Recalculating...

When one gets set to embark on a long journey - especially in another country - it is customary for one to check one's route.

Oh dear.

Before we came, things we had booked included Vegas and Yosemite - in that order. So we would drive from the former to the latter. Many of the roads in the mountains shut around winter because of the snow and icy conditions, one of which is the road that goes into the east side of Yosemite park. I knew this.

So when we were in Vegas we knew we had a night to fill in between Sin City and Yosemite so we looked at the route up the eastern side of the state, and found a nice little city called Bishop in Inyo County that we could stop off at on the way.

It was about a five-hour drive from Vegas but we had all day, so that was fine. And the next day we'd just have a two-hour journey into the park.

Oh no we wouldn't. As we were fast approaching Bishop, I decided to look at the not-very-detailed map in my Rough Guide. Crap. That road that I knew was shut? That's the very road we were heading for. Double crap. We hastily stopped at a McDonald's to use its trusty WiFi and consult Google Maps. More crap. Even more roads were closed. It would take us eight hours to drive north, then west across the Sierra Nevada mountains and then south to enter Yosemite from the west side.

It's really annoying when the satnav announces she is "recalculating"; if only she had recalculated for us this time.

In the end, it turned out to be a great day. Our motel was characterful and had cable so we (I) could see Kate's dress and some live coverage of the latter part of the wedding.

We also managed to go via Mono Lake, an incredible sight with its calcium towers (tufa) coming out of the lake. I didn't think we'd get to see this. Bonus.

The drive across the Sierra Nevada was kind of hairy, in that we had to drive through avalanche areas and that the snow drifts up the side of the road were about 12-feet high. And, rather disconcertingly, that there were big sticks that lined the sides of the road of about the same height, presumably so you could tell where the road is when the snow is that high. Yikes. I didn't take very many pictures through here for fear of Adam crashing (for no reason, apart from that I have a heightened sense of danger!). This is a pic when we were through the scariest part.

A mere hour or so after coming out of the mountains were in the greenest of valleys (which FYI was ripe for the car game horse: see a horse, shout 'horse', win a point; see a horse box, shout 'horse box' win three of your opponents' points - I won).

We left Bishop at 8am and arrived at Yosemite, richer with even more sights, at about 7pm. This was our home for three nights.

Viva Las Vegas

There she is, looming out of the haze: The Strip.

Vegas is nuts. But strangely it has everything you could ever need (except from perhaps a pint of milk).

You want to go to New York? Yes siree, it's right next door.

You need socks? The World's Greatest Sock Store will satisfy all of your foot clothing needs.

Don't want to miss out on the gambling fun while you get a drink at the bar? No need!

CSI fan? Get thee to the CSI: Experience (this one's for you, mum).

You want to see animals? Forget about the zoo. Go to a casino, of course! The MGM Grand to be precise.

You want to win dollar? That's right, I'm talking big dollar (three big dollars).

Finally, if you want a frozen custard (and I'm serious here), Luv-It MUST be on your to-do list. Thanks for the tip-off, big sis. This was the best. We had the Western Specials. Mmmm yeah.

There you have it. Vegas: we can't say we'll miss you but we certainly won't forget you - or this delightful souvenir display.

PS: big thanks to Martin for sorting us out for tix to the Criss Angel show! Row AA no less.

Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

It's Thursday now and I think it was Monday when we went to Bryce and Zion National Parks but the days are starting to blur... We're almost half way through the trip now - so we've got just over three weeks to go. Can't quite believe how much we've done and seen so far. And how many miles we've driven. I think we're near to 2,000 miles now.

So yes, we actually arrived at our motel in Tropic, Utah (just outside of the park) on Sunday early evening with plans to do a quick stop at a look-out over Bryce before dinner. But it was pretty much zero degrees when we arrived, we'd been driving for five and a half hours, and - actually - we couldn't be bothered.

We'd starting getting into the habit of squeezing as much into every day as possible, but burn-out was approaching. And it wasn't like our day had been uneventful. We had driven via Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Stunning.

So we had a well deserved 'night in', which included a crappy-but-good fast food dinner of battered shrimp and fries, hit the laundromat and watched Poirot on cable and played Gin Rummy, or some variant thereof. Super.

Less super was the washing machine breaking on our second load and not draining the water out, thus leaving us with a bundle of dripping, non-tumble-drier-able clothes. Lucy was not happy: "Travelling sucks. Why is there no spin setting?!"  Adam wrang out the clothes. Lucy was less angry. Especially after the satisfaction of setting up Stage One of the clever drying system.

Stage Two involved a chair on a bed near a hot-air fan heater. There is no photographic evidence of this but, believe me, it was awesome and our clothes were dry before we went to bed.

The next morning, refreshed, we woke to snow. SNOW! For the second time on our trip. We weren't expecting that, but we wrapped up and drove down the road to Bryce Canyon National Park. The Rough Guide: USA book said the best time to see Bryce was in the winter when the hoodoos (top-heavy columns) are covered in snow, so we were pretty lucky. This place was incredible. I'd love to have walked down into the basin but we were short of time (and breath: part of the canyon rim we walked up to was 7,777 feet above sea level).

It took us about two hours to drive west to Zion National Park. It's very different: to start with, you don't walk the rim; you drive straight down into the basin. Which was actually my favourite part of this park. The sceond pic is of the Great Arch that you see when you come out of a scary-ass long tunnel that goes through the rock face.

It's pretty lush (or "verdant" as Adam so proudly announced) down along the Virgin River. We did a short walk to the Lower Emerald Pools where the waterfall was doing its thing.

With Utah done, we headed west for something entirely different...

Las Vegas.