Vegas Photos

Hiya,
We're currently in Santa Barbara chilling by the pool in some truely opulant surroundings i.e. Devons parents villa - I can see Oprah's House and it doesnt look as cool! Also yesterday I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever! Its salty. Tonight we head of to LA for some partying with a mechanical bull and a plethora of Brennas girlfriends. Tommorrow we will browse LA.

I still have my Vegas entry to blog up but its too sunny and pool-y just now and we're heading off to the Santa Barbara version of the summer solstace parade, in the meantime here are some photos from our night out in vegas :-

June 19th, 20th Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Day trip from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon

June 19th, 20th Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Day trip from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon, 410 miles.

Ive already posted the links for the photos, but here they are again, Albuquerque and the Grand Canyon

On the 19th we headed from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, intending to use Flagstaff as our base for visiting the Grand Canyon. We decided to keep this night fairly quiet, partially this was the conspicuous hemorrhaging of dollars and partially this was 1. Mexican beer 2. Tequila 3. Repeat from 1. So, quietly skulking off to the local cinema we sat down to watch 'Batman returns'. There's a lot that could be said about the movie but I don't think I'll bother blogging it, in short its generally quite good but with some flaws.

The 20th seen us day tripping to the Grand Canyon. On first impressions it is quiet awesome, the shear scale doesn't quite compute and it takes a while to sink in. Once the novelty of the scale wears off some of the other sights start to register; the red and orange cliffs, the incredibly wide panorama and the green glints from the distant Colorado. Well worth seeing.

After an afternoon of wandering the rim and visiting various view points we ended up at 'Hermits point'. From here there is an unmaintained trail down into the canyon to where a hermit used to mine. The trail was described as 'for experienced desert hikers' and headed with a billboard informing us of the deaths of people, including various marathon runners, who had died here whilst insufficiently prepared. The guide book recommends 8 liters of water per person per day and to not hike between 10:00 and 16:00. Cool. None the less I did persuade Keith and, after some cajoling, Josh, to hike down for fifteen minutes or so just to get a different view of the Canyon. God it felt good to stretch out my legs and work my lungs for a bit! Such a shame we didn't come prepared for some proper hiking, and there was sooo much good climbing about as well, sigh. Next time more water and equipment!

In between all this we managed to catch some glimpses of a decent amount of wildlife, from numerous birds and lizards to scuttling little desert versions of mammals, which I found quiet cool. Actually from the 'DANGER DANGER' signs they had about the squirrels I was surprised to see anything else alive. The squirrels are reportedly rabid, bubonic plague bearing aggressive little sods, perhaps leaving nothing in their path but blood and nuts.

So that's about it for the Grand Canyon. The remaining night in Flagstaff we found a cool bar and had some beers, however the night was hampered by the fact that we needed a designated driver (Keith) and that we had to drive back and forth a few times picking up increasingly valid forms of ID to get into the pub in the first place. Hey ho. Anyway tomorrow we're off to Vegas! Cya.

June 18, Santa Fe to Albuquerque.

June 18, Santa Fe to Albuquerque.

In the morning we verified there was not much to do in the pretty Santa Fe and after cake-pie, WiFi and coffee decided to opt for the Albuquerque night out rather than the Santa Fe night out. Molly was on a date that night but none the less had asked us if we wanted to join her later, I guess dating really is different in the states.

In Albuquerque we once again attempted to explore on foot only to be defeated by a large yellow lazer in the sky that was attempting to incinerate our flesh. Thank god for factor 35 suncream, even if it is leaving my skin a pasty white.

On the way back we happened across a nice little diner in classic American style. It had a bar-like structure surrounding the open kitchen which itself came with wisend bitter looking chef. We got chatting to the mostachioed dude who appeared to be running the place, i.e. he wasn't doing anything, and the waitress who was doing all the work. He turned out to be a huge soccer fan and over the next hour and a half we proceeeded to cause chaos as service ground to a halt due to various discussions with them. The dude was a huge soccer fan and extracted all the meager knowledge of football that Josh, Keith and I have. This lasted sometime before he adopted listing all places in L.A that we should visit. Subsequent grumpy customers and mis-changings occured left right and centre.

Chatting to the waitress also got us an invite to a "12 keg-er with Jungle Juice" featuring four goth/industrial/metal bands. She reckoned that everyone would be heading to this (a 4 keg-er gets 100 people apparantly) and that we should come along. Basically a big illegal piss-up in the desert with free booze, bonfire, bands and allegedly, babes. It sounded loads of fun but we said maybe, it was in the desert well outside of town and neither Keith or I fancied driving there and back or giving up booze for the evening. She then, somewhat sportingly and without us knowing, phoned a bunch of her friends to see if any of them weren't going and could take us out downtown. It turned out they were all going to the 12 keg-er, maybe a bit of a shame as she said "...don't worry they're all cute too".

Having decided to stay in town we had our dinner, a quick beer and phoned Molly. She was still on her date but said to come on down to the 'Perl diver' and join them. Wondering a bit about American dating we headed off to meet up with Molly, her date Aaron and her friend Heather. As an aside as we walked into town passed the diner the 12 keg-er lassie chased after us down the street and took our cell numbers. This is unprecedented and would have been much cooler if she wasn't only seventeen.

We arrived at the 'Perl Diver' and met up with Molly and Co. It was a really good night, excellent and witty chat ensued and there was much hilarity all round. They were sharp and interesting, and were social libertarians to boot, hooray. After a couple of beers on our part, and a couple of waters on the part of our hosts we all had some smooth, smooth tequila. Closing time then promptly arrived and the bar disgorged us onto the busy street. There was a brief discussion about continuation of drinking before the impossibility of finding somewhere open or serving alcohol became apparent and we parted with happy waves.

Tomorrow we head for Flagstaff as our base for day-tripping to the Grand Canyon. Cya,

Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Grand Canyon photos

Hiya,
Still a few blog entries to write but in the meantime here are the photos from the last few days.
Cya,
Dave.



Santa Fe
Albuquerque
Grand Canyon

June 17th, Roswell to Santa Fe.

June 17th, Roswell to Santa Fe, 200 miles.

Again we had a lazyish start to the morning, we sorted out some boring things like laundry and Josh's haircut before visiting the Roswell "museum for UFO research". Its was comically bad and, probably correctly, very much looks like its been stuck together by a bunch of enthusiasts who don't know much about public displays. Roswell is funny though, the cafes and shops have things like "Alien resistance HQ" and "probe free service", its makes me laugh.

Over yet another huge lunch we thought we had a bit of a dilema. The conversation went something like :-
Josh : "Hmm, aren't we booked in for Vegas on the 21st"
Dave : "(Checking the plan) Yep"
Josh : "Well (looking at watch) this is the 18th and we've got 4 days of stuff planned before then"
Keith : "Crap, we must of lost a day somewhere"

The irony of losing a day in Roswell of all places was too much and guffaws and jokes about little gray dudes ensued. With new found impitous we hastily re-planned to spend only one night in Santa Fe, gobbled our massive lunches and set tail for Santa Fe. Once on-route the combination of laptop, PDA, and mobile phones soon made it apparent that it was the 17th, Doh. It seems some watch-timezone-adjusting around Roswell had gone horribly wrong, hee hee.

We arrived in Santa Fe in good time, party due to our fake-crisis-induced driving.
Santa Fe sits at 7000ft and so was a very pleasant temperature, the sun however is painfully strong. We wandered around the city for a while soaking up the styles and atmosphere. Santa Fe has a lovely mix of Mexican / Spanish style architecture in cosy ochres and oranges, the mountains again providing an impressive backdrop. It really is very, very, pretty. However we found ourselves walking with an increasing sense of foreboding about the evenings festivities, nothing seemed to be going on, the place was a lot smaller than we realized and there didn't seem that much to do, hmmm.

After dinner we departed and, relieved to find that the place had busied up somewhat, entered the liveliest bar we could find. It turned out to be a billiards (pool) hall and served moderately fine locally brewed ales. We had a few games of pool, in which I specialized in sinking the white along with the black. Josh attempted to recruit a couple of nearby lassies to join us in a game. They politely declined but did invite us along clubbing with them later. After they had inexplicably increased their number to four cute girls they joined us and we headed to the "Paramount". It turned out to be a very cool bar with plenty of opportunities for chat before we went to shake our booty to some R&B. Unfortunately Keith's digestive tract had been suitably crippled by green chillies and so had to bail out early. T'was a good night though, that seen us collect an invite to a night out with Molly in Albuquerque, an invite to a BBQ with free booze with in Elena Santa Fe, and a lift back home, neat.

Tomorrow, well we're not sure now :)

June 16, San Antonio to Roswell

June 16, San Antonio to Roswell, 655 miles.



Today was the "beast" drive we'd been fearing, 9-10 hours of scrub-cum-desert traversal with all the killing-each-other-in-the-desert opportunities this afforded. In practice the huge car, having two drivers, Josh FM, books and interesting scenery gave us a pretty darn pleasant drive, which was good.

Roswell was pretty much what I had envisioned a smallish town in the middle of the USA in the middle of nowhere to be like. The whole place was stretched along the main street, which was also the road north, with few buildings venturing far to either side. It was exactly the sort of place I'd imagined us stopping at on our trip across the plains and deserts, which was kinda cool, and when we went out for some beers I did so with a little spring in my step.

We sauntered over to a bar across the way called 'Bud's'. After eventually finding the door we almost didn't go in, there was a very specific dress code which none of us came close to meeting. Braving ourselves we stepped forth to give it a try anyway, finding no-one to be respecting anything like the dress code we breathed a sigh of relief and ordered some surprisingly tasty Buds. The place gradually busied up (like 15 people :)) over the night and had an interesting, weird small town feel that was none the less pleasing. The odd mix of hip-hop and country could only but help. Yeah, Roswell was weird, but neat, or maybe it was the effect of the 9 hour drive ;) Tomorrow some time in Roswell and then onto Sante Fe.

June 15th, Houston -> San Antonio

June 15th, Houston -> San Antonio, 200 miles.

I already posted the photo link for San Antonio but here it is again anyway :)

We arrived in San Antonio around one, which gave us plenty of time to sample the cities various delights. The heart of San Antonio is a series of renovated flood control canals collectively named 'Riverwalk' and they languidly snake their way around the underbelly of the city about 15ft below street level. The canals are clean, lined with lots of green fauna and punctuated with the occasional boat and bridge. They make for a very pleasant route to navigate the city. The nightlife also centers around here, most of the route being lined with bars and restraunts whose tables spill out onto the walkways up to the banks of the canals.

We started the afternoon ambling the length of the pretty darn gorgeous Riverwalk. We stuffed ourselves with the usual mountainous portions of food at one of the many Mexican places. The mexican food here is sumptious, definitely the best mexican if ever had. We then waddled downtown for a look around and a visit of the remains of the Alamo fort. There's not much to see at the Alamo and the oppressive 100f heat was starting to get to us, so we headed back to the Motel to recover and prepare for the evenings festivities. Apart from the heat I can understand why everyone in this area drives; air conditioning. Walking in this heat and humidity is really sapping.

The evenings festivities started of at Mad Dogs a 'British theme pub', we selected it for its lack of cover charge and cute staff in belt length tartan kilts with knee high Dr Martens. However the bizaro combination of cabaret, karaoke, and mid forties crowd soon had us on our way for a funkier venue. Forfeiting five dollars we entered 'Club Rive' and followed the sound of some funky R&B tunes towards the bar and dance floor. The music was good, the room was dark, the bar was long and on top of it unexpectedly had three incredibly nubile lassies girls grinding away on poles. Hmmm. A quick round of two large smooth tequilas with Coronas started us off and the club was starting to fill up. The dancing crowd was mostly made up from black dancers who were shaking booty with intimidating proficiency. This and a lack of suitable candidates made for a dance-free night for myself and Keith and, apart from a quick spurt at the end, Josh. Instead we mostly settled for sampling Mexican liquor and nubile dancers before heading on about half one.

In a bizarre footnote we bumped into a lassie, Heather, on the way out who was a regular visitor to Scotland in her youth for Clan reunions. She promptly and very competently demonstrated a highland dance and a sword dance and from there we all got chatting. I wonder what the odds of meeting a highland dancer were? :)

Anyway tomorrow we've got a bitch ass drive of 8 hours to Carlsbad or 10 hours to Roswell if we press on. See y'all there! Er, metaphorically.

San Antonio photos

Still to do the San Antonio blog entry, but its so gorgeous I had to upload the photos anyway

June 14th, New Orleans to Houston

June 14th New Orleans to Houston, 392 miles.

We were aiming for San Antonio early on the 15th with Houston marked as our intended stop off. By the time we had nursed our respective hangovers it was actually quite late in the day before we managed to set off. This gave us few chances to stop off on the way and for a late arrival in Houston, making for a rather uneventful day. From Houston's (not Keiths) ugly, ugly appearance this is perhaps no bad thing. We used the time to plan the rest of trip, which has us spending tomorrow in San Antonio before heading Rosewell, Sante Fe, the Grand Canyon, then Vegas baby. San Antonio here we come!

New Orleans; Beads, breasts and balconies.

June 12th, Mobil -> New Orleans via beaches at Pass Christian and southern pie at Bay St Louis.
June 13th New Orleans.



Photos can be found here

New Orleans is interesting indeed, although in an entirely different manner than I expected. We are staying in an area called the French Quarter, this is also the area where all the nightlife is. It is an area of about 60 blocks of colonial style houses converted into bars, hotels, bars, clubs, bars, restraunts and er, bars. Most of the nightlife takes place along Bourbon street, which runs the length of the Quarter, and is lined with balconied clubs and bars. The idea is that you pick up some drinks and, drink in hand, wander the length of the street popping in and out anywhere that takes your fancy.

Now the surprising part is that it is the custom to buy yourself a load of beaded necklaces, stand on the balconies and yell at passers by that you want to strip. Amazingly loads of people flash ass or breasts or sometimes, er, other bits. After they have flashed their, um, goodies, the callers chuck them a load of beads. Very wierd, but makes an interesting backdrop to an evening.

Our evenings here we spent cruising Bourbon street, drink in hand, soaking up the atmosphere and crashing other groups of people to have a blether. It turns out that doing a road trip and coming from another county gives as loads of conversational ammunition and the local cocktails, the 'hand grenade' and 'hurricane', were giving us plenty of fuel.

So the whole place has an atmosphere of non-stop party. However it it is like a Spanish resort style party not a down'n'dirty R&B grind fest or finger clicking jazz / blues chill out, and in this respect New Orleans was not what I was hoping for, although its still a real fun place.

In other news I was ripped off to the tune of $300 dollars from the bag in my Hotel room. Insurance or the Hotel will cover it, however it meant I had the dubious pleasure of chatting to New Orleans Boys in Blue. They popped around to the Hotel for an interview. Most of the interview seemed to be spent persuading them it was unlikely to have been, as they suspected, Keith. Or as he put it "Trust your buddy with you life but not you money or you wife".

Random notes I

Yawn, sitting waiting on everyone having their respective showers, so some random notes.

- So far everyone here is nice. Really nice, and keen for a bit of a blether. Im really going to miss the service here.
- So far everyone seems pretty much happy and relaxed.
- No-one gets sarcasm,
- example one, Josh orders the same thing as two Americans he is with, saying "Just to be original I'll have the same thing", they pause and correct him saying that to be original he'd have to order something else.
- example two, Im discussing various sports with a chap who refuses to believe Im not Irish and keeps asking me about Irish bands. We are discussing female softball, the teams consist of lots of highly fit young ladies I say sarcasticly "Hmm I cant imagine why this is so popular", he corrects me with "It is because they are all hot"
- The weather has been a distinctly curious yet pleasantly steady temperature with mild humidity, nice and bright but without ever really seeing the sun.

Oop we're starting to pack now, cya.

June 11th Decatur -> Mobile

June 11, Decatur -> Mobile, 377 Miles.

We had a lazy start to the morning. Decatur is a pretty little place so we wandered around for a bit sampling the WiFi and coffee. The coolest coffee place was a little arthouse place full of interesting types, subtely played mellow jazz and good coffee. It was also called the java monkey, which gets it extra kudos in my book for having monkey in the title.

About tweleve we were suitably caffinated and blogged out so we grabbed the maps and looked for our next port of call. The grander plan has us hitting New Orleans soonish. We decided to get the guts of that trip out the way by aiming for Mobile (Mo-beeel) tonight, it is only about 2-3 hours from New Orleans. Mobile was described as a "crappy version" of New Orleans by our ever-helpful bar staff. Hmm.

So Keith and I alternate driving for about the next 6 hours. This puts us ahead of the game milage-wise and will let us slack of in New Orleans for a couple of days. The weather report still reports a tropical storm on its way, should be an interesting way to see New Orleans :)

We arrive in Mobile and head for the centre to check it out. It is absolutely desolate. No-one is moving and there are hardly any cars. Most of the businesses are also closed. Hmmm. Its also a bit of a dump, which is in complete contrast to the pretty lovely suburbs we drove through on our way in. Eventually the penny drops and we notice sand bags placed in front of some places, we reckon there has been a storm / flood warning and everyone has buggered off inside rather than chancing it.
So we abandon plans to spend much time in the centre and head out to find a WiFi'd motel. Soon enough we come across one, check in, dump our stuff and head out for some grub and booze. The meal was as usual huge, good and cheap. The beer was as usual small, dubiously fizzy and cheap. I'd forgotten my ID but a combination of cursing, pleading, questioning the need for ID and pretending to be Keith, soon got me some booze.

I finish the night playing with the new toy I got today at one of our road side stops, a Nikon coolpix 7800 camera :) I got this one because it compatable with my iRiver and so spend a good 10 minutes transfering stuff to and from the iRiver and camera just because I can :) Heres the test photo I taken in Mobile :-

June 10th - Charlotte -> Decator (Atlanta)

June 10th, 299 miles so far.

We started off the morning watching some unintentionally funny CNN in our reasonably luxuriant hotel. The weather section comes on and announces that tropical storm Arlene is causing some damage around Florida, and that if its winds continue to pick up it will become a fully fledged hurricane. The projected path appears on the TV screen, it looks eerily familiar, ah yes we'll meet it on our drive to or arrival in New Orleans. Cool.

We get in touch with Josh and arrange to meet at his Hotel, We bail into the car and head off, this is my first driving in USA experience. As pre-arranged Keith shouts "right lane! right lane!" for the first few left hand turns.

We arrive at the Hotel to meet a Josh. He is donning a wicked grin and is walking with a spring in his step. He explains that he's going to be a bit late as he still has to pack and get Hannah out his room. Hannah? He pauses then grins. Hannah, it turns out, is an American lass who Josh successfully deployed "the chat" on. This was who Josh was on a date with last night. It was a proper American date as well, where Josh gets to pay for everything, the arrangements featured her asking "So, what's your budget?". He reckons he spent about $100 on booze, Hannah was trying, extremely unsuccessfully, to drink Josh under the table going head-to-head on Miller lites. Josh, being used to drinks with reasonable alchohol content was not effected.

Off we go! We check out, partially legging it before anyone gets to see the inside of Josh's room, which has Hannah's spew and various other detritus.

We're on the road to Atalanta!

Our first stop is a city called Greenville. Its a pleasant leafy place once you get into the centre but the outskirts are surrounded by mile upon mile upon mile of car sales lots. We have a mighty sized and yummy lunch, and pick up a road atlas from the map store and "pretty map girl", as she has been dubbed. Back on the road we continue heading toward Atalanta, we're making good time until we hit the outskirts of Atalanta and take a wrong turn. We're heading for a little city within Atlanta called Decatur (Dee-Kay-Tor). The wrong turn costs us about and hour and a half and a good number of sanity points. Honestly, the road signs in the US are non-existent, they are so bad! The map we have isnt high enough resolution to find out where we are.

We finally arrive in Decatur, find a motel and then hit the streets. Decator is a very nice little collage town with a sort of central square of a few streets. The atmosphere is good, lots of people out and about, feels like theres a lot of easy going fun happening. We dine at the 'Raging Burrito' have a few beers and then head out to the pub for a few more. The pubs we find are nice and a little art housey. The bar staff are all friendly and we manage to extract some facts about Decator from them, apparantly it is the gay capital of Georgia. Looking around this explains some things :)

Anyhow Im totally running out of time and writing far too much, so im off. Tommorrow we will try to find some Wi-Fi and start the trip towards New Orelans.

June 9th - Arrived in Charlotte

TODO - For now see Keiths blog :)

Nearly off to the US...

Well its nearly here! Keith and I will be dispatching ourselves to the US on thursday morning. We'll be meeting up with Josh, who is already in Charlotte, and together we will be hammering across the states for two and a half weeks of culture shock. Groovy.

We leave Glasgow on Thu 9-Jun-05 at 11:05 and arrive in Charlotte 17:39. Total travel time, including check-in in time and getting to Glasgow, is about 17 hours :) We fly out of Los Angeles at 20:45 on Sun 26-Jun-05.

Below is a very rough route map, although we will be mostly deciding where to go once we are out there. Click on the map and select 'all sizes' to see a larger version.

We're going to have a laptop and every few days will be doing some intermiable slog across swathes of the country in the car, so expect to see a few blog entries every few days :) We will however be slogging across the country in some style