Leaving Las Vegas

It's time for this little spell of entertainment to come to an end. Cirque du Soleil last nght was quite fantastic and wandering back along "The Strip" was "interesting". Sorry, but that's the most polite term I can use given the traffic, the glitz, the lights, the consumerism, the all-you-can-eat buffets, the stretch Hummers...and so on. It's certainly an adult fantasyland.

We're heading into what seems to be the only warm place on the continent: southern Arizona. We have been following the weather news from Canada, the -40s in Saskatchewan, continual snow in the BC mountains, road closures on the Trans Canada Highway. The cold and snow has extended south quite some distance, too. We had some snow a few days ago as we crossed a mountain pass in California, but mainly it's just been cool. We woke up this morning to temperatures just below freezing here in Vegas, apparently about 10 degrees lower than normal. Plans to hike in the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks could fizzle if it doesn't warm up enough to melt some of the snow on their trails. Hopefully a change in the jet stream will bring some relief to everyone.

Time to crank up the iPod and head south.

Wandering around Vegas

We arrived in Las Vegas yesterday afternoon, managed to find a room, unpacked, got on-line to book our theatre tickets and then headed out in search of some food.

It seems like everyone I know has been to Vegas except me, but now I can say I've seen it, and I'm not sure what to say. A city like this in the middle of the desert? The streets are surprisingly wide and neat. They have put a rather large amount of concrete into making some of these places, considering that what they are making is re-created fantasylands, Paris, NY NY, Luxor.... The casinos are almost unbelievable in the numbers of machines and wide variety of ways to part with your money. Personally, I have NO desire to try them out. Would it seem wierd to visit Vegas and NOT try out the gambling machines? The things they've created are impressive, I guess, but tacky. Maybe tacky isn't the best word to use, but what can you say about stuff like the picture shown above or a glass pyramid that shines blazing spotlights into the night sky? Or Treasure Island, water fountains sychronized to music. There's no end to the glitz.

We've been walking everywhere and although it takes some time, it's exercise and easier than driving in this traffic, especially with the camper. We're also taking in a couple of shows, Mamma Mia last night (a typical musical plot done to the songs of ABBA) and Cirque du Soleil tonight. There are food buffets everywhere, especially in the casinos. They seem to be the easiest places to eat - best prices, widest selection.

Anyway, 24 hours left to experience this place before we head south again searching for more desert and cactus plants.

Death Valley

Following a rather convoluted route to Death Valley, we finally began the long descent into the Valley. As we dropped steadily, a fog bank rolled up through the canyons and valleys. It made me think, appropriately, that we were descending into Dante's Inferno. We arrived soon after at Stovepipe Wells, a small collection of trailers, some buildings and a gravel campground at the north-west end of the valley. We went for a walk up a nearby canyon then set up camp on the gravel parking lot. Then the wind started and blew for a few hours with gusts that rocked the camper.

The next day we drove to Badwater, the lowest part of the valley, followed by some more hiking up various canyons. Although we hadsun, the temperature was between +10C and +15C and was quite comfortable. I just can't imagine being here in the summer!

That night we stayed at Furnace Creek, with a good view up the valley and across the valley to the mountains, including 11,000 ft Telescope Peak, with its covering of snow. Tuesday morning we were up early to enjoy the sunise on the desert and it was off towards Las Vegas.

A Bit of History

Being on a road trip makes me lose track of time and I find I have to ponder a bit to remember when I was where even a few days ago.....or it could be just a poor memory....

Whatever.... Last Friday, as we were escaping from San Francisco, our path in the pouring raintook us past Mountain View, CA, the home of The Computer History Museum. I'd discovered this place on-line (where else?) and had planned to visit. Y'know, the heart of Silicon Valley, my interest in computers, where else to see part of ENIAC, a neat geek thing to do....

So we found the right exit to the Museum, just off Hwy 101, and took the 5-cent tour of the place. Just walking around the displays would have been interesting, but the guided tour was quite a bit of fun. As history goes, most of this stuff is so recent as to hardly qualify in the traditional museum sense, but considering the impact these devices have had, and how quickly things have changed.... Anyhow, an interesting way to spend a couple of hours. I'd only recommend it to people with a real interest in computers and computing history. For example, I enjoyed the first display: a wall with just a collection of mostly "portable" computers, a good number of which I've owned, built or used over the years (remember the Osborne computer? the Altair? the Commodore Pet? the "Trash-80"?). If you do go, take the free guided tour - the stories make the whole experience much more worthwhile.

Exploring SF - Part 3

Today was supposed to be rainy, but it managed to hold off until we hiked to the Golden Gate Bridge, took some pictures and wandered a couple of more miles to the Haight-Ashbury area. For those of you too young to have heard, this was "the" centre for the drug/hippy phase of the 60s. So the picture is of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury, where the Grateful Dead posed and supposedly dropped some acid. It once again reminded me of a song I thought of as we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge: "San Francisco - Be Sure to Wear SomeFlowers inYour Hair". It's mostly full of shops selling tie-died t-shirts and posters, cafes and such, but probably very little of the counterculture era that the area was famous for over 40 years ago. It was kind of "cute" but with noticeably more street people hanging around, as well as in the adjacent Golden Gate Park. By the time we had finished lunch, it had started to rain more seriously, so we plodded back to the lodgings in the rain, even the umbrellas not managing to keep us completely dry.

A Collection of Prii..?

So, according to the rules I learned inBiology, if one of these is called a Prius, then more than one would be referred to as Prii (pronounced as Pre-i), right? Anyhow, I liked the advertising on this one, hence the picture. I have seen many, many of these hybrid cars on the west coast, especially in Portland and San Francisco. In fact, in one parking lot, a line of cars probably no more than 15 long had 4 Prii in it. I've also noticed many auto service businesses advertising themselves as certified to do "smog control testing", an issue California seems to be taking somewhat seriously. That said, the traffic around here is about what you'd see in any big city, although public transit is good, from what we can tell. We hiked!

It's Whining Time Again

OK hoseheads, listen up. If you didn't already know it, you're being "hosed" on wine prices in Canada. Fleeced, taken to the cleaners, gouged, ripped off. On our current USA epic, we've been discovering the joys of cheap wine that I didn't have to make myself. I know there's been a lot of talk about comparitive prices of books in Canada and the USA with the two dollars at near-par, but there's been no complaining about the prices of wine in Canada.

First, as all of you probably know, wine (and beer) in the USA is available in most stores. We've been buying our wine in whatever grocery store we've been using for our other food: WalMart, Safeway, Fred Myer, etc.... (I'm sure there's a good, victorian, reason for the way we do it in Canada, probably to reduce alcoholism or something....likely the same reason why the government and native groups have control over gaming - to prevent gambling addiction).

Second, we've been able to find lots of wine bring offered at some sort of sale price. I don't think that ever happens to wine prices in Canada. Hmmm - wonder why that is? Oh yeah, probably no competition?

So now we come to the prices we've been able to find. I've purchased 750 ml bottles of quite decent wine at prices as low as US$3. I don't think I've paid more than US$7 for anything. I've generally looked for whites like Gewurtziminer and reds like Merlots or Shiraz. A case in point would be Yellowtail Shiraz. In BC, this seems to sell for about C$12 or C$13. So far, I've paid about half that price for Yellowtail and there are many cheaper but good alternatives produced in Oregon or California that I've been sampling, quite happily.

My beef is why wine in Canada needs to be soooo expensive. What I'm going to try and do, if my wine-sodden brain can remember, is to.....ahhh....ummmm....where was that train of thought going???? Oh yes: to keep track of some prices of wines we find on our trip and compare them to prices back home. A completely unscientific study. So there will be more about this story coming later. Stay tuned.

Exploring SF - Part 2

Today was a day of walking. First from our lodgings up the hill to Pacific Heights. In SF, your income is reflected by how high up the hills you can live. As we saw, the quality of the houses, and their size, certainly increased as we climbed, Not that the hills are "that" high, but there is a view to be had, and the hills are steep, some of them approaching 30 degrees. I reflected that if it were to snow here, that's almost steep enough to avalanche! Here, the present hazard is earthquake. I saw this picture of a residential area here after an earthquake earlier in the last century.....

We continued to walk on towards Chinatown which was easy to identify once we arrived. After wandering around, we had lunch in one of the many restaurants. I was a bit surprised with how persistent some of the restaurant workers were that we should visit "their" establishment. One woman followed me halfway down the block, another came to her door twice inviting us in. Lunch was very good once we picked one. As usual, the stores were filled with an amazing quantity of "stuff" - overflowing, actually....

Then is was more wandering on in the general direction of Fisherman's Wharf again, passing by Coit Tower, on another hill, naturally, which afforded a good view of some of the city. The Guide book has an interesting story about the origin of the Tower - you can look it up in Wikkipedia too.

We decided to take a boat tour of the harbour - an hour-long ride out to the Golden Gate Bridge, back and around Alcatraz. The Golden Gate is a pretty impressive bridge; it's construction was completed in only 52 weeks. We're hoping to walk over part of it tomorrow if we can.

Exploring SF - Part 1

We tried to time our arrival to SF to avoid too much traffic - noonish seemed a good bet, but the traffic on Hwy 101 was pretty steady. Unfortunately, the top of the Golden Gate Bridge was nearly obscured in fog and it was showering as we drove across it. Still pretty impressive. The Rough Guide says there are several suicides each month from this bridge.....

We had planned to find a cheap motel just into the City not far from the bridge. That worked out very well. A place to park the Beast off the street, and access to the parts of the City we wanted to see. Plus hot water, a shower... We had planned to get transit passes and get around that way, but our first few hours had us re-thinking that idea. We were able to hike from the motel to Fisherman's Wharf in a reasonable time, skies had cleared up and we were able to get some exercise, so perhaps we'll mostly walk. Maybe just take the bus when we're too tired to limp our way back to the motel.

Our first route took us through one of the yuppie-zone residential areas and along the waterfront to the Fisherman's Wharf part of the city. We had views of the GG Bridge and the island of Alcatraz. By the time we "arrived" we were getting pretty hungry, it being after 4 pm and the last food I remember being the bran flakes breakfast quite a few hours ago. So the first priority was to start inspecting menus at various restaurants and pubs that we passed. We settled on Joe's Crab Shack - it seemed suitably down-scale for us, prices were reasonable and although our waiter was a bit more enthusiastic than suited our reserved Canadian natures, the food was very good. A fisherman's platter, blackened talapia and some local brews really improved our outlooks.

By the time we were finished and found a few T-shirts and postcards, it was getting dusky, so we started heading back to our lodgings. On the way, we managed to navigate ourselves into an area with one of the steepest and twistiest (is that a word?) streets in the city followed by a steady hike for a couple of miles along Lombard St back "home".

That and a few hours updating e-mail, photo albums, Facebook and chatting on Skype with Scott in NJ pretty much finished off the day.

End of an Error

Not being right in tune with things American, this bumper sticker took me a few seconds to register. I credit my many hours of watching reruns of The West Wing.

Coastal California

We spent about a week traveling slowly down the coast of California. This was on Highway 1 mostly, about as close as you can get to the Pacific without actually getting wet. The road was narrow, very winding, and quite exposed in some places. It reminded me of a Koots logging road with narrow hairpin turns, steep hills. The pavement was the one difference, plus the great views of the Ocean.

I do have to say, though, that the California Coast seemed not as nice as Oregon. The State parks were scruffy, there are, of course, more people and houses the further south you go and things in general are more expensive. And the Oregon coast is more rugged and wild. I guess as you go further south you get into more big beach territory. Still, it was nice. More pictures are on my Facebook page.

Santa Rosa,California

Before driving down into San Francisco, we visited a historic garden in Santa Rosa, previously the home and workplace of Luther Burbank (the Burbank potato, the Shasta Daisy...). It was a small garden but a nice scale. I was amused by one quote pictured here. I think you'll like it too.

Oregon

After escaping the snow and ice of the Koots and a very slow, treacherous drive to southern Washington and into Oregon, we've been spending the past week slowly traveling down along the coast of Oregon. The first couple of days were quite wet; we had near-torrential rain once, but the past few days have been sunny with great views. Not especially warm most of the time, but I'm not complaining. It's warmer here than at home and there isn't any snow.

The scenery has been pretty fantastic: wild surf and waves, neat offshore rock formations, big trees. I've uploaded some representative pictures to Facebook. Food is cheap, wine is inexpensive (less than half Canadian prices) and we're able to cook almost anything we want in the camper. With all the wining and dining, it's probably a good thing that Catherine is a bit compulsive about both of us having a 5-mile walk each day.

The Oregon coast has obviously had some major storms recently. There are the remains of many downed trees all along our route. I have to say that the State parks have cleaned things up very well: trails are cleared of debris, campgrounds are clean and their winter rates are a bargain.

California is only an hour's drive south and then it's the giant Redwoods.

Cut Block Powder

I think I could become a convert to this. Experienced skiiers can start yawning now, but it was exciting for me, so here goes: We needed another day of logging road slogging and since it was warm down by the Lake, we headed up towards the summit on the road to New Denver. The snow on the Murray Creek FSR was unused, so we picked it for the day's exercise. One problem, aside from the VERY deep powder, was the presence of a few VERY deep water bars in the road which hadn't filled in with snow completely, making skiing across a bit of a problem. However, we perservered and made it to the top of the road, about 2 km. We traversed across the top of the highest cut block and prepared for the ride down. The snow was amazingly deep and the fat skis just floated near the surface all the way down. It was perhaps the most gentle skiing I've done because we sort of floated across the tops of the logs and stumps that were buried below all that snow. It was GREAT! And I've never really skiied in snow up to my knees. It was an amazing experience. I need more of this!

Skiing in the Koots

With all the new snow we've been getting lately, I've been trying to get out and practice my skiing. The goal is to be actually able to ski through some of the backcountry terrain we have out here. A drive of 10-15 minutes from our place gets us higher up into the hills where the snow is soft and fluffy. The technique here is to put the skins on the skis and plod upwards for an hour or two and then ski back down. I've been looking for a cut block that I could try out and in the past couple of days have found two that were interesting. For the uninitiated, cut blocks are locations of recent logging where the challenge is to avoid stumps and old logs. The one I tried yesterday was covered with quite a pile of snow so I sort of fluffed my way downhill, traversing from side to side so I could control my speed and give myself time to figure out where I was going to go. My problem with skiing right now (one of them, at least) is that I can't translate a desire to turn my skis into actual reality quickly enough to avoid things in the way. Anyway, all the stumps and logs were covered with large piles of snow so I sort of skiied around and over them all the way to the bottom. Then it was 10 minutes down the logging road back to the car. Lots of fun! There was a pile of new snow last night and rain is forecast for Friday......