I kid you not, there I was laid out by the pool, thankfully under the 1 and only sunshade and it bounced off it and went under the little table next to me! The iguana then spent about 5 minutes looking down from the top of the wall behind us trying to find its lunch! Later that night I saw the hotel cat, Coco, speeding along with the dead rat in its mouth. I also came across the hotel tortoise today, which was huge, it’s the one and only time I have spotted him. 13th Oct ‘11 Well I guess it’s time for an update again, so basically it has just been days filled with sun, swimming and reading – wonderful!! Not another flying rat in sight! Not a lot else to say really, we have ... read more

Up early for the taxi to the airport and managed to get some breakfast at the hotel (fortunately as no grub on the plane). Got to the airport and limped to check in, limped to queue for security and had to go into a massive backwards and forwards pre- queue before getting in the actual queue! We finally got to the front and then were allowed to go through a short cut due to my ankle. Typically we managed to end up in the slowest xray queue known to man then only to discover we had left the sun cream and insect repellent in the bloody back pack. Lost the suncream but we were allowed to keep the insect repellent??!! (we don’t want you getting malaria said the official!). My stick had to go through the ... read more

28th September ’11 Update Well the car didn’t get trashed, no bears were spotted but very little sleep was had – to busy listening out for bears!! We were up early so we could get to Yosemite as soon as possible, as it was a Sunday Howard reckoned there would be loads of people going there and parking is limited. The drive through the park to get to the actual ‘scenic yosemite’ area took a couple of hours and was beautiful, all windy road through the mountains, lots of trees and lakes with mist hanging over them, very picturesaue. We got to the parking for Bridal Falls – I had no idea Yosemite was a park of waterfalls so that was a lovely surprise, we walked up to see the waterfall and then carried on ... read more

Bright light city gunner set my soul, gunner set my soul on fire!!! Viva Las Vegas! Listening to ZZ Tops version while driving through the desert and seeing the skyline appear was quite something! It is mad totally MAD! But very exciting! We managed to find the hotel (the Gold Coast) without too much trouble but the traffic was unbelievable they have 4 or 5 lanes on either side of the road generally and 6 on either side on the Interstate Highway and they all drive at top speed! We checked in, nice room, had a look round, sussed out how to get our B Connected cards so we could get 10% off the buffet and free entries into the American Football Scores Competition (yeah right!). We then spent a couple of hours frying ourselves out ... read more

17th Sept ’11 Cedar City, Utah This was our base for 3 nights allowing us 2 full days of exploring. We set off from Flagstaff that morning and drove to Cedar City via Zion National Park. This was a fabulous park, we both agreed it was our favourite. From the direction we came from we had to drive through a massive long tunnel right through the mountains to get into the park – an unusual sensation but pretty exciting as it was so long and there were occasional windows where you got tantalising glimpses of soaring mountain peaks. The mountains surrounding the canyon were all different shapes and colours, from red jagged peaks to white flat topped mountains with vegetation growing on them, all different heights and all equally impressive. What was particularly unique and special ... read more