Arizona - mid June

Left: lunch in Boulder City 

Right: ready to walk over the line. 

We stayed at The New Frontier place in Vegas. It is kinda divey. I dont know how it got the "New" part in the name, as its obviously old, and there's been no maintenance on the place for about 30 years. The carpets smell musty.

This place reminds me of the one in The Shining. You'll have to walk for about ten minutes to get to your room. The multi coloured red carpet, and fake wooden finishing spell fancy for the 70s.

After a while, the old style gaming area grows on you, and once you accept it, this place is cool and Vegas all over.

Driving in, we know we're close when we see a large hotel wrapped by a roller coaster. Paddy says, "you ain't seen nothin yet". When we do arrive, we still haven't seen anything yet, when we get lost in what turns out to be a hotel carpark.

Vegas deserves it's reputation, and is huge fun. On the first night, Riet and Chap get tickets to Celine Dion in the hope of seeing plenty of tackiness and kitch. Celine delivers in her new show titled "A new day". Chap went along just to keep Riet company, but comes back singing "I drove all niiiiight to get to you", and even bought her CD.

Next stop is the Railroad Pass Hotel, Casino & Travel Center in Henderson, Nevada. How am I ever going to lose weight? The club sandwich has 2 types of animal in it, and not much salad. Everything comes with fries or potato salad. Its delicious, and sits in my stomach like a brick.

We go into the gaming room for some $3 blackjack, and the attendant explains to us when it's good to hit, sit, and double up. Obviously we didn't get it, as we both sit there waiting for her to deal when we haven't got any bets out. Chappy laughs heartily at us gambling novices.

Hoover Dam: If 2.6 million cubic metres of concrete thrills you, this is your place.  The other two really enjoyed it though, and the background has beautiful desert colours. It's choked with traffic and people.

Update: after seeing the documentary, The Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, this disgusting project would fill anyone with rage. Over 100 people died, mostly by easily preventable causes like heat exhaustion. Conditions were appalling, but anyone who complained got sacked, as replacements were queuing up - this being the depression. The chief engineer Frank Crowe received a bonus of $4 million, in today's money for completing ahead of time. Early completion was achieved by shortcutting safety, so really he made his money at the expense of the lives of the workers. A large proportion of the workers lived in shanty towns with no permanent or proper shelter, despite promises to provide housing, for most of the duration of construction.

Very interesting and appalling. Another reason why a completely free market is not desirable.

At the Sahara Buffet (now closed they say): We're determined to do every cliche in Vegas, and now we cross the big buffet off the list. Falling in love with a hooker, and drinking yourself to death remain.

This place has four lanes of excess to choose from, multiple carving stations, frogurt, yogurt, cake, free softdrink refills, etc etc. Why is there no beer here, damn it? Getting trashed in Vegas is becoming surprisingly hard when you're doing all the stuff that has to be done here.

Next stop is the Amazing Jonathan show, which was pretty funny. If I can "blow" one of the jokes, is when his assistant appears claiming to have won tickets to the Blue Men show and comes out with the blue markings all round her mouth. A very coarse show and funny.

Fremont Street experience: The cab driver said something vague about a light show, and we didn't know what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised by all the old style casinos, with the old style millions of bulbs. This area is pure heritage, and you won't get to see this kind of glitz anywhere else. I think it's worth a trip just to see old style Vegas, and the famous lit up cowboy.

The light show was more of a surprise. The huge roof covering the whole street becomes a stream of dancing flowers, waves and hippy patterns, moving in time with the thumping music. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have to agree this place does have an edgy feel to it. Two homeless people danced to the music beside Aladdin's lamp. We didn't stay around for long after the show.

Checked out a tattoo place on the strip, then went back to the hotel.

It's time to hit the road again, and try get our body clocks back to daylight hours. Can we pick up from Riviera casino? You bet!

We book an economical car, and this rental site is a small one, so we get another free upgrade as per usual. I love this company. This time we've got a Pontiac G6, which kicks arse going uphill on Arizona's 75mph highways, with cruise control set at 80.

We set off listening to Celine Dion's Vegas show shouting "Shall we go for it?" in a Canadien-French accent.

The road sign says 93, 95, I-15 North. I think we need the I-15 north even though we want to go south on the 93...I dunno - and we're lost again immediately..

The people here are astonishingly polite. If you spoke to a stranger at home this way, they would think you are crazy or drunk.

We got out of Vegas with some radical, slightly illegal manouevres. We arrive in Boulder city which I think is beautiful, but Riet disagrees.

After the extreme fun that is Vegas, funded by all our dear gambling friends, we head through Arizona. 

I stopped at Ash Fork because I like the name. Dinner was another hamburger; not too bad.

Arizona has huge desert landscapes with hills like a wonky blanket, crazy rock formations and even forests.

Nearby WIlliams is beautiful, but set up for tourists. We make it to the Grand Canyon just in time for sunset.

Getting here at sunset is just unbelievable. The reds are incredibly rich, the greens, and whites are all

stunning, and the scale of this Canyon is enormous.

Everyone is snapping away like demons. There's only a handful of people here which is crazy.

We spend another morning around here. Ranger Rod gives a great talk on the birds here.

I upgrade my park entry to a one year National Parks pass, which pays for itself on the same day. It's telling me to experience my America. It's mine now hear me!

We stopped at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. My National Parks pass pays for itself here.

Between 1064 and 1180, Sunset Crater Volcano erupted. The landscape is hugely interesting. The mountains are mainly jet black ash, with regions of rust red and a tree here or there.

The rock formations from the lava flow are very sharp, and protrude in all directions. The rocks formed along the rivers of flowing mmolten mmmmagmmaa.

The slope of this unstable ground is 38 degrees according to Chap, our dirt dumping expert.

Wupatki National Monument: Who knew there was 1000 year old stone homes in the US? Arizona has it all.

The local people who built this home knew what they were doing. You can see a drainage ditch, windows, doorways and the walls look pretty true. And 1000 years later, you can just imagine the people setting up enough agriculture nearby to support a reasonable size population, relaxing here, and looking out down to the start of the Grand Canyon.

It's amazing they're still here.

The suburban-ness of Flagstaff and then desert gives way to a stunning lush forested gorge, lined with stunning rock formations. Paddy takes a dip in the creek, and gets a bunch of leeches in his underwear. He's trying to tell us that its lovely in. It's a beautiful location, but no one else is going in.

After going for a walk in the gorge, we drive on to Sedona, and another series of beautiful rock formations, which glow red and sandy gold at sunset. It's like seeing a Grand Canyon wall up close, with its stratifications, topped with Road Runner show style rock mountain formations.

At the The Hideaway Restaurant - CLOSED - in Sedona: This place is hidden away, but worth the search. It's some very good quality Italian, and the service is prompt and attentive.

The waitress is stoked to know that Paddy thinks she has good hand writing. Feck that guy is weird, but whatever he says to women seems to work. They're even exchanging email addresses. I can't see him coming all the way back to Sedona, but you never know! I think he's spiritually attracted to the rock formations.

We're going to have to make some decisions if we're going to make it to Mexico anytime soon.

There are plenty of Adopt a Highway signs, with a cactus giving us the finger up. Finally on the approach to Phoenix, we get to see the famous Arizona jungle-gym cactuses. 17st 16 east blah, the road signs are as confusing here as ever, but luckily you can see the skyscrapers, so you can roughly pick an exit.

Phoenix is another surprise after driving through the desert, a handsome, clean city.

Montezuma Castle National Monument - Camp Verde, AZ 86322. Another amazing ancient dwelling proclaimed in 1906 as "of the greatest ethnological and scientific interest."

A five storey, 20 room dwelling built into the side of a cliff. They used ladders to enter it. A second multi-storey castle allowed for about 200 people to live here.

If passing through, be sure to see it, it's quite a sight.

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Update: 1 Feb 07, it's so good, I've seen it twice now.

This state is full of surprises, from the grand canyon, a 1000 year old stone structure and a nuclear missile museum with a real nuclear missile (the warhead has been disarmed). 

We paper-scissor-rocked the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, AZ against the Titan missile museum, and I won. But it was on the way, so we popped late for a look. It shuts at 4, we got there about 6.

It's impressive from the outside, but meeting some locals; they tell us that the project failed after the scientists were caught smuggling in food. Don't know if it's true, but they said it's up for sale now.

Sounds like we made the right choice!

Arizona keeps surprising as we enter beautiful skyscrapered Tucson at sunset, and cruise around the colourful homes, obviously originally Mexican.

If you stay in Tucson, you have to stay here. As they say, its more than a hotel, it's delivering an experience. Gorgeous old building, with beautiful exposed beams. Rooms have iron framed beds and en-suites.

Monday night is cheap drinks night, and uni students converge here from out of the desert. Paddy talks to several girls, but goes to his room solo. Riet says she's now a convert to the US and plans to come back.

We went to some fry up place nearby in the same street for tea; it was okay.

One of the most interesting and unusual museums you'll see is the Titan Missile Museum. This is a hangover from the cold war.

The Titan II is the largest production missile produced by the US. At 9 megatons, it would take a train 1500 miles long with every carriage packed with TNT to equal its power. The Hiroshiima/Nagasaki bombs had a flash point of 1/10th of a mile, and killed around 100,000 people, while the Titan II would have a flash zone of 3 miles, thus devastating any city it would have landed on.

You get to see its rocket engines separately up close, the nose cone - bomb itself (pretty big!), then a top view of the missile - huge. They took us through all the safety measures - two people sat there 24 hours ready to insert their keys and turn, all based on a phone call from one human - the president.

Once that person elected to initiate the destruction of mankind, the two people needed to enter a code to unlock the fuel valve, each get their keys from the filing cabinet (not a safe!), then at the same time insert and turn their keys for three seconds. Once this was done, there's nothing left to do but pray, as the missile could not be stopped from this point.

All this is carried out in the original control room, and the bells and alarms go off, as they would in the event of a launch. Why is punched paper still used to program the computer? Because paper is not affected by intense electromagnetic radiation in the event of a nuclear strike on the site.

The guides are full of facts and information, and the hour long tour is very interesting. The site is very well preserved, so you can see the missile, fueling suits, control room etc just as they used to be.

Tours leave on the hour.

There's not much here! After burning rubber from the Titan II museum, we get here on time to drop the car off. It's a tiny office, and no-one's here for the next 2 hours because it's lunchtime. So we use the car to drive through town.

I ask Chap to get out and ask where we catch the bus south from. He jumps in and says "Righto we're f****d", and explains there are none. We have to walk across then catch one from the other side.

We set about unpacking the car, trying to stuff everything into our bags, ready to lug them over the border! We set off down the street in the oppressive heat, lugging heavy packs. Riet looks like she's about to expire. Oh lordy, where's the border around here, and what do we do when we get there??

After waiting in a shady park and failing to get a cab on the street, we spot the Best Western, get a phone number and dial in some help. Acosta's is there within ten minutes.

The driver speaks Spanish, so it's time to start practising! Paddy's dropped out of the race at this point, so first stop is the Greyhound station. Next stop the border. The driver explains it's the same place. He points out the crossing, and it's one of the more surreal sights of the trip. Cars are stopped at the gates, and on the side, foot traffic like us can go through. In 100 metres, we're going to be totally Yelpless.

It's a mixed feeling of doom and excitement. We've heard a lot about border towns, and are not keen to hang around in one.

It's at this point with one week remaining, and, according to the taxi driver, 36 hours of bus to Mexico city, that I realise I should have done some more homework on this trip. We've got zero idea how to get to the bus, zero idea on what's required to cross the border, and zero idea to get to any hotel should we decide its too hard, and to stay for the night.

Why does Google maps and Yelp stop at the US border?? Yelp, tear down this wall !!

Photo right: the Titan Missile Museum.

So its a short bizarre walk over the border into the culture shock of a Mexican border town - Nogales, Sonora.