Kerching! Travel Whiting hits Vegas & gets to see The Killers in Denver

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Greetings from San Antonio, Texas, Y'all!

Before I start, if you don't agree with something I put on here, please don't flood me with messages!! Not everyone is going to like Fiji, Ok!? God, half the Fijian tourist board have left comments telling me I'm wrong about Fiji! Er,hello? I'm never wrong😊

Right, so, we met Ju's brother Mark in San Fran and had a great time & great weather too. San Fran is known as the Fog city, because of the great rolling fog that seems to cover the place each day. We must've been lucky because it was pretty much sun & blue skies every day. The food in the USA is pretty good, especially when your brother-in-law treats you to dinner at your fave restaurant - The Cheesecake Factory! Delicious, even if Mark didn't like his dessert. Oops, cheers Mark.
To work off all those extra calories, we hired bikes the next day and cycled along the water's edge, up over the Golden Gate bridge and back underneath it to a town called Sausalito, across the bay. We were knackered!! But it was a great way to see even more of one our favourite cities. We did have grand ideas about cycling back, but we did the sensible thing and loaded the bikes onto a ferry and sailed back. I'm not that fit.
We managed to see the San Francisco Giants play baseball too, v. the LA Dodgers, so practically a local derby in terms of the USA. Sadly they lost (what is it about sports events we go to on this trip? We jinx them all!), but it was a great atmosphere with 48,000 yanks all shouting, cheering, and getting up for food every five minutes. We rode the historic cable cars, checked out Lombard street, which is the big zig-zag road most people have seen on postcards, and generally spent the rest of our time working out how to avoid trudging through the Tenderloin area. We'd invested in a 3 day pass for local transport, so this reduced our exposure to the freaks and weirdos, although an entertaining number still managed to get on the bus and sit uncomfortably close to us, me especially.
We waved Mark off, he had another night in San Fran before flying home (on rubbish BA, nevermind mup!) and we set off at 6.30am the next day for our trip to Yosemite. Now, this national park is in the middle of nowhere, but as we'd been before, we knew it was going to be worth the trip. What we didn't realise is how hard it was to get there - without your own car. The journey involved:

6.30am cab to bus station
7.05am bus trip to Emeryville
7.30am train to Modesto
9.30am bus trip to Yosemite
11.30 arrive Yosemite, but not the bit we're staying in, shout at driver
11.45 get off another bus, at Curry Village, our home for 3 nights.

Argh!! I'm not a morning person, but that was a little, testing, shall we say. It was worth all the effort. We were staying in a rustic log cabin. Ok, a tatty log cabin, with only a bed, heater, one light and a bedside table. Very basic, but in such a beautiful place it didn't matter. We were shattered so after a quick walk, we ate our tea and slept like logs. Well, the bed was the smallest ever, so we slept like logs with our noses touching.

Anyway, next day, we set out for a walk. I wanted to see a waterfall, so we picked Vernal Falls, a comfortable 0.8 mile trail. How wrong were we. Comfortable?! 0.8miles UP A MOUNTAIN. It felt like that at least. It's Autumn of course, so we had jeans & jumpers on, but quickly wished we'd worn shorts & t-shirts. I have to say, I made it to the top after mucho effort and sweat, but I had left Ju on a rock just ten mins from the summit, looking like he couldn't walk another inch. It was a killer!! Beautiful or not, it was tougher than cycling the GG bridge in San Fran. I'm still not thin. The food is more than counteracting the exercise. Damn.

After the Herculean efforts of the morning, we spent the afternoon strolling around the meadows and gawping up at Half Dome, this enormous granite, er, dome. We also managed to get up close and personal with some deer type creatures, unsure if they were Moose or what but the pics look good anyhow. On our way back to the cabin, we stopped to make a call to reconfirm our flight to Vegas the following day. Good job we called, they'd cancelled it!! It was a sightseeing flight, but they also take passengers down to Vegas too. Sadly, they hadn't bothered to email us and tell us it was off. Mad dash to the expensive internet to re-book transport. Our route to Vegas now looked like this:

9.30am Get bus from Yosemite to Merced
12.30 Get train from Merced to Fresno
2.00 Arrive Fresno, get cab to airport
2.25 Pick up rental car
8.30pm Arrive Las Vegas

Another long journey! We'd driven to Vegas before, so the road was no trouble and we had the new Killer's cd to entertain us along the way. Exhausted, we pulled into our motel, praying it wouldn't look too much like the place Nicholas Cage stays in, in the film 'Leaving Las Vegas.' We were checked in by Emma Davey's twin sister and found our room. It looked out onto a beautiful car park, filled with hoody wearing 12 year olds leaning on car bonnets. However, all was well, and we slept like babies.
The next day, we checked out and headed for our proper hotel on the strip - the motel was a one night stay as the Excalibur was waaay too expensive the first night we wanted it.
The Excalibur was great, only a 3 star, but themed like Merlin's castle, all turrets and tacky magician shops amongst the casino and restaurants. The first day was mainly a shopping day - we had space to fill in our packs as Mark had kindly taken home lots of our unwanted clothes.....I'm sure the excess baggage didn't cost him much!!

That night, we set our gambling budget and headed for the bright lights - the 25cent machines!! That's about 13p. They're about as high as we like to go, you can play them for ages, and the 'Dollies' bring you free drinks. All night. Well, if you tip them they do, and we had a good one. Suffice to say, we began at 9pm ish, and at 3.30am, we staggered back to our room, very drunk and very happy. We were up $400!!! Wooo!!!!! I couldn't believe it was that late, the next day was a virtual write-off as we were feeling very unhealthy and very tired, but you don't come to Vegas for the day-times!! Suffice to say, we put a fair amount of the money back into various machines, but we still came away with enough to have paid for most of our stay in Vegas.

Made some odd new friends too - Joanne who drives the monorail at Disney, Pete, who's joining the Marines, Ma'am and some long haired guy who didn't speak, apart from to nod at me, each time I won, bless him. Vegas has THE BEST people watching, from manic-gambling OAP's, to rednecks wearing dungarees, there's no kind of people you won't see here. I'm not even sure if that last sentence qualifies as English. Basically, Vegas was a lot of fun.

Onwards we went, this time a flight to Colorado for five nights in Denver. Not a place really on the backpacker trail, but we'd heard good things about it. We flew Southwest (think Ryanair, but with free drinks) and again, it was ping-pong-ball-in-a-tumble-dryer time, as we hit MAJOR flippin turbulence over the Rocky Mountains. Eeek. Well, I must have toughened up a bit, because this time I didn't go hot and dig my nails into Ju's arm, I serenley read my trashy mag and rolled my eyes at the people who were gasping. On the outside anyway, on the inside i was trying to recall the Lord's Prayer!

The plan had been to head to Yellowstone, to see the Geysers and possibly Yogi bear. Well, any bear really, as we hadn't seen any in Yosemite. Change of plan though - they'd had tons of snow, so we quickly remembered the snow chain palaver in NZ and decided to cancel the rental car and stay in Denver.
Good job we did, it was gorgeous. Almost alpine, with the city in the foreground, the Rockies in the back and clean air you could almost drink. Blue skies to match too. Autumn here is NOTHING like Autumn at home, where it gets dark on Oct 1st and stays grey until the following April. Here, it's all gentle leaves falling, a faint breeze and sunshine, yeah!

Another good find by Ju, we stayed at the Ramada hotel on Colfax, which initially seemed like it was in another San Fran Tenderloin type area.....tattoo shops, hoodies hanging around and that kind of thing. But no, the hoodies were at a bus stop and the tattoo shop was closed down(Damn, going to have to wait before I get a tattoo of a 3 ft puma across my back.Kidding).

The downtown area is pedestrianised, full of bookshops and coffee shops, thankfully not all Starbucks too. We spent the day wandering around, trying not to go shopping and generally grinning like idiots at the nice weather. Next day, we set off for a tour of the Coors brewery in Golden, a town about 45mins away. A free tour, with free samples, woo, this is my kind of culture. Anyway, we sussed out what bus we needed and as it pulled up, we double checked with the driver if he went to the Coors Brewery. Now this shouldn't have been a hard question, Coors sponsors the Denver baseball ground and employs tons of locals, so we guessed he'd know what we meant. Nope. Seems our accents overwhelmed him.

Coors? Where? COORS BREWERY? Where? More shakes of his head, more frowning from the driver. Coors Light? As in a bottle of? Oh, uh, yeah. Didn't realise English could sound so different to some Americans, jeez!! The same unhappy driver proceeded to mumble each stop name - they're meant to shout out each stop clearly - so we were following on a map instead. As we got nearer to Golden, the driver said " If you want Coors, y'all need to hop off here." Groovy, maybe he wasn't so bad...........until we had got off & checked the map. He'd got the wrong stop! I know people make mistakes, but he was double miserbale and wrong! Duh!
After a quick tour of the mechanics of the place, we got our freebies, along with half of Denver who were also touring! Decidedly happier after three beers each, we set off through the pretty town of Golden to the bus stop. Guess who the driver was? Numpty boy from earlier!! At least we knew where to get off this time. I did notice something on the way back, Americans love their signs, road signs, bus signs, signs are on everything..........

"Notice:Do not pick up hitch hikers - this is a correctional facility" was by the side of the road. Yikes! You think their prison uniform might not give it away a bit?

Other gems we've seen:

" Warning: Bus moves on green signal" Surely that one's a bit of a given!?
"Please let passengers exit before boarding" Nothing wrong with that one, until you realise it's INSIDE the bus?!?!

Then there's my favourite, an oldie but a goodie:

"The beverage you're about to consume is extremely hot" - what? I wanted a cold drink!! 'Consume' is such an awful word, it really annoys me, I mean, you go out for a drink, not out for a 'consume'! Are you supposed to spread the drink on your arm and consume it by osmosis?! Ok, probably just me then, but still!

Another place we visisted was the Unsinkable Molly Brown's house - she survived the Titanic sinking, hence the name, although I don't really recall her from the film. It was more worthwhile for the walk through uber-suburbia, white picket fences, squirrels and kids actually playing basketball on their driveways. If Mary Poppins had popped up and twizzled her brolly in front of me, I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. It was gorgeous. We kept up the walking the next day, as we'd indulged in yet more visits to the cheesecake factory.....!

This time, we set off through the same lovely surrounds as before, to Denver Zoo. Ju can't actually believe that I didn't get my fill of animals in Africa. I did, but I'm a sucker for animals and besides this is one of the best in America, if you believe the leaflet. They had lion cubs! And Meerkats! I was in my element. It was warm & sunny again, so jumpers off and hats on (I had purchased a new Gap baseball cap for $4.99 the day before. That's 2 pound 50, yipppeeeee!) and off we strolled to laugh at the seals, hippos and penguins.
I also learned I have a deadly new talent. After watching the keeper feed the cute baby grizzly bears, I soon sussed I could make them stand up on their backlegs and pose for photos by holding my hands in the air. Very naughty, as they thought they were getting food, but I put my hands in the air, they posed, we got our pics. And lots of RSPCA type will probably inundate me with messages now, sorry!!!! They were so cute. Hard to believe they kill people in the wild.

Our last night in Denver soon came. I didn't mind, Ju had somehow got us tickets months ago to see The Killers!! I heard the UK tour sold out in hours, (Hey Mark W!) so I was very pleased when we picked up our tickets earlier that day. I don't care what all the magazine reviews have said, their new album is brilliant, better than Hot Fuss. It's over the top and the lead singer has serious delusions that he may actually be Freddy Mercury but the cd is glorious. And anyone, no-one moans when the Scissor Sisters go over the top, so there!
The gig was great, I learned that you shouldn't drink three beers right before the band comes on, otherwise you will spend the first three songs needing the toilet. I literally RAN from our place near the front to the loo and back again, missing only the end of one song, result! The show was great, over far too quickly and I wish we could see tham again. Fantastic.
Great way to end our time in Denver, a place we will deffo go back to, to explore the Rockies and do Yellowstone, without the snow next time. And now? We're in San Antonio, Texas after another frightening flight through thunder & lightning. But we made it and we have our shorts on again as it's blisteringly hot here. Hope it's cold at home 😊

Ju is just about done with the internet banking (funds going DOWN) so it's off to look at the Alamo and the Riverwalk and get sunburnt.

Hope all is well at home, less than a month before we return! Soon be back to grimace at the football (Peter Bloody Grant??), play with Jack and think about getting jobs........

Ta Ta for now
Love Kel & Ju xx

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Comments

[Your Little Sis!]

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Hello sis! wahhhhhhh your home soon!!!!! im still super jelious of all the mad things you have done!!! cant wait for you to come home and see my new arivals (kittens) in my new pad. we shall have a beer and photos evening set up for you when you get home! see ya lea x