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Our last night in San Francisco was a pretty quiet one with the big drive ahead in mind. We did manage to find a shop that would sell us a laptop charger and fitted in a trip to the Hard Rock Cafe though, where we had the best nachos and cocktails ever-never fails to dissppoint!
The next day we set off at 7.30am and managed to successfully navigate our way out of the city over the less well known Oakbay bridge. We were on the open road and heading for Vegas-but we had to get through Yosemite and Death Valley first with its ominously named 'furnace creek' and 'funeral mountains'!
Our first place to visit was Yosemite with its impressive waterfalls and mountain views, it really did remind us of the Roskies and really made us miss Banff. We are sure that the car felt the steep inclines that took us up to the viewpoints at 10000 ft! But it still kept going...
We finally began to descend from Yosmite and had great views of Mono Lake before we hit the road that seemed to be going nowhere-into a whole lot of nothingness! The scenery really began to
change with less green and more desert like landscape-we were definitely approaching the 'valley of Death' and we were starting to feel the heat-literally and in terms of worries about the car engine!!
After 8 hours of driving we decided it was time to give ourselves and the car a bit of a break and we managed to find a campground close to the entrance to Death Valley. After an attempt to put the tent up on a sand like base with creepy crawlies that looked like they could be scorpions (there is the chance), we decided to hijack that plan and sleep in the van-but only after a trip to the pool for a dip and a spot of sunbathing! For $25 it wasn't a bad campsite, with free muffins and coffee for breakfast and we had the place pretty much to ourselves-either very lucky or we were the only mad campers in the 40 degree heat!
Another early start, check of the oil, etc, etc and we set off for Death Valley and onwards to Vegas. Although we were assured it was a 4 hour drive, it ended up being about 6 in at least 40
degree heat and no aircon as it was too risky on the car engine. The drive through Death Valley was amazing-just like what you see in the movies-endless stretches of road with jagged mountains in the distance and hardly any other human life in sight. It would have been a very tricky situation had we have broken down! We had a couple of stops along the way-for the sand dunes and near the badlands. The heat was something else. At the sand dunes you could see where the scorpions and snakes had made their tracks. It really was remote.
So the other side of Death Valley, and we did the one thing to make us 'reconnect' with the modern world-we stopped off at McDonalds of course!! The 1$ menu was too much temptation to pass up-and we do think they are bigger in the US-well, isn't everything?!
After a bit more driving, we finally spotted Las Vegas on the horizon-and what a sight it was with its sparkle and its glitter! We were so impressed to find our hotel right off the Vegas strip and were even more impressed to find our room was a huge suite right
near the pool and gym. We really went from slumming it to living it up all in 24 hours!
We hit the strip in the afternoon and were amazed to see a temperature chart showing 48 degrees! No wonder we were so bloody hot and needed to sit down and have water often. Vegas really is all that-money, money, money and lots of 'razmataz'-is that how it's spelt?! But it really is something that has to be seen and we spent a good bit of time wandering around and saying 'wow' every time we saw another impressive sight!
After chilling out at the pool, we hit the casinos and went mad on $20 of gambling spends! And I am very proud to say that we are big winners in Vegas walking away with over $40!! So we made back our spends and the money we'd spent on an amazing chinese that we actually could not eat all of-what is that all about?
So far today, we are lapping up the luxury life and are thinking about going for a show or dinner somewhere nice tonight-before we go back to roughing it tomorrow! We head off tomorrow morning
for the Grand Canyon where we'll stay for 2 nights and then onwards to Albuqurque (go on, sing it) and Santa Fe where we'll hit the famous route 66! So we'll probably check in again from there.
Lovely to hear from you all,
Lots of Love,
Daz and Debs xxxxxxx
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Wow
Looks fantastic!! Keep up the blog - love it!!