We saw Kill Bill, and as it’s now open in the UK I can spoil the plot – she kill’s Bill. There you go…
Arapahoe Basin had 2 or 3 inches of new snow so was in pretty good condition by and large. I was on a death mission and was practising launching myself off a 5ft cornice onto rather icy snow which was great fun.. Other than that it’s been a fairly quiet weekend spent just hanging about with Iain and Wendy, including an Indian restaurant last night which was a strategic mistake on Iain’s part considering we’re staying in his house. You learn by your mistakes, as they say.
As promised it’s photo time! This was the “Double O” arch at Arches National Park.
and another shot of it through the middle.
You’re not allowed to walk on them but what the hell. This is a stark contrast between the 80 degree heat there and the mountains beyond.
At Capitol Reef there is a 1,000ft drop just beside my left foot. The weather was so good we wished we’d hiked up with the tent and camped there, but never mind.
We seen surprisingly little wildlife on the whole trip really, but we did see some at Tahoe.
The locals were surprisingly friendly as well.
A neat feature of Tahoe is the ability to ski across the stateline, on the Nevada side are where all the big casinos are at. Our motel was actually about 50 yards on the California side so was all very handy…
Here were the Essex guys and girls, Michelle, Justine and Steve.
Next, in Yosemite were the Vernal Falls, the guy standing at the top gives you some idea of the scale.
Onto some city life and the usual San Franciso sights, the Golden Gate of course.
Steve had had enough of me at one stage! (see sign above phone)
This is Alcatraz from a boat (fairly obviously).
Here is one of the cells where Frank Morris and those guys escaped from a la Clint Eastwood film, supposedly preserved as it was left at the time.
And finally one of the famous cable cars that run up and down the steep hills. We did catch one of these for the purposes of meeting Ray and Beata at a boozer, so we actually felt a bit less like tourists by catching one for a real transport reason!
On the way up the coast we stopped off at the giant Redwoods, these things grow in excess of 300 feet tall.
Next in Oregon this is Crater Lake, on top of an extinct volcano and still under at least 6 feet of snow when we were there.
In Washington state we did our backcountry camping trip, here is dinner cooking in the campfire, note the two steaks on the hot rocks in front with two super-heated baked potatoes behind somewhere.
During the night you have to hang your packs to keep them safe from the hungry bears who would have loved to tuck into our steaks, followed by us for dessert.
These next shots are from Yellowstone, this is some of the small amount of wildlife we’ve seen the whole trip, a bison and a deer thingy.
We did see thousands of these mind you, but no bears sadly. Further south in the park, the Beehive geyser, it only blows once a day and we got there just before it did. Once again the people give a sense of scale, it blows 180 ft into the air.
Then Old Faithful went shortly afterwards. We were so lucky here, in addition to getting the timing of the geysers right, they’d only opened the road after it’s winter closure to this area the day before we were there!
Right, that’s quite enough of that for now. We’re busy packing up before a final night on the razz with Joe and Iain, then in the morning we leave for New Mexico.