USA: LAS Vegas Continued

27 March 2012

Tony and I have been taking in the sites of Las Vegas and have made the most of the best value bus trip in Nevada – appropriately called "the Deuce".  The double decker bus takes you all the way from one end of Las Vegas to the other (almost) for a total of US$7 each, hop-on hop-off service that runs for 24 hours a day, and buses leave multiple stops no more than 15 minutes apart.  We are still getting used to Zero desert humidity, bit of a shock after leaving the wet season of Cairns, Nth Qld. The Strip is amazing - 24hr bars, casinos, cantinas, restaurants and cafes of a variety of tastes, cultures and weirdos.  We just had to stop and lounge around outside of Cesaers Palace and drink the delightful Margaritas and Pina Coladas and watch the passing people traffic (of all persuasions and solicitations - LOL).  We ventured into Cesaers for a photo shoot ie. the mural at Reception - ie. the Hangover fame - minus Allan.  Now somewhere in this time Tony went missing - look where I found him.  OMG!!!



Check out the sign above the "beads".

Believe it or not we only spent 15 minutes at a roulette table - smokers Including cigars) are still allowed into the gambling halls and it just got too much. 

Today (wednesday) we did 1 of the longest 1 day tours in the world (still doesnt beat our Uluru tour) leaving at 5.45am and returning at 11.15 pm to Hoover Dam which was an astonishing engineering feat for its day, didnt matter 10,000s of workers died, most wrongly diagnosed by Company Doctors with pneumonia, rather tha carbon monoxide posioning from being transported on fuel trucks thru the many tunnels. Americans were never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story. The Grand Canyon National Park it is 1 mile deep, 10 miles accross, has 5 million visitors a year and wow what a natural wonder, we will post some photos later. They have only explored about 3% of the park for Archeolgical material, already there is evidence of 10,000 yrs human occupation. Apart from the great height which had Tony looking somewhat uneasy, the views and natural wonder is amazing, They have a 14 day, 277 mile rafting tour down the Colorado River which dissects the Canyon, looks a thrilling trip.  As expected a wide array of tourism goodies, including a lot of Native Indian stuff which was great. Got some great views of Las Vegas "lights"on the way back.

Tomorrow we leave Lost Wages and head back into L.A en route to San Diego where we are staying at a bnb for the 1st time, its a great website and depending on how it goes we may well use for future US cities, we have already checked out LA and have found a likely place.

We are gunna check out if Greyhound have a loyalty program as we will clock up close to 1,000 miles after LA-LV-LA;LA-San Diego- LA, with New Orleans to Miami to follow.  We start train travel next Wednesday from LA to San Francisco, and after a couple of days onto Seattle.

Now I guess you are all waiting to hear about the renewal of vows (32yrs 2mths 1 day and 2hrs after our Wedding back in Sandgate). We happened to be walking along Sth Las Vegas Blvde and saw a wedding sign pointng down Cathederal Way and decided to make and enquiry. And when you may have thought it was one of those 'ticky 'tacky' chapels - it was far from it.  The young ladies were wonderful and more excited than we were (almost).  But as it happens, we didn't make any booking, we just went back to where we were staying, got changed and went back at 8pm, picked out a song (Fleetwood Mac), got a single red rose, met the celebrant whose name happened to be Elizabeth and I walked down the aisle (swinging away like Muriel did to Abba).   It was a real hoot.

Now as you know there are usually some dramas in our life, and what would a Vegas wedding be without one.  Just so happened that we didn't have our wedding rings.......so the logical thing to do was to find something that would serve the purpose - there happended to be a little shop near the wedding chappel that sold jewellry.  We now have 2 matching wedding rings albeit stainless steel "el cheapos" which I know I will wear for a long long time. Now check out the photos......

We'd like to say a big hi and Thank you to Michelle, Tessa, Elizabeth from "Vegas Famous weddings" who will be following our Blog too.  So if you are in Vegas and want a celebration like ours make sure you look them up on the web, facebook, twitter.

Elvis couldn't be there for our wedding vow renewals as he had a prior engagement !!!  Actually we saw him the next day at the "Welcome to Las Vegas" welcoming visitors to the city.




Elvis and his pink cadilac welcoming visitors to Vegas

Till next blog have a good night and we'll be in touch from San Diego.  (looking forward to some real mexican food).

Tony and Liz's Travel Adventures (Part 3)

25 March  BNE to LAX

With all the best intentions we ran short of time to get to Part 3 of our next blog letting everyone know about the last legs of our travels taking us through more of Europe then over to Asia (Hong Kong, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and on to China). But so much happened in the last few weeks before our journey that the blog just had to take a back seat.

At the time of writing this we were actually flying over the Pacific en route to LA.  For those who were waiting for the next instalment, we apologise, but what happened in the last week before we left was just as much an exciting story as our travel plans.  For example, Dean and Elouise drove from Brisbane arriving in Cairns on Monday afternoon, back to his birthplace and fishing, of course.  Travelling in another car were Elouise’s nan, her mum and auntie. They were all really lucky to get through due to the forming cyclone in the Gulf which turned into a tropical rain depression, causing wild weather and road closures on the Bruce Highway.  They arrived on Monday afternoon.  Now this is where the story takes a turn which could have resulted in us delaying our trip.   

On the very evening they arrived all the family went to the Esplanade for a bite to eat, the rain turned nasty and torrential.  Typical of Cairns you could say, but even we hadn’t seen anything like this.  After dropping off the ladies later that night and when Elouise and I drove into our street it was flooded across the road approx. 1 ft deep even in the centre of the road.  So of course, the natural thing to do is to take the back entrance into the property.  Yeah right !!! Big mistake.  We’d turned right off Mulgrance road into the next traffic lights.  What happened next took us both by surprise.  A wall of water  was coming straight towards us.  Within a couple of minutes it was almost halfway up the car doors.  The most logical thing to do at that time was to reverse back, but in trying to do so the car stalled. At that stage we were paddling with our feet in water IN THE CAR, and it was still rising.  Still the rain was bucketing down without any sign of it abating. Oh hell, the car was starting to float, then out of the thick rain and total darkness, 2 young guys whose car had stopped further up the road, had seen we were in trouble, and pushed the car up to a safer spot. We were still in water up to the top of the wheel rims.  Strangely the car was easy to push but it was the buoyancy and floating that got the car to the side of the road. These 2 good Samaritans had the water lapping high around their thighs.  That takes guts!!  We tried to stay fairly calm and Eloise called the Roadside Assist, they asked if we were OK and said a tow truck would be out in 1 and half hours.  The rain was still bucketing down when another good Samaritan in a 4 x 4 with a winch pulled us up completely out onto Mulgrave Road.  By that time the 6 lane road had been swallowed with flash flood water to become a 2 lane.  When we finally felt safe enough to get out of the car looking around there were at least 8 cars in the same predicament.

The tow truck driver said he had 12 calls – and that is just one company.  The outcome – our car, with only just over 1500 kms on the clock, was deemed a Write-off, perhaps repairable - as it happened the car was a write-off.  The Insurance company takes over now, deregisters the car, cancels the insurance and tenders for a new car for us with the same specs as our now written-off vehicle.  A consolation that we will return to a new car in November.   The Assessor told me that he had 20 Write-offs just from that one incident. 

There is more…. on Wednesday night Tony and I were staying with Holly and the kids on the Sunshine Coast.  Yep, you guessed it, flash flooding on Nicklin Way – we happened to be at that very spot at the very time that roads and houses flooded on Wednesday night.  The same crazy weather that affected Cairns, Townsville and the Sunshine Coast.  The panic started to set in and the last thing I wanted was for the same thing to happen so we turned around and headed back to Holly’s.

After those events, finally getting on Qantas QF15 from Brisbane to Los Angeles was a breeze.  We even did some ‘Celebrity Spotting” in the likes of Peter Andre (ie Get me out of here I’m a celebrity and former husband of Jordan, who is another one of those who is famous for doing nothing).  Poor Pete ended up with the kids who accompanied him on the flight.  We are also guilty of one of those new travel no-nos such as ‘gathering in groups’ on the plane.  Apparently with all the security regulations these days, no more than 2 people are allowed to gather in the aisles or around the toilets.  Well being our friendly selves we happened to have a gathering of 4 people, fellow Aussies, talking about our travel plans.  All good – the cabin crew were too tired to deal with us anyway.

Bellagio Water Show

We’ve now arrived in Las Vegas and we haven’t stopped.  Have taken lots of photos – AND – the Wedding vow renewal happened tonight at 8.00pm and have the piece of paper to prove it.  Tears shed by all including the marriage celebrant !!!  She explained that in "Sin City" the marriages are short-lived - ours is an exception. 

Cheers till next time (with more photos)

The Strip, Las Vegas

POSTSCRIPT:  From a reliable source we were informed that 178 cars were written-off by insurance companies on the fateful night of flash floods in Cairns on March 19, 2012