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USA
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Chapter Nine USA |
The next two overseas holidays that I went on were without Kristian, and without Eileen. They were school excursions with Ryan. I remember my high school excursion. We went by bus from Dalby to Point Cartwright and counted sea urchins and cucumbers on the rocks. Ryan went to America and Japan. I went with him as an interested parent.
"We're going to Disneyland. We're going to Disneyland". Ryan and I rubbed it in to Eileen and Kristian, as they both could not escape work commitments.
This trip was not part of any exchange program. This was just a holiday organised through Maroochydore High School. I was not the only adult. There was Jo, a teacher from the school, several pupils, some mothers, and a few others to make up the numbers. The main thing we were told to take was our Aussie accents. Apparently, Americans loved them.
There were 15 of us who landed in Lax, and were shuttled to the Hacienda Hotel nearby. I have stayed at the Hacienda several times since. It is conveniently close to the airport, the shuttle is free, you can book and sleep for a few hours if you have a flight later the same day, and it's fairly central to most things in L.A. you would want to go to. Don't bother trying to get about using public transport. It's almost non-existent. This dates back to when a group of politicians with interests in automobile and tyre manufacturing decided to rip up the 'non-profitable' tram system. Taxis are fine, and the drivers seem to like tourists, Aussies anyway.
World Cup soccer/football was happening in the USA, and in Los Angeles, Romania was playing Columbia. Many Columbian supporters were staying at the Hacienda wearing their yellow team colours and matching hair and face-paint.
This was all a planned tour for us, so there was little detouring from our agenda. We were taken for a tour of the movie stars homes, and a visit to Mann's Chinese Theatre where Wyatt Earp was being premiered. We got to see the footpath with the movie star's stars, and the foot and handprints of some that were set in the concrete entrance to the theatre. We drove along Rodeo Drive (Did not stop. Did not pay $2,000 for anything.) and visited Olvera Street in El Pueblo Historic Park, where Los Angeles was first settled.
Then our road trip started. Lou was our driver and tour guide from Trek America. In a Dodge van we headed north from LA. Our next major stop was to be San Francisco. We followed the coast to the cliffs and beaches of Big Sur where the 'trek' part of our holiday started. By this I mean we spent the night in tents. This was North American summer, but the sea breezes that blew along the beach were coming from Alaska. It did not seem to bother the otters that swam in the surf, but the cold kept all of the humans out of the water.
San Francisco has a charm that is unique. Gold was found here in 1848, and the rush that followed transformed what was until then just a fishing village. For the 150 years since, it has attracted fortune seekers, immigrants, artists, poets, and tourists. The city by the bay is famous for its Golden Gate Bridge, diverse citizenry, Victorian architecture, cable cars, scenic views, and fog. The fog was so thick that for the two days we were there I never saw the entire bridge. Even from the northern end where there is a dedicated photo taking spot, we couldn't see the northern end towers.
Often billed as the 'crookedest street in the world', Lombard Street is neither the crookedest, nor the steepest street in the city, but it is the most famous, and the most visited. 'Little' Lombard Street, which is a one block section of it, has eight switchback bends, and is on a forty degree slope, and people actually live there and use it like any other street, except you cannot park out front. Locals told us that once a tourist coach attempted to drive down it but got stuck. The only way to get it out was to cut it up with an oxy torch.
We did get to visit Alcatraz. The fog was not too bad, but it is still a very foreboding place, as most prisons are, especially in cold climates. I believe the story still holds that the only person to escape from Alcatraz was Clint Eastwood.
We also went to our first Hard Rock Cafe. The first Hard Rock Cafe was in London. Eric Clapton liked to eat at this quirky American diner. He even wanted a table reserved for him with a plaque or something. One of the proprietors suggested his guitar. Eric obliged, and the proprietors hung it on the wall. A week later another guitar arrived. With it was a note from Pete Townshend of The Who, 'Mine's as good as his. Love, Pete.' So the tradition began.
American food is weird. I ordered a sandwich. I actually found it amongst the fruit platter that was served to me. In the 70s, some of the Telecom Australia linesmen I worked with had to do a job at the house of a retired NASA scientist. He served them corned beef and ice-cream sandwiches for morning tea.
Ryan was 16 years old at this time and had been picking out songs on my old acoustic guitar back home. He wanted an electric guitar and amplifier. He had been hoping to buy a Gibson guitar, but the prices were prohibitive. We had gone to the famous Haight Ashbury district, but it was nothing like what I imagined it to be. I guess the 60s are over. Ryan had some savings, and I had offered to help, and he eventually found a guitar that he liked, at an affordable price, downtown. To see if we were fooling ourselves with finance, I rang Eileen, gave her the model number, and she made some enquiries in Australia. When I rang her back, it was worth it to buy in San Francisco. We walked back to our hotel as the shops were closing for the evening, Ryan carrying his new guitar, and me carrying an amplifier. We were a little nervous as we scuttled past the drug dealers already starting to ply their trade on the street corners.
Of course Ryan wanted to show off to the others, especially the three girls his age that were on the trip, so he disappeared soon after we got back to our room. I was still awake when Letterman was on TV, and he still wasn't in. I was a little worried as I remembered the strange people I had noticed on the streets earlier. Then I opened the window and I could hear a guitar somewhere within earshot. I figured that whoever's room he was in, the occupants must have been very polite and patient.
From San Francisco we headed east to Yosemite National Park. We set up our tents again near the village in the valley, and put on our hiking boots. We did all the usual things that tourists on a time budget do. We looked at El Capitan, Bridalveil Falls and Half Dome because you can't miss them, and hiked along the aptly named Mist Trail to Vernal Falls. By then my knees were playing up so Ryan took my video camera and hiked all the way to Nevada Falls. The scenery in Yosemite is magnificent. I am not going to try to describe it here. Go there!
Across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at Tioga Pass, Lou had to pay a toll, and the rest of us hopped out of the bus for a snow fight. There was still snow in June on the mountain peaks in the distance, and one giant puddle right beside the stop. It took a lot of convincing that it hadn't been trucked there.
Heading east across the Nevada desert we stopped at Little A'Le'Inn. This roadside bar is located at the gateway to the mysterious Area 51, and holds annual UFO conferences. The town/village of Rachel has 98 human inhabitants if you go by the sign, and Little A'Le'Inn is the big tourist drawcard. It's fairly small itself with lots of alien trinkets for sale, but it's full of rumours and lots and lots of conspiracy theories. There are maps of the area to buy, and satellite images of the base (supposedly taken by a Russian spy satellite). Apart from Little A'Le'Inn, Rachel consists of a gas station, several houses, a couple of satellite dishes to receive TV (what else), and dozens of scattered mobile homes.
Alien spacecraft have been sited above the flat desert and the surrounding hills, and people from all over the world travel here to camp and wait and watch. Lou told us that the US Air Force base near Las Vegas uses much of this area to test aeroplanes like the Stealth Bomber, etc.
Our next stop was Cedar City, Utah. It was tent time again. There were only two groups using the town campsite. Us, and about 100 bikers. Aussies are a pretty friendly bunch, and knowing the universal language of bikers (beer), I grabbed a six-pack and wandered into the middle of them and started talking in my best Aussie accent.
Zion and Bryce Canyon are the national parks just a bit further east. Red Canyon is a Bryce look-alike about 15 minutes from Bryce itself. Bryce Canyon is arguably the most spectacular. It is famous for its geology, consisting of a series of horseshoe shaped amphitheatres. Erosion has shaped the bright red coloured limestone rock into bizarre shapes. The locals call the spectacular spires 'hoodoos'. There are a few miles of walking trails, and even the worst photographer can take excellent contrast shots of the red 'hoodoos' against the blue desert sky.
I am a little hazy about where we actually boarded our speedboats to explore Lake Powell, as there are several marinas along its shores. Lake Powell is what happened when they backed up the Colorado River with Glen Canyon Dam, near the new town of Page, Arizona. The lake extends some two hundred miles back up into Utah. Lou abandoned us there.
Well, not really. As a senior tour guide with Trek America, he had been asked by the company to sort out a problem with another tour whose vehicle was about five hours away. Lou was allowed by Trek America to give us some extras while he went off to resolve the problem.
We went exploring with half of our group in each speedboat. We went up blind canyons, saw where they filmed the movie 'Maverick' and went water skiing. I had not skied for twenty years.
When we lived in Miles, we often went skiing on a lagoon that was part of the Condamine River near the town of Condamine. At some stage, one of the farmers who skied realized that on his property was a suitable area sloping down to a creek, that if he walled up the creek, he would have a fair sized dam. Out came the trusty bulldozer and we had nice ski area that was bigger than the old lagoon. There was one bit of drama when it first filled. The water rose to within a foot of the single power line running on poles through the property. Rob had to ring his neighbours downstream and tell them to clear anything valuable near the creek banks, as he had to blast the top of his new dam to let some water out.
I had gotten proficient on one ski, even from a jump-start, but had not been able to ever barefoot. Here at Lake Powell, I didn't think I would have a hope of doing a jump-start on one ski after so long, and because of the number of boats and skiers on the lake, no-one was permitted to start on two skis and then drop one. However I surprised myself more than anyone by standing up on two skis straight away. I did some fairly low, safe, wash jumps, but after a while my knees started to tell me that they had had enough, so I sliced my fingers across my neck to the watcher in the boat, let go of the handle, and gracefully settled into the water. Because I had gone first, and not made a fool of myself, I could now sit in the boat while the others, most of whom had never skied before, had there turns, and give knowledgeable, experienced advice.
We pitched our tents that night on a low sandy island in the lake. The breeze got up in the night and we had to move behind a line of low shrubs for better shelter.
Our next stop was at what I still consider today to be the most awesome sight I have ever seen, The Grand Canyon. So far on the trip, after each day, I could visualise what we had seen and done. Not so with The Grand Canyon. We walked part of the rim, walked part way down one of the trails, sat on the rim at sunset, took photos, took video, went for a ride on one of the Papillon Helicopters through it, and watched a sixty minute film at the Imax Theatre. And still I couldn't get my head around it. I can't describe it in words. No one can even adequately describe it on film. It's not like it's remote or inaccessible, so, like Yosemite, just go and see it!
From Grand Canyon we travelled to Las Vegas. On the way we had a brief stop at The Hoover Dam, which holds back Lake Mead. I guess a dam is a dam is a dam. A lot of water on one side, and not much on the other. The engineering must have been amazing, but, and it may have been because we had just been at Grand Canyon, or that we were going to Las Vegas, it did not impress me that much.
In Vegas (it's amazing how you feel like a local by adopting the local slang) we did not stay in tents. We stayed in one of the casinos. It has since been imploded. This is fairly normal procedure, because despite there being thousands of acres of desert on which to build more casinos, you can't beat being on or near 'the strip'. So every year a few are destroyed, and new ones built. We weren't actually on Las Vegas Boulevard. I guess we were a budget tour so our hotel was cheap, and therefore three blocks away. At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon I suggested we walk. After all we were fit Aussies doing Trek America. No one told me a block in Las Vegas was about a mile long. And it was summer. That night it was 109degreesF at 9 o'clock.
I must be the only person who has spent two days and two nights in Las Vegas without even putting a nickel in a poker machine. I don't gamble. After I left Telecom Australia Eileen and I had some retail businesses. We sold them, and Eileen went back into her original profession and opened an accounting practice while I learnt how to be a share trader. Share trading is not gambling if you learn how to do it like any other profession. Poker machines, Blackjack, Poker, Roulette, and Craps etc are gambling, and the casinos can not lose.
So what did I do in Las Vegas if I didn't gamble? Like most of the others I went into every casino on the strip. The architecture, the displays, the shops, the shows, the restaurants, and all the other attractions would keep most people entertained non-stop for weeks. While risking sounding like a cracked record, go there! Everyone deserves to experience Las Vegas live at least once. Maybe because she didn't come with Ryan and I, Eileen has never wanted to visit America. In 2005 I took her anyway and she loved it.
Next stop Disneyland. We were back to camping in our tents again, but that was okay because the camping ground was only one block from the entrance. When we were there in 1994 there was only Disneyland. The California Adventure Park had not been built yet. This still gave us plenty to see and do in one afternoon and evening, and all of the next day. We did lots of rides, ate lots of junk food, saw the electric street parade, and the fireworks and laser shows''and that's what you do at Disneyland.
Lou had organised a farewell party for us on that second night. What was he thinking? Our choices were to stay inside Disneyland until closing time, for maybe the last and only time in our lives, or go back to the campground early for pizza and hot-dogs.
As I settled into my window seat on the United Airlines jumbo for the 14-hour flight back to Brisbane, all I wanted to do was sleep. However the lovely little old lady (another one) next to me just had to tell me all about her cruise up to Alaska.
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