All good things must come to an end

Vegas really has everything, whether it's Jack Sparrow casually checking his phone, or two playboy bunnies taking money for photos, you can see it at Vegas. But both are far from the best thing you could see if you came to town, the best thing you could see is Cirque Du Soleil's "Love". The show is done to the music of The Beatles, and if that didn't convince you, I can easily say that it is the best thing i've seen in the whole holiday, and i've seen a lot in this trip.

We're staying in the venetian hotel, and we're definitely in the nicest room we've had for the whole holiday, it's large and comfortable, and doesn't smell like smoke like all the other parts of the hotel. The most interesting part of the venetian is the shopping area, where there is an actual canal in the middle, where you can go on gondola rides, and the roof is made to look like the sky, as if you were actually walking through venice. It looks great as you walk along the canal, looking at the shops, and it's a sudden change as you go into any restaurants or clubs, they are all dark with lit up walls and music, much different to the atmosphere outside.

It occurs to me that this is likely the last post that i'll be able to make, seeing this is the last place we are staying, and the last place where I know I will have access to the internet. Although I am quite sad to see such an excellent trip come to an end, I am also glad to be finally coming home, I have been missing my friends, and my family and would love to see them again. This is probably also the last holiday I will go on with my parents, seeing I will be going to Europe with school next year, and then schoolies after that, and once I leave school I won't be going on holidays with them any more, and it really was an enjoyable final trip to go on with them.

Not many people can say they have done what we have this trip, when we reach Los Angeles, we'll have driven over 5000 miles from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast. We've gone from the tropics of the Florida keys, to the swamps of the everglades, to the deserts of Texas and the high mountain forests of Arizona, the scenery and the kinds of people we see have changed again and again as we've gone along, and it really has been a spectacular trip which I will remember for many, many years.

We've still got more to see though, tomorrow we'll be going to the Pawn Shop seen in the TV Show "Pawn Stars" (which if you have not seen it, you should have), and Santa Monica in Los Angeles before we get to the Airport for our flight home, I can't wait to see everyone again and tell them all about this long, fantastic holiday.

Flagstaff Arizona

Today we left Tuscon and began our drive to Flagstaff, a city quite high in the mountains of Arizona, just outside the University of Northern Arizona. Our first stop on the way there was Montezuma Castle, a "town" built in the side of a cliffside by Native Americans back in the Medieval ages, and where the Native Americans lived for a very long time. It was an interesting site, as the buildings were basically modern apartments, but built so long ago and into a cliff.

We also saw the Red Rocks of Arizona as we went toward Flagstaff, the area where these are common has an odd history, again and again it has gone from an area of desert to sea, and then back again, the huge mountains are red sandstone at the base and as they go toward the tip they become limestone, and then even basalt. The site is spectacular and some of the mountains really are beautiful. 

It's a rather large change in Flagstaff, we've gone again from massive deserts to tall forests, and the temperature has been quite low here, which is the exact opposite to the thousand degree heat which we've been getting often on this holiday. Tomorrow we'll be going to Las Vegas, where we'll have the last night of the holiday, drat.

Tuscon

This morning I got to sleep in again, something which I am very happy about on this holiday, considering it has been so rare. I was able to get a good sleep without any distractions in the morning because I am in a separate room to mum and dad, so when they go down to breakfast in the morning, I can remain asleep without being disturbed.

After I eventually did get up and had the breakfast mum and dad brought up to the room for me, we left the hotel and went to the Pima air and space museum nearby, where they have the SR-71 stealth plane, which was used first during the cold war, and went to altitudes so high, that the pilots actually had to wear a space suit.

We looked around the museum at many of the planes they had there, such as the C-130 Hercules and the Air Force One jet used by Kennedy and Johnson. But there weren't just planes, but also helicopters such as the Huey and the UH-60 Black hawk. They had an indoor area known as the "Space gallery" with a few simulators to try and displays.

The highlight of the museum though was the boneyard tour, we got on a bu and were taken to the nearby Air Force base, and then began to drive through the massive storage area for all kinds of planes used by the U.S Air Force, we were told that the boneyard had 4000 planes, and seeing the size of it, that wasn't hard to believe.

After we left the museum we went to the nearby Titan 2 Missile Silo. The Titan 2 is a nuclear missile, and the most powerful one ever deployed by the United States, it could wipe out an entire city. We looked around the facility on a tour, and even got to simulate a launch, I was made the commander and had to launch the missile, though I didn't actually launch one (Next time).

We then went to the Saguaro National Park, which is filled with Saguaro Cacti, these are the cacti which are shaped in the cliche positions, going straight up with slightly curved branches. They have a very long life-span and can grow to up to 50 feet tall, as well as living for over 100 years. We drove around their 5 mile scenic route and took a few photos before heading back to the hotel. It was a long day, but a very enjoyable one.

Into Arizona

So we left Alamogordo this morning and first drove to the nearby White Sands national monument, and missile range. White Sands is a large area of sand dunes which aren't really Sand, but something called Gypsum, which crumbles to make what is basically white sand. We looked around the monument and were surprised to find three large hot air balloons, we waited for a while but unfortunately they didn't take off, and we left the park after exploring for a little bit.

We then started to drive toward the town of Tombstone, of course getting stopped twice by Border Patrol, and even once by a police officer, because dad had been speeding a bit, not deliberately i'm sure (I hope). But everything was fine and all the people who stopped us were very friendly, and quite interested to meet people from Australia!

When we arrived in Tombstone, we looked around the town a little bit, at the old Western buildings and stores before we went to see the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", a recreation of a very famous gunfight that happened in the town of Tombstone between three lawmen and Doc Holiday, and a group of four cowboys, it was very loud, but also very entertaining. And after seeing that we went onto Tuscon, we have two nights here and we'll be looking around tomorrow, it should be fun!

More of New Mexico

We started this morning after leaving the hotel by going to Carlsbad Caverns, a massive cavern system of limestone which has been preserved as a national park. The caverns are absolutely massive with huge formations of limestone, some looking very interesting. The main part of the park where you walk around inside the caves is about six-hundred and fifty feet under ground, and you can enter it by an elevator or by hiking down the natural cave entrance, we took the elevator like all good lazy people.

After we left Carlsbad, we started to drive to Alamogordo - where we are staying tonight - and we stopped on the way at Roswell, a town famous for a UFO crash which happened there. Everything in Roswell is alien or UFO themed, and even the street lights are decorated to look like the heads of Aliens. While we were there we went to the "International UFO museum" (Yes, it exists) and began looking around there.

After leaving Roswell and going back on the road to Alamogordo, we went through the Lincoln National Forest, and stopped to hike around for a bit, the scenery was quite an interesting change, to have gone from fast deserts to huge forests, high in the mountains was an interesting change. It was a bit cool, unlike down in the city where it was fairly warm, and it was good to actually see some fall foliage. We're going into Arizona tomorrow, and we'll be staying in Tuscon for two nights, it's hard to believe we only have 4 nights left after this one (and fairly uspetting).

Suddenly New Mexico

And suddenly we're in a new state! I missed out on making a post yesterday, we didn't have internet access where we were staying, well, we did, I just didn't really want to walk up to the restaurant with my laptop at night to sit and make a post, then walk back to our room. Nothing much happened yesterday anyway, what we had planned to see in Big Bend was blocked off due to the heavy rain which we had the night before.

Today we had a look around Big Bend at the things we could, and even saw over the border into Mexico at a few places, hard to believe that America and Mexico are separated by just a small river. After we left Big Bend we didn't really stop as we drove to Carlsbad, we had planned to go to Fort Davis, but that was also closed, we've had great luck for the past 2 days, as you can tell.

Tomorrow we'll be going into the caverns here at Carlsbad and going further into New Mexico, we won't be going to Albuquerque unfortunately, at least not unless we make a wrong turn somewhere.

San Antonio

After a long drive today we arrived in San Antonio, the site of a famous American landmark, the Alamo, where Davy Crockett and about 100 Americans fought and died defending a fort called the Alamo from close to 5000 Mexican soldiers. it was interesting to see such a well-preserved building in the middle of the city and was quite interesting. We also saw quite a few US Air Force members walking around in their dress uniforms, clearly there had been a parade or something on nearby, I saw about 25 different Air Force members just walking around, which was a little bit of a surprise.

We also saw the River walk, through San Antonio is a rather large river which they had planned to divert through tunnels, but instead made a pathway along either side with restaurants, shops and even a theater, it is quite beautiful and was much cooler than the hot streets at around lunch time. We'll be heading on to Big Bend national park tomorrow, and will be spending the night quite far away from civilization, hopefully i'll get some good pictures there!

Go for launch

I didn't update the blog yesterday, and it's not just because I forgot (which I did, but that's another matter). Yesterday we did nothing but drive really, we didn't stop to get out and look at anything on the way to Houston from New Orleans, so there was nothing particularly interesting to talk about in my blog yesterday. Today however, we went to NASA, and had quite an enjoyable day there.

When we arrived we first decided to go on the tram tour, which took us first to the building and the room where the original mission control was, of the apollo missions all the way to some of the space shuttle missions, which only ended recently. We then went to the Astronaut training facility, to see many of the training modules and mock-ups used by Astronauts to simulate life and work in space, and on board the International Space Station (ISS), we next went to a massive hanger where one of the Saturn V rockets was housed, these rockets were used on the Apollo missions, from Apollo 11 all the way to the final moon landing, Apollo 17.

When we got back to the main area we looked around the museum with many artifacts and even some moon rock samples from different missions, and watched a short film about all of the missions NASA has undertaken, such as Skylab and the most recent Endeavor missions. It certainly was an entertaining and interesting day today, and I look forward to going on to San Antonio tomorrow!

More N'awlins

Finally was able to get a good sleep in this morning, much later than I have been able to on any other day of this holiday, until about ten in the morning, a few hours earlier than i'd have liked, but still, it's better than nothing. This morning, we went down to Cafe Du Monde to have Hickory-Smoked Coffee and beignet, which are french doughnuts. The coffee was fairly normal, but the beignet were delicious, and it was certainly a very enjoyable breakfast. 

We had a look around the areas we were staying in, going down to Bourbon street first. Remember how I said Duval Street was the Vegas strip of the Keys? Well, Bourbon street is the Vegas strip of Louisiana, it wasn't the most appealing place in New Orleans. After that we went to the museum which had exhibits about Hurrican Katrina, and Mardi Gras, which were fairly interesting. Later we went to the French Markets and had lunch, which for me was Alligator on a Stick, which was delicious. We're heading into Texas tomorrow, to Houston, hopefully we won't have any problems!

New Orleans

We entered Louisiana today, and I have now been to 25 of the 50 United States of America, i'm half-way there! When we got to New Orleans, we went straight to the National WWII Museum, and began looking at the exhibits. The exhibits were much like those at the Australian War Memorial, and many things that I had already known, but the most interesting part was a film shown every hour called "Beyond All Boundaries" Produced and Narrated by Tom Hanks. It was fascinating and I actually learned quite a few things I had not known about the war.

The film only focused on the Americans in the war, due to it being part of the National WWII Museum, and talked about things like Pearl Harbour, the Normandy Landings, their battles in the Pacific and the planned invasion of main-land Japan, which would have been the largest military operation in Human History. Hearing about the Americans plans in the invasion, it was clear that without the atomic bombings of Japan, the Japanese may have been completely wiped out.

We have two nights here in New Orleans, and tomorrow we will be looking around the city at all of its sites, looking forward to it!

Mississippi

We drove back into Mississippi today and followed the river down to the city of Natchez, stopping a couple of times on the way. We've been following Highway 61, also known as "The Blues Highway" and have stopped in a few famous blues towns, it's easy to tell you're on the Blues Highway with street names like "John Lee Hooker Ln." It was easy to tell we were in mississippi due to the fast cotton plantations which we could see on the sides of the road, some of them going on for what seemed like miles.

After a while, we came to the city of Vicksburg, where one of the biggest battles of the Civil War took place, one which altered the course of the war completely. Abraham Lincoln once famously said "Vicksburg is the key, and we can not win unless we have the key in our pocket". Vicksburg was a city contolled by the Confederates, and was their last point on the Mississippi river that they could transfer supplies across to their other states, if the Union took it, they would cut off the Confederacy.

Ulysses S. Grant had been assaulting Vicksburg numerous times, and always failed, but only once had he been told by Abraham Lincoln himself that he needed to take Vicksburg, he devised cunning plans to distract the soldiers in Vicksburg so his own men could sneak around and begin to attack from the rear, it succeeded, but the attacks that the Union made during the siege of Vicksburg often failed, as they were repeatedly pushed back by the Confederate defenders. Eventually, the Confederate army had no choice but to surrender, as they were running low on supplies, and disease was spreading through their ranks.

Tonight we are actually staying on an old cotton plantation which has been renovated as an inn. We are staying in one of the rooms which used to be the slave quarters, it's much nicer now than it probably was back then. We're heading on to New Orleans tomorrow and we'll be back on the Blues Highway!

Memphis

Finally was able to sleep in a bit this morning, instead of getting up at 7 like I have everywhere else, which made me much less grumpy this morning than usual. After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and went to Graceland, the mansion where Elvis Presley lived, died and is buried along with other family members. There, we were able to walk around the mansion, but not the area upstairs, we could see his car collection and his two custom planes, the Lisa Marie (named after his daughter) and the "Hound Dog II"

After leaving Graceland we went to the the Civil Rights museum. The museum was previously the Lerane Hotel, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, and the building he was shot from has also been converted, however the place where King was shot, and the room he was shot from have been preserved as they were. It was a rather odd feeling, to have now seen where he stood during one of his most famous speeches, and now to have seen where he died.

After the museum, we came to our new hotel, the Peabody Hotel. The hotel is rather famous due to the fact that it has a group of five ducks who live on the roof of the hotel, and march into an elevator at 11 AM every morning to go down to the lobby and march into the fountain there, where they stay until 5 PM, when they march right back into the elevator and up to the roof, it's a very interesting sight. Tonight we ate dinner at B.B. King's Blues Club and were treated to some very good live blues music as we ate, it was a good start to the blues part of the trip, which will be continuing very heavily until we get to New Orleans.

Atlanta to Memphis

It was a long drive today! After leaving Atlanta, we started on the road all the way to Memphis, Tennessee, going through the states of Alabama and Mississippi on the way. While on our way through Alabama, we went to the city of Birmingham, and a place called "Vulcan Park" where a huge statue of the Roman god of Fire and Forge, Vulcan looks over the city, due to the heavy mining that used to go on in and around Birmingham.

We didn't really have many stops after Vulcan, but there was a lot of beautiful forest and scenery during the drive, even though I ended up falling asleep for almost two hours in the car! (Those SUV seats are just too comfortable!) We have two nights in Memphis, and we will be seeing the sights tomorrow, starting with Gracelands, where Elvis Presley was born, looking forward to it!

Stone Mountain and Atlanta

Leaving Savannah today, we began to drive up to Atlanta, stopping at Stone Mountain on the way. Stone Mountain is sort of like a smaller, grey Ayers Rock, except in the mountain is a large "Sculpture" carved by the same man who carved Mt. Rushmore. The carving shows three confederate generals, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson.

After arriving in Atlanta we checked in to our hotel and went to the "World of Coca-Cola", Coke was originally made in Atlanta by a pharmacist and there is now a lot more products than I thought there ever was. There are over 60 products of Coca-Cola world wide, and we could taste every single one. Needless to say, I had a bit of a sore stomach afterwards, we even got a free bottle of "Original" Coke. Starting on our drive to Memphis, Tennessee tomorrow, but we will have to go through Alabama and Mississippi, so we may not make it all the way there yet.

Leaving Florida and Savannah

Well today we left Florida, and I can now add a new state to the list of ones I have visited, Georgia! We drove for a long while through Georgia and have now reached Savannah, which is actually where the park in "Forrest Gump" is, that part of the movie was not filmed in Alabama. The park bench that Forrest sits on is not even a real park bench, nor is there one where the park actually is, however there is a replica in the visitors center.

On our way out of Florida, we stopped in the town of St. Augustine, the oldest town in the entire United States of America, originally settled by the Spanish. We visited the Fort there which was still fairly well preserved, and had a short look around the old part of the town, before heading on out of Florida and into Georgia. We're going on to Atlanta tomorrow, where we'll go to "The world of Coca-Cola", which should be very fun, and give me quite a sore stomach.

Disney World

Well we arrived at Disney World yesterday and were almost immediately told we were the "Family of the Day", as this part of the trip is also celebrating mum and dad's 30th anniversary. We relaxed at the resort we are staying in - the Beach Club Resort - for a few hours before going to the Magic Kingdom for "Mickey's not-so-scary Halloween party", where we watched fireworks, trick-or-treated, and of course, went on rides.

Today we got up early to make it to Hollywood studios in time for opening, and we rode "Toy Story Mania" right away, after getting a fastpass to do it again later. After we rode it once, mum and dad went to ride on the "Rock-n-roller coaster" while I went and did "Star Tours", the best ride in all of Hollywood Studios as you can probably tell. After that we all did Star Tours again together and then went back to do Toy Story once more.

We came back to the resort after a while to relax, go to the arcade and swim. The pool is supposed to be the best of all the Disney World Resorts, and it is not surprising, there's quite a large water slide and the pool itself is massive, with hot tubs and a small area called the "lazy river" where you can just drift along in the soft current. I was just about to go on the water slide when a very loud thunder crack went off, and the pool was closed, they don't run any risks here. Anyway, we're going to Epcot in a few hours and we'll be there for dinner, as well as quite a few more rides!

The Everglades and The Road to Orlando

Well, last night was a shock, at about 4 AM we were all woken up by the loudest thunderstorm I have ever heard, it sounded like it was right outside the window, it may have been, because we could actually hear the electricity zapping and sparking. At home the storms are so far away that you'd get thunder every minute or so, here it was every thirty seconds, and it kept us up for about an hour until I at least fell asleep again.

This morning the rain had gone though, and we only had one more thing to see in Key West, the furthest southern point in the USA! Well, Continental USA, seeing the furthest southern point of the United States is actually in Hawaii. After seeing this and taking a few photos, we were back on the road and went up to the Everglades National Park, which - if you didn't already know - is a very big swamp. We saw a few animals while we were there, lizards, vultures, fish and turtles, but no alligators unfortunately, they seemed to be a bit shy.

We're staying in Fort Myers today, and it'll be back on the road to Orlando tomorrow, except we won't be going straight there, we're going via St Petersburg (not the Russian one), but we should still get there before it is too late, and we will be able to check in to the Disney World Resort where we are staying for 2 nights.

Florida Keys

So the road trip started today, we left Fort Lauterdale at around nine in the morning, and drove down through Miami, we didn't have time to stop in Miami but we got a few photos of the city before it started to rain as if a hurricane had just hit us. The car is very comfortable and the aircon was so cool that it made it very surprising to get out of the car and feel the heat suddenly, it got up to around 30 degrees today, but everywhere had air conditioning, which made it easier.

Driving through the keys, it seemed not very densely populated, and for the most part it wasn't, at least until we got to Key west. It's certainly the vegas of the tropics here, and with all the bikers around it makes it even more so. There was recently a "Harley Davidson Poker Run" which went from Miami down to Key West, which was a long drive where bikers would stop and get poker cards along the way, and the winner would be whoever had the best poker hand at the end of the run. Most of the bikers had left, seeing the poker run finished yesterday, but there were still quite a few around, and the place was fairly popular and busy.

There wasn't a huge amount to see here in Key west, and msot of it had to do with the writer Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Key west during the 1930's, we saw his old house, and the bar where he used to drink. (fun stuff :P) During the day we didn't really see anything else, but tonight we got to see a beautiful sunset, and quite an entertaining show done by "Mark" who rode on his suicycle (a very tall unicycle) and told quite funny jokes, which are unfortunately too rude for me to say. Hoping for good weather for the coming days, and looking forward to another good drive tomorrow.

Done with Flights!

Well, we had our second, and last flight (except for the one home) today, and it was fairly pleasant. We flew with Virgin America and the plane had in-flight entertainment, despite being a domestic flight, but there wasn't really anything good that was free, we had to pay for movies this time, but Arrested Development was on the TV, so that was pretty good. Arriving in Fort Lauterdale today, the first thing I noticed was how humid it was, in L.A. It had been fairly hot, but it was dry there, it is much the opposite in Florida, and we even had a little bit of rain earlier.

Our car which we have for the trip (and which i will refer to as "The Thing") is a Mazda CX7, a SUV - as it should be in the United States, and it is certainly comfortable enough, and big enough to take us back to California without any real problems (minus any possible hurricanes). There hasn't really been much which we've seen yet, except there was quite a funny billboard on the way to our hotel here advertising Aircon repairs with the words "Your wife is hot." which almost made me lose it in the car, hopefully i'll have more to talk about tomorrow, when the actual road trip starts.

Almost away!

We're through customs and security at Sydney International Airport, now we are just waiting for our flight to be ready, and our flight isn't the one we planned on taking! Our original flight to Auckland which took off at 3:30 has been delayed to 5:00 and would mean we missed our flight to LA, luckily we have been put on a Qantas flight to Auckland and we will be leaving at 3:15 instead, looking forward to arriving in LA, not so much looking forward to 17 hours trapped on a plane though.

Let's get started.

On friday, September 14th, 2012, I will be leaving with my parents for the United States for a three-week holiday. We are flying with Air New Zealand from Sydney to Auckland, and then on to Los Angeles. (the in-flight entertainment looks pretty good) After a night in LA, we have another flight to Orlando, Florida, where our real trip begins. From Florida, we will be driving all the way across the south of the United States, going through places like Alabama, New Orleans, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, all the way back to LA in California.

At the moment, I don't know a huge amount of the places we will be going exactly, and what we will be seeing, I know at least that we will be going to Disney World (fun!), the birth-place of Elvis Presley, the National World War II museum of the US, and many other very cool, interesting places. I'll be uploading the photographs that I take on here, along with posts like these explaining how things are going, and what we've been seeing. One thing that's certain, is that I may have actually put on weight when I get back!