorts and Santa style beards.
Our final cultural encounter occurred in the middle of a fast food restaurant conveniently placed in the middle of a strip mall, in the middle of yet another medium sized American town. We thought we would order a drink between us and so Ben ordered the large size. The girl had to duck behind the counter to retrieve the large jug which looked to be the size of a pitcher of beer. I swear it must have held at least 2 litres of soft drink. Looking around the restaurant we noticed that the majority of the customers had opted for that size. We settled for a medium. I think the sugar high may have lasted us back into Canada.
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