| |||||||||||||
Friday 5 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| First time around: Not that I'm bragging about my organisational skills, but Friday went along just as planned. Having a flight at 3pm I figured there was little point showing up at work (and having to leave at midday) but got up early anyhow (7am - part of my anti-jetlag plan). Did the usual pre-holiday things... finished packing, picked up the bulk supply of Neurofen, had a haircut, etc. Actually, the barber almost electrocuted me when the cord fell out of his clippers in a huge electrical explosion and flash of light. Thankfully it was his shirt that was hit with the fallout and not my hair that got singed (yeh... like there's enough that I can go cope with this!). By this time Sydney was shaping up for another bute day (as the last few had been) so I wondered down to the pool and swam a few laps while the last of the cloud cleared. Amazingly in just a few minutes the cloud was burned off and I was left with a perfect blue sky to lay and gaze at. Roasted here for a while, in 45C heat (in the sun that is... it was a mere 28C in the shade) before home to shower and head off to the airport. I don't know why I bothered with the wash though, by the time I had dragged (thank you Atomic, for wheels on my ski bag) my 30Ks of luggage to Milsons Point station I needed another. Still, after the few (well, 14) hours on a 747 yet to come I figured no-one would tell, or at least be able to separate my odour from the other passengers. Not much more to this day, get on plane, discover I'm sat next to some guy in the same industry, lives 5 minute walk from me, works 5 minute walk from where I do. Small world eh? Shame the similarities end here, or I too would be sailing my father's yacht to from Australia to Vanuatu on my return to Aus (come on dad, sort it out!). And the second time: Friday started all over again some where over the Pacific Ocean as we crossed the date line. Although I didn't sleep too much on the flight, I probably was asleep at this point, albeit in an alcohol induced snooze, but sleep is sleep, and on this journey is much needed. Awoke to 'Enemy of the State' starting up on the in flight entertainment and a bit of a headache, so tucked into the Nurofen and took in the movie. A seemingly endless flight touched down at 9am in San Francisco, only another 2 hour hop to Denver left now. Denver was cold (steaming breath for the first time since my NZ trip last year) but sunny. Who cares... my hotel room was warm and the bed was comfy. Watched a movie, ordered room service food and drink and crashed out (what more did you really expect?). | |||||||||||||
Saturday 6 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| My jet lag avoidance plan almost worked perfectly, the only mistake was going to bed the night before a bit too early which meant I was awake for an hour or so in the middle of the night. Aside from this everything was fine until being rudely woken by the telephone (wake up call). Had an excellent breakfast, took a dip in the pool, went back to the airport and met Sean. I was a little disappointed to find that the transfer to Breckenridge he had arranged was not a BA charter coach, but a private van company, disappointing as this meant I could have gone up the day before and had an extra day on the slopes. Oh well, such is life when you are this organised. The van trip was pretty good though and we were soon in the resort, checked into the hotel and out looking for hire skis. This is where our first impression of Breckenridge was formed. Great skiing was to come, as you immediately notice all the runs weaving between trees on the mountain above the village (er, sorry, 'town'). A lack of nightlife looked like it may prove a problem as we wondered around and noticed a distinct lack of drinking holes. At lest the second of these observations was born out later that night as we searched for entertainment after eating in the hotel bar. One of the better bars to be found, The Breckenridge Brewery (who have a micro brewery behind the bar) was, as luck would have it, right next to the hotel. After a disappointing stroll around, we returned here and had a few of their local ales to end the day. | |||||||||||||
Sunday 7 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
Hurrah, at least the first observation proved true too - a great first day skiing from 8:30am 'til 4pm, mostly in bright sunshine but still very cold (minus 10) temperatures. We took it easy to begin with, but as Sean tired later in the afternoon I did a couple of runs alone and found myself on 'Southern Cross' after a wrong turn. Double black diamond, my butt! Even I was able to negotiate this supposed expert only as hard as it gets covered in moguls run, and discovered that the generalisation about US pistes (oh, sorry, they call them trails here) being less steep and mostly easier to ski than those in Europe was probably true.
After this excellent day on the slopes the usual ski holiday routine began to emerge - back to the hotel for a short rest, shower and change before heading out in search of food and drink. Basic but substantial tucker was found in Ullr's sports bar, washed down with a few beers before more drinks in the brewery (after a fruitless search for a different venue) and off to bed. | |||||||||||||
Monday 8 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Today we discovered when not to hit the lifts. A pretty large crowd was already waiting at the Quicksilver super chair when we arrived at 9:45, which in itself wasn't too bad. What did compound the problem were all the ski school students meeting at 10am, and able to jump the queue with their various instructors. All this meant it would be another half an hour before taking in the first run of the day. I'm glad to report that this was by far the worst case of the ski lift blues that hit all week, and once away from the mountain base access to other ski lifts was quick and easy. Part of the delay in getting to the lift this morning was due to me wanting to try out a set of Snowblades, and I had to go to the ski rental shop first thing and exchange my 190cm skis for this minute (around 70cm?) set. The reasoning behind this: 1. The Snowblade experience is described as what inline skating on snow would be like. 2. Apologies to Sean, but I'm sure he'd agree with me when I say he's far from the worlds fastest, or most adventurous sole on the piste. I thought that that trying these things out might go some way to slowing me down, and bringing our different styles of skiing closer together. I must say, that initially I was very impressed with the Snowblades. They are great fun, and yes, you can quite easily skate along on the flatter sections of the mountain, so eliminating the need to carry poles, which is a plus. I found them pretty easy to get used to, particularly useful on a mogul field, or skiing through the trees, where quick turns are a must. Travelling backward is quiet possible, and I soon got the hang of doing 360 degree spins in the middle of a run - excellent! The downside with all this is that due to their length high speed skiing feels pretty unstable and it's just too easy (well, for a novice like myself) to bury the tips when taking a course off groomed runs into the deep stuff, resulting in several head over heels incidents! Again, Sean abandoned the slopes a bit earlier than myself, so there was the last couple of runs alone before I left for home at 4:30. Again we wondered around the village looking for somewhere for dinner before deciding on some pasta place. Was pretty nice, but still lacked that certain something. Actually, I was amazed at the portions here - I received a pretty mediocre amount of nosh while Sean ended up with some huge (16" It was over to the Brewery after this for drinks, but I really couldn't believe that this was the only worthwhile place in town to drink, so embarked on a quest to the apparently 'happening' Downstairs At Eric's (as tipped by a couple of the local shop staff). Well, nice try, but the place was full of what looked like US collage boys hanging out at the bar while only a few people were bopping on the dance floor in the corner. Left after a few minutes unimpressed with the time it was taking to get a drink, the lack of numbers of the fairer sex in here not helping either. | |||||||||||||
Tuesday 9 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
Ah, this is more like it - looking out the window and seeing sunshine is far more conducive to getting out of bed early. Was very nice after the very cold previous day when temperatures below minus 10 were made even worse by the wind - factoring this in made the mercury plummet to minus 35!
Having learnt the 'avoid ski school' lesson we hit the slopes at 9:15 and didn't finish until 4pm. Still on my Snowblades there was plenty of fun to be had, but by the end of the day I was looking forward to getting a set of skis back and going blasting down these long, wide runs just built for high speed cruising.
Had drinks and dinner guess where? The Breckenridge Brewery of course! Tired of looking for alternatives, and having to get up early the next day we figured it best to stay close to home anyhow. | |||||||||||||
Wednesday 10 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Having a three mountain ski pass (well, for a couple of the days here anyhow) and staying in the same resort would seem to be a bit stupid, so today we hoped on a bus for the short trip over to Vail. The trip over there was pretty well organised (booking, it would seem is a must in busy periods) as we loaded up at ten past eight, and were taking the first lift up to mid-Vail (the Vista Bahn Express) by 9:15 after only a brief queue. As we took this lift I was looking up at the sky and thinking that maybe we were heading for the worst weather of the week and a rest day would have been a better option. How wrong can you be? Thankfully, after an hour or so there was a total turnaround in this situation and the rest of the day was gloriously sunny.
On this short visit (we would only ski Vail this one day) there didn't seem to be much to separated it from Breckenridge. Of course, there's the sheer size of the place (Vail boasts over twice the skiable area - although over half of this is accounted for in the back bowls) but oddly, what I liked most about the place was the difference in trees. This might sound a little weird, but they're not as dense, and made up of a different species of tree that I can only describe as more bushy, more like your traditional xmas tree. Basically, this all boils down to a more picturesque area, and more runs that have a scattering of trees that are great fun to weave in and out of.
After a day of skiing that was about as good as it gets, there came the trip home. Did I say the outbound trip seemed well organised? A need for booking? Unfortunately all this fell appart on our return to Breckenridge as a free for all to get on the return coaches ensued, what a nightmare! Back home I mixed a couple of cocktails in the hotel while we got ready for the night out. Had dinner in Ullr's, more drinks in the brewery, more drinks in the brewery and, yes, a few too many more drinks there too. Got home at some unknown hour after all this and a few games of pool (well, I remember the first, anyhow, so I suppose there was more than one!). | |||||||||||||
Thursday 11 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Feeling a little fragile and tired there was a late start to Thursday's ski campaign, which didn't come as much of a shock. After a couple of runs though it was becoming clear that the previous four long days were taking their toll. Well, it was either the seven to eight hours a day in the piste those days, or that time in the bar last night! Not much else to say about this... shame, but better have one last full day than a half hearted attempt at them both (my excuse anyhow, and I'm sticking to it!). | |||||||||||||
Friday 12 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Yes, lots of rest does you the world of good, up early and feeling fine for the bus to Keystone, the final area covered on this pass. Although an incredibly cold day, the worst so far, but as always it's impossible not to have fun when up a mountain on a pair of skis. Keystone seems to be a more spread out resort than the other two, but like Breckenridge, has a dense population of trees either side of the trails carved down the mountains. It was particularly nice to be able to plan a route around the resort and feel you are actually travelling a fair distance. This was defiantly preferable (to me anyhow) to just choosing from one of many runs as you unloaded at a peak, but always ending up in the same place whichever you took, which is what was happening far too often at Breckenridge. Like them or not, Keystone also has it's fair share of huge mogul fields. Very long runs, with very deep moguls, very close together, all lead to very tired legs at the end of the day. You notice I didn't say, "very steep" - 'cos they weren't (see my comments earlier on). For me anyhow - someone (ahem - Sean) doesn't like the bumps and even on these last runs wouldn't join me on them. Shame on you! Back in Breckenridge, where else would we go for a final night out...? | |||||||||||||
Saturday 13 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Moved on to the next leg of our trip, flight to San Francisco to meet up with Nic and begin the week of seeing sights in California (oh - and a bit of Nevada). Picked up our slightly under powered Chevey Lumina and drove through town and over the Golden Gate bridge (well, it has to be done doesn't it?). Checked into the Handerly in Union Square, the place has obviously seen better days, but was still in decent nick and suited our purposes.
Looking for dinner we soon realised that although this was billed as a city of 3,500 restaurants, they were not all immediately available to the tourist and picking the jems from the duds was going to be tricky. Luckily, I think on this first night we picked a jem, Puccini & Pinetti. An Italian round the corner, which proved the best find of the weekend - ate very nice pasta here. | |||||||||||||
Sunday 14 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Spent most of the day walking around a few of the city's inner suburbs - Nob Hill and Russian Hill proved to be very plush. Apparently the higher you live, the higher your social state, and hence these are well to do addresses. We then passed through China Town. To my untrained eye this looked pretty much like the Chinese district in both London and New York. On to the Finance District, which was as you'd expect pretty much deserted on a Sunday, the few exceptions being pretty classy looking restaurants. Beginning to tire, we turned for home, and stumbled across a St. Patrick's day parade starting out, so stayed and watched the festivities for a while. Back in Union Square there was time for a spot of shopping, which this region thankfully lives up to it's reputation in, although I'm no great shopaholic so probably aren't fit to comment on this. We are at the famous Johns Grill that evening, this being featured in the novel, 'The Maltese Falcon', where the fictitious character Sam Spade hung out. I'm guessing that the prices here were probably hiked a bit due to the reputation, and I made the food to be only average, but nice enough. | |||||||||||||
Monday 15 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Our last day in San Francisco and much better weather (it was raining heavily Sunday) saw a few of the more usual activities taking place. Rode the very rickety cable car from Market Street to Fisherman's wharf where a trip to Alcatraz island seemed on the cards. It's hard to believe, but this trip was booked out for the entire day, and this being in a pretty chilly spring. Makes you wonder what the demand in summer would be like. After wondering round the wharf for a while and checking out Peir 39 (which was a bit dull really, at lease the seal colony added a bit of spice though) we decided to settle for a harbour cruise. Took a windy and rather chilly hour long trip out under the Golden Gate bridge, around the bay, and of course, Alcatraz Island. I wasn't expecting much from the on board commentary (supplied via your own personal radio headset) but was pleasantly surprised to find in informative and even entertaining in places, so a thumbs up to Red and White Fleet cruises!
Back on dry land more walking around was to be done as we paid a visit to a couple of places pointed out on the boat. Firstly to the church of St. Peter & St. Paul and then a walk up Telegraph Hill to take in the panoramic city and bay views from there and the top of the Coit Tower.
Had a bit of a problem catching a cable car back to Union Square, but eventually managed this and went for a beer or two in Dewey's (a bar in the very nice Westin). Met my dad and wife for dinner later on and ended up in Fisherman's Wharf. Haven't seen him for over a year so this was nice (he'd just flown in that afternoon and happened to be in San Francisco on the same day purely by chance). | |||||||||||||
Tuesday 16 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Got up at 6:15 for the drive east to Yosemite National Park. Not having too much trouble with the rush hour traffic at this time (we were leaving San Francisco at 7:15) we managed to negotiate through the city, over the bay bridge and through the maze as we left. A few hours later we were climbing through think fog and cloud. Given this, I for one didn't think much of our chances of seeing much in the valley. Things improved slightly as we passed through the first of a number of short tunnels and looked down the path of the Merced River towards Yosemite Village.
Driving further down into the valley was a pleasure as the cloud suddenly disappeared leaving us in brilliant sunshine. There were still some low lying clouds hanging around, but these only seemed to complement the to scenery.
Rather than having any one or two formations that draw crowds, it is the whole Yosemite Valley that is breathtaking, with huge almost shear cliffs towering above the narrow flat floor, with a number of waterfalls pouring from them. The first of these falls we viewed were the Bridalveil Falls, before taking a break in the village for lunch.
A short walk (2.5 mile round trip) up to Mirror Lake was the go in the afternoon where I was a bit disappointed to find that a lack of water had somewhat reduced the lake, to a collection of ponds over which a collection of sandbanks was dispersed. Still, even in this small body of water, the surrounding mountains were beautifully reflected, and the whole setting was just magnificent.
Heading onto the overnight stopover at Oakhurst the same sort of story unfolded in reverse order. Driving out of the late afternoon sunshine we soon found think fog and cloud that was to be a bane in the drive out of Yosemite, hanging around until we left the park via the south entrance. It was a slight disappointment, as I'm sure there were plenty of viewpoints on this route out of the park, if only we could see more than a couple of car lengths. Another blow was the fact that the road to Mariposa Grove was closed due to lingering winter snow - we would have to wait until the next day to view some of the giant Sequoia trees. | |||||||||||||
Wednesday 17 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| After a pretty uneventful night in Oakhurst it was on to the next set of our targeted national parks - Kings Canyon and Sequoia. It was an excellent day to drive up into the mountains, these Sequoia trees are not the tallest in the world (those being giant redwoods further up the Californian coast) but they have a greater bulk. We visited a Grant Grove in Kings Canyon and viewed the General Grant tree (the worlds third largest) before heading over to Giant Forest in Sequoia national park. It was a pretty amazing thought to wonder around in these forests, and it's hard to get the sheer size of the trees into perspective. Here you marvel at what is widely regarded as the largest living thing on the planet (and one of the oldest at over 2,100 years), the General Sherman tree.
After lunch we left the mountains and headed east through the central valley of California, mile after mile of orange trees - no wonder so much juice is produced here. We decided to stay in Kernville by Lake Isabella on way to Death Valley. Not much to report about this pretty standard country town, stayed in a clean and tidy motel in the centre and ate good Italian food in one of the limited number of restaurants. | |||||||||||||
Thursday 18 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| After three days of driving some of the most winding roads I've been on we finally came out of the mountains to the desert on our way to Death Valley and it's National Park. Early in the day I couldn't help but be reminded of one of those scenes from the X Files: A huge cloud of dust tails a car streaking downs a desert road, miles from civilisation as our heroes head into the back of beyond in search of alien artefacts. No really, that's what it felt like as we headed towards The Pinnicals.
This collection of Tufa spires, around 15 minutes drive off the main highway was used as a backdrop for a scene in Star Trek V, such is it's alien appearance (apparently!). Anyhow, it's pretty impressive, partly because of the desolation, partly because of the impressive formation. On to Death Valley, it was great to get into some sunlight and a warmer climate, as even this early in spring, it felt like a pleasant mid 20's temperature.
There are several unique attractions (if you can call them that) in the valley, impressions of which were; Impressive - the sea of sand dunes here, which apparently stretch on for 15km or so. Particularly cool are the patterns backed hard into what would otherwise probably be very soft sand. Kind of like the patterns on tortoise shell perhaps, these, and the sparse spread of vegetation (living, and sun bleached remains) made for a very scenic location.
Not so scenic was Devil's Hayfield, a rather dull collection of shrubs that almost resemble stacks of harvested hay. Moving swiftly on we found the picturesque Golden Canyon. A short (mile and a half) mini-canyon (it's a few hundred feet deep at most) where rainwater has cut a path through the softer rock in this part of the valley wall. The name comes from the sandy, golden colour of the walls and is a pretty fair name. We wondered quite some way up the canyon, admiring the unusual rock formations on either side before the heat got the better of Sean and Nic, who decided that they'd seen enough, especially as it was getting pretty hot now and the sun was beating down relentlessly.
The road then heads away into nothingness along the valley floor. Strangely, there's a spot called the Devil's Golf course that is so named because it looks absolutely nothing like one (would this be what golfer's hell would be perhaps?). Don't bother turning off the road here - there's nothing of interest to see, it looked like a huge, newly ploughed field to me! This didn't really bode well for the next stop. Badwater is the lowest place in North America at 282 feet below sea level, and one of the hottest places on the planet. By this time the sun was feeling pretty strong, and I'd guess the temperature was getting towards the late 20s, add 30 degrees or so and that's what to expect later in the year!
There's not a lot here though, except a very small pool of the bad water. The strange chemical composition makes it taste bad (hence the name), although it is at least non-toxic! You can walk out onto the salt flats and marvel at the desolation as you wilt in the heat. Check out the sea level indicator on the valley wall, say, "Been there, done that", and leave. At this point it was time to make a path toward Las Vegas, driving back down the valley via Artist's Drive. On this route you pass another unique part of the valley wall known as Artist's Palette. Of interest as there are many multicoloured rock formations here, not particularly vibrant though, but sort of impressive (well, when compared to the devil's stuff earlier in the day anyhow!). We arrived in Las Vegas an hour or so after sunset so. The strip was exactly as expected bright, busy, larger than life themed casinos. Checked into the Luxor (Egyptian theme) and got a room in the main pyramidal part of the complex. Couldn't decide what to do for dinner, so wondered through our casino, the one next door (Excalabur) and on to New York, New York. I'm not a big gambler, so wasn't really expecting to find much to interest here, and I'd say that was the case. To be honest, you've seen one casino, you've seen them all. Outwardly they look very different, but look under the surface and you find same machines, same bars, same choice of restaurants. And in the case of New York, New York where we ate, restaurants with terrible service, and the guy wondered why he didn't get a tip - earn it pal! As you can guess, I somehow managed to resist the temptation to gamble all night and hit the sack early. | |||||||||||||
Friday 19 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
OK, so I went to bed early, but that was because we had a 6am start to catch a flight to the Grand Canyon. Was a very pleasant day at the South Rim, even at the 2,200 metre altitude and we took a walk westward to a number of lookout points (Trailview Lookout, Maricopa Point, Powel Point, etc).
What can I say? This is one bloody big hole in the ground and very impressive. The only shame is that this was a half day trip so there was on chance to walk down into the canyon which I'd really like to do, I think (it is a long way down!).
Returning to Las Vegas and again enjoying more of the cheesy commentary on the scenery below (natural and man made). For example, did you know there's enough concrete in the Hoover Dam to build a two lane highway, coast to coast across the USA? Very interesting... and there's more reinforcing steel in the Dam than was used to build the Empire State Building. And there's more... but I won't repeat it here! We had all planned to grab an early dinner before my flight home, but there was a problem with my flight to LA (lucky I rang to confirm, or I'd have been staying an extra night in Las Vegas). I barely had time to shower and change before leaving early to make the long trek back to Sydney even longer. | |||||||||||||
Saturday 20 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| Flying from LA to Sydney Saturday passed by pretty quickly as we crossed the dateline somewhere over the Pacific. Not that I'd have anything much to say about it anyhow - I was trapped on a plane don't forget. | |||||||||||||
Sunday 21 March 1999 | |||||||||||||
| After a pretty crappy flight (I didn't sleep much at all, despite having two seats to myself) arrived in Sydney flashed through customs and went in search of transport to the North Shore. Somehow ended up on a bus full of Japanese religious types who were keen to tell me all about their faith. Luckily I was quiet convincing with the, "I'm sorry, I don't understand" line and managed to get some peace in the end. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
pizza. Lucky for him mine was so small, I guess he'd have only managed half otherwise!
