The pianist is finishing his solo - I can tell only because its getting faster, and my limited experience of jazz tells me that most solos finish with a flourish. As the flourish comes the crowd clap - enthusiastically, but not wildly, because, as we are about to find out, its the trumpeter they have come to see.
Right on cue, as the claps for the pianist fade the trumpet starts. The double bass and the drum never stopped, but they get no credit here. Again, the music starts gently and builds. A flourish here and a crescendo there, each met with far increasing applause by the crowd. Even with my limited experience and poor ear I can tell the trumpeter is very good. By now his fingers are moving so fast they are no more than a blur, but the music is controlled, rhythmic, and never misses a note.
We have some friends with us who are musically inclined, and undoubtedly better judges than me - and they too are enraptured. Like the rest of the crowd, Jono and Jacinta are mesmerized, tapping along almost subconsciously and joining the spontaneous applause that breaks out sporadically. I have to admit that I take my cue for these outbreaks from the rest of the crowd - I can't predict when the mid-song applause becomes appropriate. It must be something that comes with a sense of rhythm and tone.
We are in a jazz club on Bourbon Street, in New Orleans famed French Quarter. The club is exactly as I had imagined clubs on New Orleans' most famous street to be: a small bar, live jazz on stage in front of a couple of rows of wooden chairs and tables, in an aging French colonial style building - good enough to let me forget the offense of paying $7 for a Bud Light. Well, its almost what I expected - apart from the brilliant trumpeter the rest of the band is middle aged and white, which I have to admit it slightly different to my mental picture.
While the bar, Maison Bourbon, is just right, it is in truth an exception rather than the rule on Bourbon Street. A quick glance at the audience reveals that most of them are in their thirties or older, clearly enjoying the refuge that the jazz club provides from the hustle and bustle of an entertainment district that more closely resembles Khao San road in Bangkok than any quarter in France that I ever been to. There are still parts of New Orleans to visit for its rich history and live music scene, but Bourbon Street is not one of them. I'm told that it hasn't been for quite some time. While there are still plenty of bands playing on the street, the music venues are outnumbered by t-shirt stalls, strip clubs and beer barns, and the revelers are more likely to be celebrating a bachelor, or bachelorette, party than soaking up Louis Armstrong.
It comes as a surprise to me, but apparently New Orleans has long been a rival to Las Vegas as a drinking and partying venue for college kids, frat and sorority houses and anyone else from the big cities looking to cut loose for a weekend. I didn't realize it was a legendary party town before I came, but when the facts change… Well, it was time to get involved.
A unique feature of Bourbon Street is the presence of take away cocktail vendors. Each of the famous t-shirt stores also sells the local favorite, a Hand Grenade, in souvenir, grenade shaped cups. Once they are empty, you can take the cups into any bar and they will refill them for you (for an exorbitant fee, of course). If the Hand Grenades are not your choice of poison - and in truth, after you've had one of these sickly sweet, vile green concoctions, they probably won't be - bars will happily let you take any drink you buy with you. There is usually someone stationed at the door to pour your drink into a plastic cup for the road.
The fact that you can take your drink with you has an interesting effect on the street, in that most of the partying happens on the outdoors, rather than in the bars. That's convenient, because the building facades and the architecture are the other great attraction of the French Quarter, so you can enjoy both the history and the party at the same time.
The buildings on Bourbon Street are all in the same style - old wooden buildings, two stories, and a balcony on the second story. The balconies are full of people throwing necklaces of plastic beads to the people below. Originally a Mardi Gras tradition, and still only worn that day by the locals, the beads are considered part of the New Orleans experience by the tourists now and are a feature year round. The people on the balconies enjoy the scene they create by throwing them down, while the recipients, who I suspect never realized they wanted beads, suddenly see an indispensable, and free, souvenir, and crowd around shouting for more. In many ways the beads seem like a reflection of New Orleans as a whole - once a meaningful tradition, now somewhat corrupted by the demands of the tourist industry, but enjoyed by all.
On leaving the the jazz club we join the throng on the street, buy some take away Hand Grenades and watch Kate and Jacinta eagerly amass a large collection of beads. The take-away culture makes a pub crawl here not only easy, but essential. A shot of jaegermeister at a bar with a mechanical bull tempts us inside, but the line for the bull looks long, probably because the bull seems to rock so gently that, even with the help of copious amounts of alcohol, everyone manages to ride out most of the bull's time.
Eventually we reach a bar with dueling pianos, where Kate wants to try out the two step she was taught in Texas. She tries to show me how its done, but suddenly its not as simple as it was in Texas - there is no answer to the age old question of whether the instructor or the student is to blame, but our two step seems to contain many steps, few of them in time with each other. At the pianos a woman, comfortably in her fifties, has become enamored with, alternately, the piano players and a group of young guys wearing matching t-shirts. Even in New Orleans, a fifty year old woman jumping on stage and beginning to remove her singlet top causes a stir. The crowd watches with the voyeuristic fascination usually reserved for a car crash, torn between wanting the woman to stop and save some dignity or take it all off and give everyone a funny story to take home (or blog about). She stops at the last possible moment and disappears into the crowd, only to return later having swapped tops with one of the matching t-shirt brigade. She looks at him expectantly, apparently ready to ignore the thirty year age difference. He looks uncomfortable, both from wearing a woman's tank top and as a result of the situation that seems to be developing around him.
It's past 2 am when we decide to call it quits, but the street shows no sign of abating. We are far enough from our hotel to justify a taxi, but can't resist walking all the way back down Bourbon Street one more time (and picking up a hot-dog from a street vendor on the way). The hand grenades are still pouring freely, the beads still flying from balconies, and, as it is finally cooling down to a bearable temperature, the party will continue all night.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Texas - boot scootin', toobin' and BBQn'
Texas is bigger France. So say quite a few bumper stickers and souvenir t-shirts on sale throughout the state. That may be the case, but with less than half the population of France, a large part of the vast state is made up of useless nothingness, barren land covered in shrubs that doesn't seem to be used even for farming. Those were our observations during the 7 hours on I10, the interstate highway that takes you from Southern New Mexico to the Texas Hill Country, where we saw nothing - even fast food outlets were few and far between.
Apart from the wide expanse of nothingness, the other notable part about the Texas highways has been the confirmation of one fairly odd stereo-type. The street signs, including the big Welcome to Texas sign at the state border, are indeed riddled with bullet holes. I'm not quite sure how the bullet holes get there. My theory was that they are shot by drunken hooligans leaning out of the car as they pass the signs. Kate's slightly less scary theory is that they are used by people on the adjoining properties as target practice. Although that means they are shooting at the road, which is actually not less scary at all.
Fortunately, once you arrive in Hill Country, the area around Austin and San Antonio, all that changes very quickly. As we arrived, Hurricane Alex had just made landfall, and Texas was being doused by torrential rain. With little to no change in the temperature, it made for ferocious humidity, but it also went some way to explaining why the shrub and dirt give way to green lawns and fruit orchards. It's peach season at the moment, and just about every house we passed had a sign at the front offering buckets of fresh peaches to passers by.
The Hill Country is where guide books tell you to find 'the real Texas', and there are indeed plenty of people in cowboy hats and boots, big cars and dance halls. But that is where the stereotypes just about end. These towns are popular weekend get aways for couples and families from the cities, so for every cowboy hat there is an antique store, and those boots mainly walk around wine tasting bars and bed and breakfasts.
The first thing that struck me, for obvious reasons, is that the entire region is overwhelmingly dominated by its German heritage. I didn't even know that Germans settled Texas, but it turns out that they did, and they left plenty of evidence behind them. The towns have names like Fredericksburg and Gruene (pronounced Green), and streets like Eichen Strasse. 'Wurst and Kraut' are on every menu, and in Gruene there is even an annual 'Wurstfest', held in the Wursthalle.
Having said all that, this is no Leavensworth (the Bavarian town near Seattle), which tries to capture and replicate German culture. The Texas hill towns are self consciously unique, they simply have German heritage.
Still in search of the real Texas, we had to check out the Gruene Dance Hall. The dance hall is the centre of the community in these towns, and the Gruene Dance Hall claims to be the oldest in Texas. Inside it was much as the name suggests, a big hall dedicated to music and dancing. The bar at the front served $2.50 beers, while the packed crowd enjoyed a live country music dance, most of them still wearing the big hats and boots. I had hoped to see line dancing, but I'm told in Texas its more about the two step, and there were lots of couples getting their dance on. With old car number plates and street signs hanging from the walls, wooden floorboards and a pool table tucked in the corner, you couldn't have gotten a much more iconic American bar.
From Hill Country we headed to Austin, the officially proclaimed capitol (that's how they spell it here) of Texas, and the self proclaimed capitol of live music. That is all well and good, but, as ever, the first order of business was to find a good place to watch Germany play (and embarrass, as it turned out) Argentina in the World Cup. Some goggling turned up Cuatro, a bar near the university, as the home of soccer in Austin, and the meeting place for the German community to watch the World Cup. So off we went.
After the game it was almost an appropriate time to have a beer, and I was certainly in the mood to stick around and celebrate, so we decided to stay at the same bar to watch the upcoming Paraguay v Spain match. In the build up to the game we got talking to a couple, Erin and Mateo, who were there to support Spain. Americans have been almost universally friendly to us, and these guys were no exception.
Kate asked them what the typical thing to do on July 4 (the next day) was, and they told us they usually just 'float the river'. Floating the river means hiring a couple of tire inner tubes, packing a cooler full of beer (the cooler gets its own tube) and floating down a river for a couple of hours, drinking the beer and making merry. Australians who have visited South East Asia might recognize as a favorite activity in Laos too.
Extending American hospitality to new heights, Erin and Mateo kindly invited us to come and float the river with them and their friends on July 4, an invitation we were very happy to take up.
So on July 4 we headed to their place, in San Marcos, a town outside Austin that is built around a university campus, and after the typical setting up delays that reminded me very much of trying to get out on the BBQ boat in Sydney, we headed to the river. Its a pretty organized set up, with a fleet of those typical yellow school buses on hand to carry people up river, where they drop in and start the two to three hour float back to the car park.
You can probably just about picture it from there, but there were two unexpected things. Firstly, there are turtles all along the side of the river, and secondly, in parts of the river there were rapids. Nothing that would really bother you in a canoe or kayak, but from tube level its a bit different. The technique, as I learned the hard way, is to make sure your bum doesn't hang below the bottom of the tube. There are some pretty sharp rocks down there.
With the sun coming out, they beers cold, and all of our group proving to be greet company, it was one of the best days we've had in America, and we weren't done yet.
Once the tubing was done, we headed back to Erin and Mateo's place for a BBQ, some more beers, and even a quick game of basketball. My only real contribution to basketball was to make up the numbers and then complain about the massive blister developing on my bare feet (which is still there, by the way) but it was fun.
Since then, back in Austin, we've taken in some of the famous live music, which really does go on in pretty much every bar in town, and had some of the best meals ever.
BBQ is a way of life down here, but it is not quite what we know as BBQ in Australia. While people do BBQ at home, there are also many restaurants dedicated to serving the best BBQ in town. At these places, there is one large fire pit where the food is cooked over hot coals. I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure a gas BBQ would not be tolerated here. The meat is basted in BBQ sauce and then whole slabs of ribs, beef brisket and sausages are thrown onto the pit.
We ate at Salt Lick last night, one of the area's most famous BBQ restaurants. BBQ lore decrees that the meat does not taste right from a brand new pit, so before a pit is serviceable, it needs to be used for a while. At Salt Lick, they refurbished the giant BBQ pit recently, and for an entire year they cooked on it every night and donated the food to the homeless, before it was ready for restaurant use. I don't know why that was necessary, but I can't argue with it, because the food was amazing. A huge plate of meat, with a small side of kraut, potato salad and pickles (you can see the German influence here pretty clearly too).
That is enough Texas for now. We are headed back to Cuatro in an hour or so to watch Germany take on Spain. For those of you not following the soccer blog, let me simply give you this tip. Whoever wins this semi will win the World Cup.
Apart from the wide expanse of nothingness, the other notable part about the Texas highways has been the confirmation of one fairly odd stereo-type. The street signs, including the big Welcome to Texas sign at the state border, are indeed riddled with bullet holes. I'm not quite sure how the bullet holes get there. My theory was that they are shot by drunken hooligans leaning out of the car as they pass the signs. Kate's slightly less scary theory is that they are used by people on the adjoining properties as target practice. Although that means they are shooting at the road, which is actually not less scary at all.
Fortunately, once you arrive in Hill Country, the area around Austin and San Antonio, all that changes very quickly. As we arrived, Hurricane Alex had just made landfall, and Texas was being doused by torrential rain. With little to no change in the temperature, it made for ferocious humidity, but it also went some way to explaining why the shrub and dirt give way to green lawns and fruit orchards. It's peach season at the moment, and just about every house we passed had a sign at the front offering buckets of fresh peaches to passers by.
The Hill Country is where guide books tell you to find 'the real Texas', and there are indeed plenty of people in cowboy hats and boots, big cars and dance halls. But that is where the stereotypes just about end. These towns are popular weekend get aways for couples and families from the cities, so for every cowboy hat there is an antique store, and those boots mainly walk around wine tasting bars and bed and breakfasts.
The first thing that struck me, for obvious reasons, is that the entire region is overwhelmingly dominated by its German heritage. I didn't even know that Germans settled Texas, but it turns out that they did, and they left plenty of evidence behind them. The towns have names like Fredericksburg and Gruene (pronounced Green), and streets like Eichen Strasse. 'Wurst and Kraut' are on every menu, and in Gruene there is even an annual 'Wurstfest', held in the Wursthalle.
Having said all that, this is no Leavensworth (the Bavarian town near Seattle), which tries to capture and replicate German culture. The Texas hill towns are self consciously unique, they simply have German heritage.
Still in search of the real Texas, we had to check out the Gruene Dance Hall. The dance hall is the centre of the community in these towns, and the Gruene Dance Hall claims to be the oldest in Texas. Inside it was much as the name suggests, a big hall dedicated to music and dancing. The bar at the front served $2.50 beers, while the packed crowd enjoyed a live country music dance, most of them still wearing the big hats and boots. I had hoped to see line dancing, but I'm told in Texas its more about the two step, and there were lots of couples getting their dance on. With old car number plates and street signs hanging from the walls, wooden floorboards and a pool table tucked in the corner, you couldn't have gotten a much more iconic American bar.
From Hill Country we headed to Austin, the officially proclaimed capitol (that's how they spell it here) of Texas, and the self proclaimed capitol of live music. That is all well and good, but, as ever, the first order of business was to find a good place to watch Germany play (and embarrass, as it turned out) Argentina in the World Cup. Some goggling turned up Cuatro, a bar near the university, as the home of soccer in Austin, and the meeting place for the German community to watch the World Cup. So off we went.
After the game it was almost an appropriate time to have a beer, and I was certainly in the mood to stick around and celebrate, so we decided to stay at the same bar to watch the upcoming Paraguay v Spain match. In the build up to the game we got talking to a couple, Erin and Mateo, who were there to support Spain. Americans have been almost universally friendly to us, and these guys were no exception.
Kate asked them what the typical thing to do on July 4 (the next day) was, and they told us they usually just 'float the river'. Floating the river means hiring a couple of tire inner tubes, packing a cooler full of beer (the cooler gets its own tube) and floating down a river for a couple of hours, drinking the beer and making merry. Australians who have visited South East Asia might recognize as a favorite activity in Laos too.
Extending American hospitality to new heights, Erin and Mateo kindly invited us to come and float the river with them and their friends on July 4, an invitation we were very happy to take up.
So on July 4 we headed to their place, in San Marcos, a town outside Austin that is built around a university campus, and after the typical setting up delays that reminded me very much of trying to get out on the BBQ boat in Sydney, we headed to the river. Its a pretty organized set up, with a fleet of those typical yellow school buses on hand to carry people up river, where they drop in and start the two to three hour float back to the car park.
You can probably just about picture it from there, but there were two unexpected things. Firstly, there are turtles all along the side of the river, and secondly, in parts of the river there were rapids. Nothing that would really bother you in a canoe or kayak, but from tube level its a bit different. The technique, as I learned the hard way, is to make sure your bum doesn't hang below the bottom of the tube. There are some pretty sharp rocks down there.
With the sun coming out, they beers cold, and all of our group proving to be greet company, it was one of the best days we've had in America, and we weren't done yet.
Once the tubing was done, we headed back to Erin and Mateo's place for a BBQ, some more beers, and even a quick game of basketball. My only real contribution to basketball was to make up the numbers and then complain about the massive blister developing on my bare feet (which is still there, by the way) but it was fun.
Since then, back in Austin, we've taken in some of the famous live music, which really does go on in pretty much every bar in town, and had some of the best meals ever.
BBQ is a way of life down here, but it is not quite what we know as BBQ in Australia. While people do BBQ at home, there are also many restaurants dedicated to serving the best BBQ in town. At these places, there is one large fire pit where the food is cooked over hot coals. I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure a gas BBQ would not be tolerated here. The meat is basted in BBQ sauce and then whole slabs of ribs, beef brisket and sausages are thrown onto the pit.
We ate at Salt Lick last night, one of the area's most famous BBQ restaurants. BBQ lore decrees that the meat does not taste right from a brand new pit, so before a pit is serviceable, it needs to be used for a while. At Salt Lick, they refurbished the giant BBQ pit recently, and for an entire year they cooked on it every night and donated the food to the homeless, before it was ready for restaurant use. I don't know why that was necessary, but I can't argue with it, because the food was amazing. A huge plate of meat, with a small side of kraut, potato salad and pickles (you can see the German influence here pretty clearly too).
That is enough Texas for now. We are headed back to Cuatro in an hour or so to watch Germany take on Spain. For those of you not following the soccer blog, let me simply give you this tip. Whoever wins this semi will win the World Cup.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
To Las Vegas and beyond
Where to begin with the adventures of Las Vegas? Perhaps with some assurances of what we did not do. Despite the impressive offering of girls to the room in just twenty minutes, we decided not to test that particular service. It's an element of Vegas that will have to be left to mystery.
Apart from the adult industry, we tried to get to all the typical Vegas experiences. First and foremost there is obviously the gambling. A trip to Las Vegas would surely be incomplete without a trip to the casino. The first step was to try and learn Craps, which is the game with the dice that everyone seems to play on television. This was moderately successful at best. After watching the table for a while and making little progress in understanding the in and outs of it, I was approached by some random guy who offered to show me how to play. It did not take a genius to figure out that his plan was to show me how to place a few bets and then ask me for a tip or a share of any winnings. Being aware that you are being hustled is one thing, but finding a good reason to get out of the conversation, without being overly confrontational or accusing him of being a hustler, is quite another. Before I knew it I was following his instructions and betting on the 'pass line' and the eight and nine. I still don't know how to play craps, but on the upside, I avoided any awkward conversations about sharing the winnings by quickly losing my money.
Next stop was the blackjack table. At the Luxor (inside the Pyramid) some of the blackjack tables had a World Cup theme. Finding a table with a Germany chair, and a dealer in an England shirt, seemed to good an opportunity to resist. Now, I am not a superstitious person, but it does seem that, given events in the real world game between England and Germany, England's luck was all used up in the casino. In the end things turned around on one of the other blackjack tables and I ended up winning lots of money. Almost as much as I lost.
Vegas is about more than the gambling though, and we did do some of the other typical things. The evenings are all about the shows, and we saw two. The first was Penn and Teller, a magic act. West Wing fans would recognise Penn and Teller as the magic duo that may or may not have burned an American flag in the white house for the President's daughter's birthday. They did some absolutely unbelievable tricks. My favourite one saw Teller somehow conjure about twenty goldfish out of his sleeve into an aquarium.
The other show we saw was Zumanity, one of the many Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas. On a tight budget, we picked Zumanity because it was the cheapest of the Cirque shows. Zumanity markets itself as the 'adult side of Cirque du Soleil'. It is a concept that seems obvious enough. You have all these athletic, beautiful performers, just remove a few more sequins and dim the lights, and there you go. This was not how Zumanity approached it. Orchestrated by a six foot three transvestite, the show was mainly composed of a series of lewd skits based around the idea that, if sufficiently exaggerated, the grotesque will eventually develop artistic merit. It's an old idea, but Picasso this was not. There is no other way to describe Zumanity - it was awful. Actually, if you can think of stronger words than awful, then there are other ways to describe it. The lowlight, from a long list of contenders, was the scene in which two of the performers began duelling with large rubber dildoes. The highlight was the largely applause free end, as the bemused audience hurried out of the theatre.
The nightlife was on the menu too, of course. New York New York had its own Coyote Ugly bar. For the older generation amongst my readers, Coyote Ugly was a movie about a bar with obscenely attractive bar tenders who dance on the bar and liberally hand out free shots. If you are wondering how you make a whole movie out of this, the makers of Coyote Ugly probably don't have much of an answer for you. It was really more about being marketable than having any merit as a movie. A similar thing might be said of the bar. Again, the concept seems simple, but the execution left something to be desired. Chief amongst the problems for the Vegas version of Coyote Ugly was the focus on audience participation. There was one dancer who acted as ring master, and spent most of her time trying to get girls from the crowd to jump up on the bar and dance. Proof of two things. One - sufficient alcohol makes anyone think they are both attractive and a good dancer, and two - alcohol does not actually make someone either of these two things.
As Kate and I pondered in what way this was not degrading to both participants and bystanders, our attention, and that of the ring master, was drawn to a couple who had just walked in. She was in a white dress, he was in jeans and a white jacket, and they both wore large fake roses on their wrists. "This is my wife" he yelled in response to questioning from the ringmaster. "We just got married!"
Just married, a few hours ago, and they were spending the evening at Coyote Ugly. What better place to have your first dance than on the pedestal at Coyote Ugly, for an adoring audience of leering single men and awkward looking couples you don't know? Well, it wouldn't have been a complete Vegas visit without a Vegas wedding would it?
Apart from that, I played golf, Kate shopped, and I watched at least two games of football every day. All in all, not a bad week.
From Las Vegas it was on to that other great American icon of the South West, the Grand Canyon, via a drive across Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam is not somewhere I would recommend to future travelers. The dam is actually part of the highway, and driving across it is the only way to get from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. The problem is that it is only wide enough for one lane in each direction. The highway either side of it was six lanes, and the squeeze from three lanes to one causes a traffic jam of several kilometers. For over an hour we sat in the 35 degree heat, coming to the unfortunate conclusion that Yes Man's air conditioning only works when the car is moving at a reasonable speed. In a traffic jam, it just blows hot air.
The Grand Canyon was a more successful trip than the dam. It is difficult to really describe the Grand Canyon, because, to be honest, the name says it all. It is a Canyon, and it is enormous. Despite the descriptions in guide books and the like to this effect, it's size still took my breath away. Standing at the edge of the Canyon we could barely see the other side. Between us and the distant north rim the Canyon plunged over 1500 meters straight down to the Colorado river that is responsible for the whole show.
The miles were starting to add up now, and after a night at the Grand Canyon it was on to Monument Valley. Yet another site famous for its rock shapes, I'll leave it to the photographs to describe the site (check facebook soon!). If you've ever seen a John Wayne movie, it was probably filmed in Monument Valley, and they still show one John Wayne movie every night at the campground. You can even visit the cabin where he liked to stay. I thought that was kind of interesting, but Kate was not impressed. "Who's John Wayne?" she asked. Like Star Wars, apparently John Wayne didn't make it to New Zealand.
With miles to go before we slept, from Monument Valley we headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was no more than an overnight stop on the way to Roswell. Fans of the X Files, or those who want to believe in the paranormal, will be well familiar with Roswell as ground zero for alien sightings. Roswell has certainly cashed in on its reputation, with everything from alien shaped street lights to the International UFO Museum and Research Centre.
Despite the grand title, the museum is really just a large hall dedicated to telling the story of the Roswell incident that made the town famous. On July 4 1947, a rancher named Mack Brazel discovered the remnants of a crashed vehicle on his property near Roswell. Unable to identify the material, and curious about its origins, he took a sample of it in to town to show to the local sheriff. That much is undisputed, but from there things get controversial. The sheriff called the air force, and shortly afterwards the air force turned up, took Mack into custody, and confiscated the sample he brought in. They then headed to his ranch and cleared the crash site.
There had been enough UFO sightings in the USA in the previous year that they were already an issue in the public mind, and Roswell quickly attracted national media attention. At first someone from the military announced that a flying disc had been recovered. The next day that story changed, as a superior officer announced that the item that had crashed near Roswell was a weather balloon. In the official version, that was the end of the story.
The reason for the enduring interest in Roswell is the large number of people involved, from the military and other sources, who claim to have been first hand witnesses to a cover up. The museum exhibits countless sworn affidavits from people involved in the clean up on the site swearing that they found a flying disc with three dead bodies in it, and that the bodies were not human. There are also claims from officers, several recanting on their death beds many decades later, that say they knew it was not a weather balloon but that was the cover story the were told to use. The recovered material was never released again, and it seems no one ever heard from Mack again either.
I don't know what to make of it, but at the very least it seems clear that something crashed in Roswell, and the military really did cover it up. That doesn't mean there were aliens, but there is no proof that there weren't aliens either. Personally I thought the alien story was at least as likely as Joseph Smith's.
With aliens behind us it was down to Carlsbad, possibly the worst town we've stayed in. The influence of the recession could be pretty clearly seen in the number of boarded up businesses, and the fact that, to judge by the state of the footpath and roads, the council was out of money. The two hours of moderate rain we'd had were enough to flood the main street in knee deep water. My opinion of Carlsbad might be biased by the fact it was also the site of our (my) first run in with the traffic police. I will simply say that if they want people to stop at stop signs, they should make the signs slightly more obvious. Not an excellent use of $66.
Still more miles were covered today, as we left New Mexico and entered Texas, which will surely merit its own entry soon. We've added a lot of miles in the last few days, and our odometer now tells me we've covered over 6000 miles so far. To see the latest map, click here
Apart from the adult industry, we tried to get to all the typical Vegas experiences. First and foremost there is obviously the gambling. A trip to Las Vegas would surely be incomplete without a trip to the casino. The first step was to try and learn Craps, which is the game with the dice that everyone seems to play on television. This was moderately successful at best. After watching the table for a while and making little progress in understanding the in and outs of it, I was approached by some random guy who offered to show me how to play. It did not take a genius to figure out that his plan was to show me how to place a few bets and then ask me for a tip or a share of any winnings. Being aware that you are being hustled is one thing, but finding a good reason to get out of the conversation, without being overly confrontational or accusing him of being a hustler, is quite another. Before I knew it I was following his instructions and betting on the 'pass line' and the eight and nine. I still don't know how to play craps, but on the upside, I avoided any awkward conversations about sharing the winnings by quickly losing my money.
Next stop was the blackjack table. At the Luxor (inside the Pyramid) some of the blackjack tables had a World Cup theme. Finding a table with a Germany chair, and a dealer in an England shirt, seemed to good an opportunity to resist. Now, I am not a superstitious person, but it does seem that, given events in the real world game between England and Germany, England's luck was all used up in the casino. In the end things turned around on one of the other blackjack tables and I ended up winning lots of money. Almost as much as I lost.
Vegas is about more than the gambling though, and we did do some of the other typical things. The evenings are all about the shows, and we saw two. The first was Penn and Teller, a magic act. West Wing fans would recognise Penn and Teller as the magic duo that may or may not have burned an American flag in the white house for the President's daughter's birthday. They did some absolutely unbelievable tricks. My favourite one saw Teller somehow conjure about twenty goldfish out of his sleeve into an aquarium.
The other show we saw was Zumanity, one of the many Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas. On a tight budget, we picked Zumanity because it was the cheapest of the Cirque shows. Zumanity markets itself as the 'adult side of Cirque du Soleil'. It is a concept that seems obvious enough. You have all these athletic, beautiful performers, just remove a few more sequins and dim the lights, and there you go. This was not how Zumanity approached it. Orchestrated by a six foot three transvestite, the show was mainly composed of a series of lewd skits based around the idea that, if sufficiently exaggerated, the grotesque will eventually develop artistic merit. It's an old idea, but Picasso this was not. There is no other way to describe Zumanity - it was awful. Actually, if you can think of stronger words than awful, then there are other ways to describe it. The lowlight, from a long list of contenders, was the scene in which two of the performers began duelling with large rubber dildoes. The highlight was the largely applause free end, as the bemused audience hurried out of the theatre.
The nightlife was on the menu too, of course. New York New York had its own Coyote Ugly bar. For the older generation amongst my readers, Coyote Ugly was a movie about a bar with obscenely attractive bar tenders who dance on the bar and liberally hand out free shots. If you are wondering how you make a whole movie out of this, the makers of Coyote Ugly probably don't have much of an answer for you. It was really more about being marketable than having any merit as a movie. A similar thing might be said of the bar. Again, the concept seems simple, but the execution left something to be desired. Chief amongst the problems for the Vegas version of Coyote Ugly was the focus on audience participation. There was one dancer who acted as ring master, and spent most of her time trying to get girls from the crowd to jump up on the bar and dance. Proof of two things. One - sufficient alcohol makes anyone think they are both attractive and a good dancer, and two - alcohol does not actually make someone either of these two things.
As Kate and I pondered in what way this was not degrading to both participants and bystanders, our attention, and that of the ring master, was drawn to a couple who had just walked in. She was in a white dress, he was in jeans and a white jacket, and they both wore large fake roses on their wrists. "This is my wife" he yelled in response to questioning from the ringmaster. "We just got married!"
Just married, a few hours ago, and they were spending the evening at Coyote Ugly. What better place to have your first dance than on the pedestal at Coyote Ugly, for an adoring audience of leering single men and awkward looking couples you don't know? Well, it wouldn't have been a complete Vegas visit without a Vegas wedding would it?
Apart from that, I played golf, Kate shopped, and I watched at least two games of football every day. All in all, not a bad week.
From Las Vegas it was on to that other great American icon of the South West, the Grand Canyon, via a drive across Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam is not somewhere I would recommend to future travelers. The dam is actually part of the highway, and driving across it is the only way to get from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. The problem is that it is only wide enough for one lane in each direction. The highway either side of it was six lanes, and the squeeze from three lanes to one causes a traffic jam of several kilometers. For over an hour we sat in the 35 degree heat, coming to the unfortunate conclusion that Yes Man's air conditioning only works when the car is moving at a reasonable speed. In a traffic jam, it just blows hot air.
The Grand Canyon was a more successful trip than the dam. It is difficult to really describe the Grand Canyon, because, to be honest, the name says it all. It is a Canyon, and it is enormous. Despite the descriptions in guide books and the like to this effect, it's size still took my breath away. Standing at the edge of the Canyon we could barely see the other side. Between us and the distant north rim the Canyon plunged over 1500 meters straight down to the Colorado river that is responsible for the whole show.
The miles were starting to add up now, and after a night at the Grand Canyon it was on to Monument Valley. Yet another site famous for its rock shapes, I'll leave it to the photographs to describe the site (check facebook soon!). If you've ever seen a John Wayne movie, it was probably filmed in Monument Valley, and they still show one John Wayne movie every night at the campground. You can even visit the cabin where he liked to stay. I thought that was kind of interesting, but Kate was not impressed. "Who's John Wayne?" she asked. Like Star Wars, apparently John Wayne didn't make it to New Zealand.
With miles to go before we slept, from Monument Valley we headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was no more than an overnight stop on the way to Roswell. Fans of the X Files, or those who want to believe in the paranormal, will be well familiar with Roswell as ground zero for alien sightings. Roswell has certainly cashed in on its reputation, with everything from alien shaped street lights to the International UFO Museum and Research Centre.
Despite the grand title, the museum is really just a large hall dedicated to telling the story of the Roswell incident that made the town famous. On July 4 1947, a rancher named Mack Brazel discovered the remnants of a crashed vehicle on his property near Roswell. Unable to identify the material, and curious about its origins, he took a sample of it in to town to show to the local sheriff. That much is undisputed, but from there things get controversial. The sheriff called the air force, and shortly afterwards the air force turned up, took Mack into custody, and confiscated the sample he brought in. They then headed to his ranch and cleared the crash site.
There had been enough UFO sightings in the USA in the previous year that they were already an issue in the public mind, and Roswell quickly attracted national media attention. At first someone from the military announced that a flying disc had been recovered. The next day that story changed, as a superior officer announced that the item that had crashed near Roswell was a weather balloon. In the official version, that was the end of the story.
The reason for the enduring interest in Roswell is the large number of people involved, from the military and other sources, who claim to have been first hand witnesses to a cover up. The museum exhibits countless sworn affidavits from people involved in the clean up on the site swearing that they found a flying disc with three dead bodies in it, and that the bodies were not human. There are also claims from officers, several recanting on their death beds many decades later, that say they knew it was not a weather balloon but that was the cover story the were told to use. The recovered material was never released again, and it seems no one ever heard from Mack again either.
I don't know what to make of it, but at the very least it seems clear that something crashed in Roswell, and the military really did cover it up. That doesn't mean there were aliens, but there is no proof that there weren't aliens either. Personally I thought the alien story was at least as likely as Joseph Smith's.
With aliens behind us it was down to Carlsbad, possibly the worst town we've stayed in. The influence of the recession could be pretty clearly seen in the number of boarded up businesses, and the fact that, to judge by the state of the footpath and roads, the council was out of money. The two hours of moderate rain we'd had were enough to flood the main street in knee deep water. My opinion of Carlsbad might be biased by the fact it was also the site of our (my) first run in with the traffic police. I will simply say that if they want people to stop at stop signs, they should make the signs slightly more obvious. Not an excellent use of $66.
Still more miles were covered today, as we left New Mexico and entered Texas, which will surely merit its own entry soon. We've added a lot of miles in the last few days, and our odometer now tells me we've covered over 6000 miles so far. To see the latest map, click here
Friday, June 25, 2010
From the Latter Day Saints to Sin City
I've been tardy again, and have fallen behind on my blogging. So much to tell, so little time. Well, to be honest I can't really claim that time is at a premium, but I had important things to do in the last few days - I had to watch a lot of football, think about football a lot, and occasionally blog about football.
As I watched the Germany Ghana match a few days ago, with Germany still potentially facing elimination, it occur ed to me that this is not how football is meant to be. I was sweating, despite the excessive air conditioning, my pulse racing well above anything it had reached in two months of holidays, and I couldn't even hold my beer steady. When they win, I only feel relief, when they look like losing a deep dread. Football is meant to be little more than a form of entertainment. Every rational bone in my body knows that the outcome of this Sunday's game between England and Germany will have no more bearing on my life than a movie or sitcom, but the heart refuses to follow the head. I think after this World Cup I will have reduce my interest in football for a while - I am like an addict that needs to get his habit under control.
While this is the non-football blog - if you are looking for the football blog, click here - I can't help mentioning the World Cup because its having a fairly large impact on our travels.
Camping has been postponed in favour of motels with ESPN. We had a motel without ESPN the morning of the Germany - Serbia game and I found myself leaning out of the window of our room, at 5.30am, holding out Kate's laptop in an attempt to get the office's Wifi signal and watch a live stream of the Spanish language version online. I shouldn't have bothered.
It was difficult for the first week after Salt Lake City because we were driving through a large expanse of desert, dotted with national parks, but not well endowed with people who care about football. So lets put the football aside for a moment and concentrate on the things we came here to see.
On leaving Salt Lake City the mountainous backgrounds very quickly give way to desert, first brown, then an increasingly deep red colour. Southern Utah strongly resembles outback Australia, and is about as densely populated. Our first destination on this desolate route was Arches National Park, which takes its name from the sand stone arches that dot the landscape - the highest concentration of sandstone arches in the world. Quite a claim to fame. The arches themselves are curios rather than fascinating, but the true highlight of the area is the general landscape. The red earth is punctuated by sheer sandstone cliffs that rise straight out of the sand, some of them over a hundred meters. They are not cliffs leading to a plateau, but cliffs for their own sake, only a few meters wide at the top before falling straight back down.
From Arches we headed to Capitol Reef national park, a few hundred kilometers south west. Capital Reef's claim to fame is that it is the location of the final scene in Thelma and Louise, where (spoiler alert, but who hasn't seen Thelma and Louise?) they drive over the cliff and plunge into the canyon. So you can picture it is primarily a giant canyon, with the scenic drive taking you through the valley floor. By now the desert had turned from red to almost pink, which turned to a bright orange around sunset. The heat had also begun in earnest. Where Salt Lake City was warm, and Arches got warmer, by the time we reached Capitol Reef it was hot - to the point that tar was softening on the road and we spent more time in the car than outside of it. (This was also the scene of my attempt to stream the Germany - Serbia game)
From Capitol Reef we rounded out our trifecta of Utah National Parks in Zion, near the Arizona border. Like the previous two, Zion is known for its stark desert scenery, high cliffs and deep canyons. Like the park itself, the features in the park were named by the Mormon settlers. So the sandstone spires have names like Mt. Moroni and Angel Peak, and the word Virgin is sprinkled about liberally; there is Virgin town, next to the park, the Virgin River, and Mt Virgin. Most intriguing (if that is the word) is the sandstone cliff with a large dark red blotch near the top, the looks distinctly like blood running off the surface. That is called the Virgin Altar. I think Sigmund Freud and Germaine Greer would each have their own interpretations of the Mormon's early expressions of faith.
Zion has one standout highlight, which is the river walk along a canyon called (surprise surprise) the Virgin Narrows. It is a canyon that is only as wide as the river which has formed it - not more than 20 meters, and as little as 5 or 6 in some places. To walk along it means, simply, walking through the river, in water which is sometimes ankle deep, sometimes waist deep, and flowing rapidly in the opposite direction to the walk. At the start of the walk there are literally hundreds of people who have gotten off the park shuttle bus and have begun wading. As you walk on the crowd slowly thins out, as people decide they have had enough of the bitingly cold water, or that their children have reached a point in the river they cannot pass. Eventually we beat the crowds and found ourselves almost alone in a gorge with cliffs that would make a base jumper salivate either side of us, separated only by the 5 meter gorge. It is another of Utah's quite unforgettable sights.
That was it for Utah. In a way it also marked the end of the first of three sections of the USA roadtrip. The last month has been about national parks, camping and hiking, and the sights provided largely by the natural world. The next phase of our journey, in the break up I've been using in my head, takes us across the South West, through Texas, and then from New Orleans north through 'the South' (in the USA the South is actually more central east than geographic south) eventually arriving in Chicago. It will be a phase defined by the small towns, the unique cultures of Texas, New Orleans and the South, and hunt for so many iconic American images. Chicago will mark the beginning of phase three, through the North East to the big cities like Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and New York.
So from Zion we headed to New York, which was only a three hour drive from Southern Utah, and where we checked straight into a room on Park Avenue, with great views of the city skyline and the desert behind it. I'm sure anyone with an even elementary knowledge of US geography already suspects that I am of course talking about Las Vegas, where we stayed in the New York New York hotel, complete with Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and a roller coaster.
The approach to Las Vegas is an experience in itself. From Zion the desert theme continues uninterrupted, and in fact the desert becomes more sparse than before. An hour outside of Zion and the last small trees and shrubs have been replaced by the first cacti, and the stark sandstone cliffs give way to hills of sand and rocky outcrops. It is hot, dry and dusty - utterly inhospitable, and with nothing to suggest that there could be a major city lurking around the corner.
But then it happens. As we rounded yet another sandy hill a city suddenly came into view. Approaching from the North the first building to stand out is the Seattle space needle, 1800 km from Seattle. The other hint that you are approaching something unusual comes from the billboards. While until this point the occasional billboards on the interstates were advertising upcoming fast food outlets and lodging opportunities, there is suddenly a large billboard exhorting you to come and try a real machine gun. As you get nearer the city the billboards switch their promotional vigour to, in decreasing order of quantity, strippers, magicians and casinos.
As we reached Las Vegas Boulevard, the famous strip, other structures emerged from the hazy horizon. First the pirate ships of Treasure Island, flanked by Caesar's Colosseum, which sits across the road from the canals of Venice, which in turn are in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. From the Eiffel Tower it is only minutes to the New York Skyline, which acts as the gatekeeper to the gatekeeper - the Sphinx and Pyramid emerge shortly after the Statue of Liberty. Not to be overlooked are the turrets of Excalibur castle, nor the theme less but gigantic towers of MGM Grand and the brand new City Centre, the Strip's newest and biggest development.
There are many things that strike you instantly about Las Vegas, but the one that most impressed me is the pure scale of the place. Las Vegas is not a collection of 10 or 12 big resorts, dotted along a strip in the desert - it is a big city. Ignoring for a moment the suburbs, in which generic housing for the workers of Vegas stretches for kilometers out from the Strip, the central area itself is huge. New York was our hotel, and is by no means the biggest. Still, in recreating the New York skyline it houses several 20 story towers full of hotel rooms. Caesars Palace is a village in itself, while the towers of the Bellagio and Mandalay bay would easily rival Chifley Tower in Sydney for size. In total I am told that Las Vegas contains 125 000 hotel rooms, and welcomes 36 million visitors per year. To put that in context, Australia welcomes just over 5 million international arrivals per year.
All this in the middle of the desert - there can be no more obvious symbol of man's eternal contempt for nature. The searing heat lets you know it is a desert, but apart from that there is little to give it away. Palm trees line the boulevards, water features define many of the hotels, and golf courses surround the entire city, each providing a few acres of perfect lawns surrounded by sand and rock.
Once I adjusted to the size of Vegas, and came to terms with the impossibility but reality of its very existence, I managed to take in the details. Las Vegas' modern reputation is as a place for casinos, nightclubs and stripshows. It certainly has no shortage of any of these things, but there is a great deal more to it. Contrary to the stereotype, it is possible to visit and enjoy Las Vegas with no intention of gambling or indulging in the seedier side of the town, and millions of families come intending to do exactly that. There is the good food, the myriad of shows in the evenings, the golf, the pools and the bars, not to mention the enjoyment you can get just from walking around the place.
Each hotel is a tourist attraction in itself. The Bellagio lobby is decorated as a giant magic garden, with oversize flowers, pots and insects decorating every space from floor to ceiling. The sound is provided by fake birds and the dripping sounds of giant water cans hanging from the walls. It is such a complete illusion that it would be no surprise to come around a corner and stumble upon the mad hatter inviting you to an unbirthday party. When you take a photograph outside the Paris hotel, if you compose it to leave out the glittering casino signs, you could easily be taking a photo of the real Paris, but for the close proximity of the Arc de Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower.
The question is what to make of it all. Unquestionably, each hotel on its own would be tacky in the extreme if it turned up in a normal city. But when it all comes together in one place it is no longer so absurd. It may never be a place you would describe as classy, but this is America - a society founded on the principal of abolishing the very concept of class. Las Vegas seems to me the place where the mankind has indulged its wildest fantasies. The whole thing seems like it could have been created by Willy Wonka, and I would not have missed a step if I'd seen little orange figures running around singing cautionary tales of morality (though I suspect that in Vegas, their theme would have to be adjusted slightly). For its very audacity, its originality and its sheer scale, Las Vegas is actually a remarkable and very impressive place.
Having said all that, the traditional images, of girls and gambling, are never far away in Vegas. If you sit at the counter in almost any bar, there will be a little poker machine built into the bar, so you don't need to pause your gambling for drinking, nor indulge in any excess conversation while you drink. There are trucks that drive up and down the Strip promising 'Girls eager to meet you, in your room in 20 minutes'. Twenty minutes? They must be really eager.
As you walk down the strip everyone tries to hand you a flyer. Some promote the shows, some promote nightclubs, but by far the most common are little business cards handed to you advertising the aforementioned eager girls, complete with photograph. Many people seem to take these flyers and drop them straightaway, either in shock at the contents or because all they wanted was a quick look at the girls. The result is that for 20 meters either side of the stocky hispanics who hand them out the footpath is transformed into a mosaic of buttocks, breasts and sundry bare bits. I wonder what the many people who bring their young children to Vegas do about this.
The flyer distributors also reveal the curious ethnic hierarchy of Las Vegas. It seems that in Vegas, if you are hispanic you are likely to be handing out flyers for girls. If you are black, presumably because of your better language skills, you can hand out night club invitations, which come with a quick promotional spiel, while being white qualifies you to hand out flyers for Cirque du Soleil and other shows. Asians, it seems, do not hand out flyers at all, but they make up the overwhelming majority of dealers in the casinos.
Those are my descriptions of Las Vegas - I know it is remarkably short on any detail about what we actually did in Sin City. Well, they do say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but that would not make for very good blogging at all. It will come, but its getting late, and I still have a football blog to give some attention to. So check back in a couple of days for details of our adventures.
As I watched the Germany Ghana match a few days ago, with Germany still potentially facing elimination, it occur ed to me that this is not how football is meant to be. I was sweating, despite the excessive air conditioning, my pulse racing well above anything it had reached in two months of holidays, and I couldn't even hold my beer steady. When they win, I only feel relief, when they look like losing a deep dread. Football is meant to be little more than a form of entertainment. Every rational bone in my body knows that the outcome of this Sunday's game between England and Germany will have no more bearing on my life than a movie or sitcom, but the heart refuses to follow the head. I think after this World Cup I will have reduce my interest in football for a while - I am like an addict that needs to get his habit under control.
While this is the non-football blog - if you are looking for the football blog, click here - I can't help mentioning the World Cup because its having a fairly large impact on our travels.
Camping has been postponed in favour of motels with ESPN. We had a motel without ESPN the morning of the Germany - Serbia game and I found myself leaning out of the window of our room, at 5.30am, holding out Kate's laptop in an attempt to get the office's Wifi signal and watch a live stream of the Spanish language version online. I shouldn't have bothered.
It was difficult for the first week after Salt Lake City because we were driving through a large expanse of desert, dotted with national parks, but not well endowed with people who care about football. So lets put the football aside for a moment and concentrate on the things we came here to see.
On leaving Salt Lake City the mountainous backgrounds very quickly give way to desert, first brown, then an increasingly deep red colour. Southern Utah strongly resembles outback Australia, and is about as densely populated. Our first destination on this desolate route was Arches National Park, which takes its name from the sand stone arches that dot the landscape - the highest concentration of sandstone arches in the world. Quite a claim to fame. The arches themselves are curios rather than fascinating, but the true highlight of the area is the general landscape. The red earth is punctuated by sheer sandstone cliffs that rise straight out of the sand, some of them over a hundred meters. They are not cliffs leading to a plateau, but cliffs for their own sake, only a few meters wide at the top before falling straight back down.
From Arches we headed to Capitol Reef national park, a few hundred kilometers south west. Capital Reef's claim to fame is that it is the location of the final scene in Thelma and Louise, where (spoiler alert, but who hasn't seen Thelma and Louise?) they drive over the cliff and plunge into the canyon. So you can picture it is primarily a giant canyon, with the scenic drive taking you through the valley floor. By now the desert had turned from red to almost pink, which turned to a bright orange around sunset. The heat had also begun in earnest. Where Salt Lake City was warm, and Arches got warmer, by the time we reached Capitol Reef it was hot - to the point that tar was softening on the road and we spent more time in the car than outside of it. (This was also the scene of my attempt to stream the Germany - Serbia game)
From Capitol Reef we rounded out our trifecta of Utah National Parks in Zion, near the Arizona border. Like the previous two, Zion is known for its stark desert scenery, high cliffs and deep canyons. Like the park itself, the features in the park were named by the Mormon settlers. So the sandstone spires have names like Mt. Moroni and Angel Peak, and the word Virgin is sprinkled about liberally; there is Virgin town, next to the park, the Virgin River, and Mt Virgin. Most intriguing (if that is the word) is the sandstone cliff with a large dark red blotch near the top, the looks distinctly like blood running off the surface. That is called the Virgin Altar. I think Sigmund Freud and Germaine Greer would each have their own interpretations of the Mormon's early expressions of faith.
Zion has one standout highlight, which is the river walk along a canyon called (surprise surprise) the Virgin Narrows. It is a canyon that is only as wide as the river which has formed it - not more than 20 meters, and as little as 5 or 6 in some places. To walk along it means, simply, walking through the river, in water which is sometimes ankle deep, sometimes waist deep, and flowing rapidly in the opposite direction to the walk. At the start of the walk there are literally hundreds of people who have gotten off the park shuttle bus and have begun wading. As you walk on the crowd slowly thins out, as people decide they have had enough of the bitingly cold water, or that their children have reached a point in the river they cannot pass. Eventually we beat the crowds and found ourselves almost alone in a gorge with cliffs that would make a base jumper salivate either side of us, separated only by the 5 meter gorge. It is another of Utah's quite unforgettable sights.
That was it for Utah. In a way it also marked the end of the first of three sections of the USA roadtrip. The last month has been about national parks, camping and hiking, and the sights provided largely by the natural world. The next phase of our journey, in the break up I've been using in my head, takes us across the South West, through Texas, and then from New Orleans north through 'the South' (in the USA the South is actually more central east than geographic south) eventually arriving in Chicago. It will be a phase defined by the small towns, the unique cultures of Texas, New Orleans and the South, and hunt for so many iconic American images. Chicago will mark the beginning of phase three, through the North East to the big cities like Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and New York.
So from Zion we headed to New York, which was only a three hour drive from Southern Utah, and where we checked straight into a room on Park Avenue, with great views of the city skyline and the desert behind it. I'm sure anyone with an even elementary knowledge of US geography already suspects that I am of course talking about Las Vegas, where we stayed in the New York New York hotel, complete with Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and a roller coaster.
The approach to Las Vegas is an experience in itself. From Zion the desert theme continues uninterrupted, and in fact the desert becomes more sparse than before. An hour outside of Zion and the last small trees and shrubs have been replaced by the first cacti, and the stark sandstone cliffs give way to hills of sand and rocky outcrops. It is hot, dry and dusty - utterly inhospitable, and with nothing to suggest that there could be a major city lurking around the corner.
But then it happens. As we rounded yet another sandy hill a city suddenly came into view. Approaching from the North the first building to stand out is the Seattle space needle, 1800 km from Seattle. The other hint that you are approaching something unusual comes from the billboards. While until this point the occasional billboards on the interstates were advertising upcoming fast food outlets and lodging opportunities, there is suddenly a large billboard exhorting you to come and try a real machine gun. As you get nearer the city the billboards switch their promotional vigour to, in decreasing order of quantity, strippers, magicians and casinos.
As we reached Las Vegas Boulevard, the famous strip, other structures emerged from the hazy horizon. First the pirate ships of Treasure Island, flanked by Caesar's Colosseum, which sits across the road from the canals of Venice, which in turn are in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. From the Eiffel Tower it is only minutes to the New York Skyline, which acts as the gatekeeper to the gatekeeper - the Sphinx and Pyramid emerge shortly after the Statue of Liberty. Not to be overlooked are the turrets of Excalibur castle, nor the theme less but gigantic towers of MGM Grand and the brand new City Centre, the Strip's newest and biggest development.
There are many things that strike you instantly about Las Vegas, but the one that most impressed me is the pure scale of the place. Las Vegas is not a collection of 10 or 12 big resorts, dotted along a strip in the desert - it is a big city. Ignoring for a moment the suburbs, in which generic housing for the workers of Vegas stretches for kilometers out from the Strip, the central area itself is huge. New York was our hotel, and is by no means the biggest. Still, in recreating the New York skyline it houses several 20 story towers full of hotel rooms. Caesars Palace is a village in itself, while the towers of the Bellagio and Mandalay bay would easily rival Chifley Tower in Sydney for size. In total I am told that Las Vegas contains 125 000 hotel rooms, and welcomes 36 million visitors per year. To put that in context, Australia welcomes just over 5 million international arrivals per year.
All this in the middle of the desert - there can be no more obvious symbol of man's eternal contempt for nature. The searing heat lets you know it is a desert, but apart from that there is little to give it away. Palm trees line the boulevards, water features define many of the hotels, and golf courses surround the entire city, each providing a few acres of perfect lawns surrounded by sand and rock.
Once I adjusted to the size of Vegas, and came to terms with the impossibility but reality of its very existence, I managed to take in the details. Las Vegas' modern reputation is as a place for casinos, nightclubs and stripshows. It certainly has no shortage of any of these things, but there is a great deal more to it. Contrary to the stereotype, it is possible to visit and enjoy Las Vegas with no intention of gambling or indulging in the seedier side of the town, and millions of families come intending to do exactly that. There is the good food, the myriad of shows in the evenings, the golf, the pools and the bars, not to mention the enjoyment you can get just from walking around the place.
Each hotel is a tourist attraction in itself. The Bellagio lobby is decorated as a giant magic garden, with oversize flowers, pots and insects decorating every space from floor to ceiling. The sound is provided by fake birds and the dripping sounds of giant water cans hanging from the walls. It is such a complete illusion that it would be no surprise to come around a corner and stumble upon the mad hatter inviting you to an unbirthday party. When you take a photograph outside the Paris hotel, if you compose it to leave out the glittering casino signs, you could easily be taking a photo of the real Paris, but for the close proximity of the Arc de Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower.
The question is what to make of it all. Unquestionably, each hotel on its own would be tacky in the extreme if it turned up in a normal city. But when it all comes together in one place it is no longer so absurd. It may never be a place you would describe as classy, but this is America - a society founded on the principal of abolishing the very concept of class. Las Vegas seems to me the place where the mankind has indulged its wildest fantasies. The whole thing seems like it could have been created by Willy Wonka, and I would not have missed a step if I'd seen little orange figures running around singing cautionary tales of morality (though I suspect that in Vegas, their theme would have to be adjusted slightly). For its very audacity, its originality and its sheer scale, Las Vegas is actually a remarkable and very impressive place.
Having said all that, the traditional images, of girls and gambling, are never far away in Vegas. If you sit at the counter in almost any bar, there will be a little poker machine built into the bar, so you don't need to pause your gambling for drinking, nor indulge in any excess conversation while you drink. There are trucks that drive up and down the Strip promising 'Girls eager to meet you, in your room in 20 minutes'. Twenty minutes? They must be really eager.
As you walk down the strip everyone tries to hand you a flyer. Some promote the shows, some promote nightclubs, but by far the most common are little business cards handed to you advertising the aforementioned eager girls, complete with photograph. Many people seem to take these flyers and drop them straightaway, either in shock at the contents or because all they wanted was a quick look at the girls. The result is that for 20 meters either side of the stocky hispanics who hand them out the footpath is transformed into a mosaic of buttocks, breasts and sundry bare bits. I wonder what the many people who bring their young children to Vegas do about this.
The flyer distributors also reveal the curious ethnic hierarchy of Las Vegas. It seems that in Vegas, if you are hispanic you are likely to be handing out flyers for girls. If you are black, presumably because of your better language skills, you can hand out night club invitations, which come with a quick promotional spiel, while being white qualifies you to hand out flyers for Cirque du Soleil and other shows. Asians, it seems, do not hand out flyers at all, but they make up the overwhelming majority of dealers in the casinos.
Those are my descriptions of Las Vegas - I know it is remarkably short on any detail about what we actually did in Sin City. Well, they do say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but that would not make for very good blogging at all. It will come, but its getting late, and I still have a football blog to give some attention to. So check back in a couple of days for details of our adventures.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Yellowstones and Salt Lakes
I may have been a bit premature when I called my last post 'Leaving the Mountains', and happily forecast warmer and drier climes.
Yellowstone National Park, it turned out, was still very much in the mountains, cold and rainy. But still somehow completely different to the Canadian Rockies.
For me, the highlight of Yellowstone was the bison. Bison were hunted to near extinction in the 19th century, but some herds (somewhere - I couldn't find out where) survived. The same thing went for wolves. In 1997, both were reintroduced to Yellowstone, and are thriving populations today. I knew this, but you never know the true meaning of the word thriving in these contexts, so I still wasn't sure whether we'd actually see any of these creatures.
However a bison weighs around 2000lbs (don't get me started on the imperial system - that's about 900kg), and that makes it difficult for them to hide - and sure enough, on our first morning driving around around the park, two bison came trotting around the corner in front of us. I think they were actually running away from the car behind them, but the road was at a narrow point, so they had nowhere to go.
For our first two or three bison sightings Kate and I couldn't understand why nobody else was stopping to gape at these incredible animals. By the time we'd seen a herd of a hundred of them grazing beside a campsite, we weren't stopping anymore either. I'll need to delete about 400 excess bison photos from my cameras.
The glut of bison also got me thinking about the strange criteria that make for an exciting animal sighting. The bison are so numerous that they don't even stop traffic anymore, as are the elk - unless there are young involved. Moose will still draw a few glances, even without calves. Mountain goats are a favourite for many Americans, which is odd, because mountain goats live on impossibly steep cliff faces, and you never get within 500 metres of one. Yet where ever there is a mountain goat, there will be an RV pulled over to the side of the road, its owners eagerly staring through huge binoculars. To me, that seems less interesting than seeing them on TV.
One of the star attractions in Yellowstone is a big-horn sheep. The one big horn sheep we saw caused a scene on the road, with 20 or more cars and campers pulled over and eagerly snapping away. This time we couldn't understand it for the opposite reason - in Canada the sheep are everywhere, and you are told to be wary of them because they have ticks and won't leave a campsite if they manage to get some food. No one is interested in the sheep. But in Yellowstone they are rare, and their appearance causes a minor sensation. And that is the crux of the matter - the only thing that really gets people excited about animals is scarcity. If its rare, its exciting.
Its odd, because its not really related to the appearance of the animal at all. Even a sighting where you can't make out any detail at all (like the mountain goats) is something people get excited about. A bighorn sheep looks alot like a normal sheep, but with big horns. A moose and an elk are hard to tell apart at a distance. While I began to recognise this, I was certainly not immune to the trap. At one point I thought I saw a beaver, and was very pleased to have seen such a rare creature. If I hadn't returned to the same spot the next day and seen that the beaver hadn't moved, and was in fact a log sticking out of the water, I would have gone home completely satisfied that I'd seen a beaver. I might even have put a photo of it on facebook.
Two thing everyone agrees are is the excitement of seeing a bear, and that of seeing a cub / calf of any animal. So a bear cub is like the holy grail. On our last day in Yellowstone (shortly after watching the Germany v Australia game - good day?) - we found the holy grail. Found is the wrong word. It is hard to miss when there is a traffic jam that makes the Pacific Highway on a Friday afternoon look fast flowing. Usually there is some decorum as to where you pull over and leave the car, but for a bear cub, its all forgotten. He was cute though.
The other thing I liked about Yellowstone was that it must be one of the world's best examples of managing the balance between human use and conservation. It is a huge wilderness area that it would take about 5 hours to drive around. There is only one real road through the park, which forms two scenic loops - like a big figure eight. They have managed to keep the area healthy enough that they can reintroduce extinct species, and within a kilometre or two of walking you can be completely alone. Yet the park welcomes over 3 million visitors a year, and surely is the most important resource in Wyoming's economy.
From Yellowstone we headed further south, and we've now arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah. Still more mountains, but, finally, it has gotten warm. Yesterday was our first day in North America without rain, and today the temperature reached the 80s (Fahrenheit - the only thing more absurd that the imperial system - its about 25 degrees)
Salt Lake City is of course the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - or Mormons as we know them. We took a tour of the main Temple complex today. When I say we took a tour, we just walked into the complex before we were approached by Sisters Rathburger and Main. When I say Sister, you are probably picturing old nuns in the Catholic image. Not so - these sisters were around twenty, wearing normal clothes, on their year of service, which the church mandates for its members - and, at least for Sister Rathburger, well, lets just say it seemed a waste.
The sisters explained the basics of the Mormon theology and history to us. Basically, they are Christians, and believe all the same things about Jesus and God and the Bible. But they also believe that there is a third testament, to add to old and new, which is called the book of Mormon. As the book of Mormon tells it, after Jesus was resurrected, his apostles (new ones, I think) appeared in North America and began spreading his word amongst the native Americans, long before Europeans got there. The book of Mormon was passed down through about 1000 years of prophets (each to their son - it was a family thing) until it got to Moroni. Moroni didn't have a son, so he buried the book - apparently time for sharing the message was over. Many centuries later, in 1820, a boy named Joseph Smith was trying to decide which of the many churches in America he should join, and Moroni (now in Angel form) appeared to him, explained that the other churches had deviated from god, and showed him where the book was buried, and how to translate it.
Joseph held onto this knowledge for a while, but eventually completed his translation and shared it with the world. The church museum houses the manuscript of his original translation (no word on the whereabouts of the original book, I noticed). Whatever else you might say about Joseph Smith, he must have had charisma, because by 1840 or so, he had a few thousand followers, and they set out to create Zion - a community in harmony with God. However, religious persecution being all the rage in those days, the other churches soon drove the Mormons out of New York. At first they reached Illinois, but the persecution continued, and Joseph Smith was assassinated.
At that point, the Saints, as they call themselves, decided they needed to get right out of existing society, if they were ever to be able to worship in peace. Under the leadership of Brigham Young they marched thousands of miles, over several years, until they found a safe place - their journey eventually coming to and end at the great Salt Lake valley, where they founded this city.
The sisters offered to send me the book of Mormon. At first I thought getting the book might be the discreetest way out of this conversation, but when they made clear that some of their fellow missionaries would drop it round in person, I backpedalled. It took some serious convincing before they believed that I had no permanent address at the moment, and didn't know when I'd be back in Australia (which is actually true). I did curse myself afterwards for not having the presence of mind to give them the address and phone number of a friend in Sydney. I think Ben would have particularly enjoyed their visit.
You can think what you want about their beliefs - it seems to me that at least it partially addresses the staggering arrogance of the old world churches that believed Christianity applied to all people, including Native Americans, but God didn't bother to tell them until Columbus, Cortes and Pizarro arrived - but it certainly makes a good story, and the settlers that marched here from the East coast must have had a heck of a journey.
Today Salt Lake City is a standard, mid size city. Its in a nice location, with some great architecture, and few overt signs of the Mormon culture (apart from the temple in the middle of the city, which is no different to the cathedral in any other city). There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about Utah and Salt Lake City. Contrary to what I have heard, it is perfectly simple to get a drink, and in fact we had lunch in a bar today with about the biggest beer selection I've ever seen. Then there is the big misconception that it seems almost everyone has. About the only thing I knew about Mormons before I got here was that they practice polygamy. This is not true. The Mormons outlawed the practice of polygamy over a hundred years ago. Just goes to show that once you get a reputation, its hard to shake (like the German soccer team - see the world cup blog ;-))
As we've started covering some serious miles now, I've attached a link to a map of our journey so far. Click here to see where we've been.
Yellowstone National Park, it turned out, was still very much in the mountains, cold and rainy. But still somehow completely different to the Canadian Rockies.
For me, the highlight of Yellowstone was the bison. Bison were hunted to near extinction in the 19th century, but some herds (somewhere - I couldn't find out where) survived. The same thing went for wolves. In 1997, both were reintroduced to Yellowstone, and are thriving populations today. I knew this, but you never know the true meaning of the word thriving in these contexts, so I still wasn't sure whether we'd actually see any of these creatures.
However a bison weighs around 2000lbs (don't get me started on the imperial system - that's about 900kg), and that makes it difficult for them to hide - and sure enough, on our first morning driving around around the park, two bison came trotting around the corner in front of us. I think they were actually running away from the car behind them, but the road was at a narrow point, so they had nowhere to go.
For our first two or three bison sightings Kate and I couldn't understand why nobody else was stopping to gape at these incredible animals. By the time we'd seen a herd of a hundred of them grazing beside a campsite, we weren't stopping anymore either. I'll need to delete about 400 excess bison photos from my cameras.
The glut of bison also got me thinking about the strange criteria that make for an exciting animal sighting. The bison are so numerous that they don't even stop traffic anymore, as are the elk - unless there are young involved. Moose will still draw a few glances, even without calves. Mountain goats are a favourite for many Americans, which is odd, because mountain goats live on impossibly steep cliff faces, and you never get within 500 metres of one. Yet where ever there is a mountain goat, there will be an RV pulled over to the side of the road, its owners eagerly staring through huge binoculars. To me, that seems less interesting than seeing them on TV.
One of the star attractions in Yellowstone is a big-horn sheep. The one big horn sheep we saw caused a scene on the road, with 20 or more cars and campers pulled over and eagerly snapping away. This time we couldn't understand it for the opposite reason - in Canada the sheep are everywhere, and you are told to be wary of them because they have ticks and won't leave a campsite if they manage to get some food. No one is interested in the sheep. But in Yellowstone they are rare, and their appearance causes a minor sensation. And that is the crux of the matter - the only thing that really gets people excited about animals is scarcity. If its rare, its exciting.
Its odd, because its not really related to the appearance of the animal at all. Even a sighting where you can't make out any detail at all (like the mountain goats) is something people get excited about. A bighorn sheep looks alot like a normal sheep, but with big horns. A moose and an elk are hard to tell apart at a distance. While I began to recognise this, I was certainly not immune to the trap. At one point I thought I saw a beaver, and was very pleased to have seen such a rare creature. If I hadn't returned to the same spot the next day and seen that the beaver hadn't moved, and was in fact a log sticking out of the water, I would have gone home completely satisfied that I'd seen a beaver. I might even have put a photo of it on facebook.
Two thing everyone agrees are is the excitement of seeing a bear, and that of seeing a cub / calf of any animal. So a bear cub is like the holy grail. On our last day in Yellowstone (shortly after watching the Germany v Australia game - good day?) - we found the holy grail. Found is the wrong word. It is hard to miss when there is a traffic jam that makes the Pacific Highway on a Friday afternoon look fast flowing. Usually there is some decorum as to where you pull over and leave the car, but for a bear cub, its all forgotten. He was cute though.
The other thing I liked about Yellowstone was that it must be one of the world's best examples of managing the balance between human use and conservation. It is a huge wilderness area that it would take about 5 hours to drive around. There is only one real road through the park, which forms two scenic loops - like a big figure eight. They have managed to keep the area healthy enough that they can reintroduce extinct species, and within a kilometre or two of walking you can be completely alone. Yet the park welcomes over 3 million visitors a year, and surely is the most important resource in Wyoming's economy.
From Yellowstone we headed further south, and we've now arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah. Still more mountains, but, finally, it has gotten warm. Yesterday was our first day in North America without rain, and today the temperature reached the 80s (Fahrenheit - the only thing more absurd that the imperial system - its about 25 degrees)
Salt Lake City is of course the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - or Mormons as we know them. We took a tour of the main Temple complex today. When I say we took a tour, we just walked into the complex before we were approached by Sisters Rathburger and Main. When I say Sister, you are probably picturing old nuns in the Catholic image. Not so - these sisters were around twenty, wearing normal clothes, on their year of service, which the church mandates for its members - and, at least for Sister Rathburger, well, lets just say it seemed a waste.
The sisters explained the basics of the Mormon theology and history to us. Basically, they are Christians, and believe all the same things about Jesus and God and the Bible. But they also believe that there is a third testament, to add to old and new, which is called the book of Mormon. As the book of Mormon tells it, after Jesus was resurrected, his apostles (new ones, I think) appeared in North America and began spreading his word amongst the native Americans, long before Europeans got there. The book of Mormon was passed down through about 1000 years of prophets (each to their son - it was a family thing) until it got to Moroni. Moroni didn't have a son, so he buried the book - apparently time for sharing the message was over. Many centuries later, in 1820, a boy named Joseph Smith was trying to decide which of the many churches in America he should join, and Moroni (now in Angel form) appeared to him, explained that the other churches had deviated from god, and showed him where the book was buried, and how to translate it.
Joseph held onto this knowledge for a while, but eventually completed his translation and shared it with the world. The church museum houses the manuscript of his original translation (no word on the whereabouts of the original book, I noticed). Whatever else you might say about Joseph Smith, he must have had charisma, because by 1840 or so, he had a few thousand followers, and they set out to create Zion - a community in harmony with God. However, religious persecution being all the rage in those days, the other churches soon drove the Mormons out of New York. At first they reached Illinois, but the persecution continued, and Joseph Smith was assassinated.
At that point, the Saints, as they call themselves, decided they needed to get right out of existing society, if they were ever to be able to worship in peace. Under the leadership of Brigham Young they marched thousands of miles, over several years, until they found a safe place - their journey eventually coming to and end at the great Salt Lake valley, where they founded this city.
The sisters offered to send me the book of Mormon. At first I thought getting the book might be the discreetest way out of this conversation, but when they made clear that some of their fellow missionaries would drop it round in person, I backpedalled. It took some serious convincing before they believed that I had no permanent address at the moment, and didn't know when I'd be back in Australia (which is actually true). I did curse myself afterwards for not having the presence of mind to give them the address and phone number of a friend in Sydney. I think Ben would have particularly enjoyed their visit.
You can think what you want about their beliefs - it seems to me that at least it partially addresses the staggering arrogance of the old world churches that believed Christianity applied to all people, including Native Americans, but God didn't bother to tell them until Columbus, Cortes and Pizarro arrived - but it certainly makes a good story, and the settlers that marched here from the East coast must have had a heck of a journey.
Today Salt Lake City is a standard, mid size city. Its in a nice location, with some great architecture, and few overt signs of the Mormon culture (apart from the temple in the middle of the city, which is no different to the cathedral in any other city). There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about Utah and Salt Lake City. Contrary to what I have heard, it is perfectly simple to get a drink, and in fact we had lunch in a bar today with about the biggest beer selection I've ever seen. Then there is the big misconception that it seems almost everyone has. About the only thing I knew about Mormons before I got here was that they practice polygamy. This is not true. The Mormons outlawed the practice of polygamy over a hundred years ago. Just goes to show that once you get a reputation, its hard to shake (like the German soccer team - see the world cup blog ;-))
As we've started covering some serious miles now, I've attached a link to a map of our journey so far. Click here to see where we've been.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Leaving the mountains
We’re back in the USA now. Even when you cross the border into the middle of nowhere and the back of beyond, which seems a fair way to describe Montana, you get the same stern faced examination from customs. I’ve figured out now that part of their training must be to simply ask you a string of questions to which the answers are unimportant, just to see how you react, and on the off chance that you blurt out something about how much you hate the infidel. I’m pretty sure that when the border guard asked me how I met Kate I could have said I bought her at market in Siberia, and he wouldn’t have cared – as long as I didn’t start avoiding eye contact or sweating profusely. I didn’t test my theory though.
Once we were back in the USA I spent a while searching my IPod for the song of the same name, before I realised that I was looking for “Back in the USSR” by the Beatles, which is not quite the same. The next best song I could think of was Born in the USA. When I asked Kate about Bruce Springsteen on her Iphone, she asked whether he was the guy who played at the Sheaf just before we left. I said I thought that was unlikely.
Actually, Kate’s knowledge of all things pop culture and music is proving to be almost as bad as my own. When I suggested a game of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon o our last hike, not only had she not heard of the game, she had no idea who Kevin Bacon was.
“You know, the guy from footloose”
“Footloose? – is that a movie or something?”
You may be wondering why we would want to play a game like “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” anyway. The answer, like so many things in this part of the world, has to do with bears. A bear is at its most dangerous if you surprise it. If the bear hears you coming, it will generally get out of your way before you get anywhere near it, but if you are walking silently around a corner and happen upon a bear, it may be startled and tempted to attack. Accordingly, it’s important to keep talking and making noise as you walk. However when you have 22km day of walking planned, it’s difficult to keep the conversation going for the entire time. Hence games like the Kevin Bacon one, just to keep you talking.
Having found that pop culture based games were of limited use to us, we found other topics to talk about. Kate gave me an extensive briefing about the rules of the Americas Cup, which remain a mystery to me. As I understand it now, the holder of the Cup gets to decide a venue and accepts a challenge every couple of years. There is a series, called the Louis Vuitton series, which, ostensibly, decides which boat gets to challenge. But, the holder is obliged to accept a challenge from anyone, and in the recent series, Oracle, the challenger, simply ignored the LV series and made its own challenge. If this is possible, why is there a challenger series? Apparently there is no answer to this question.
One way or another, it worked, because we made it to our campsite without any bear incidents. There is always a balance to be struck here – you want to see a bear, but not get killed by it. Unfortunately, when you are hiking, ensuring the latter generally means making sure of the former. So no bear sighting either.
We were in Banff, on a hike recommended to us by the parks service as ‘just about the only option at this time of year’. The entire hike followed Lake Minnewanka, first out to LM22 (the campsites are named for their distance from the trailhead, then back over two days, camping at LM 9, with the plan to head up to a pass and lookout after setting up our camp. By the time we got to LM (however (still bear free) the previous day’s walk was taking its toll, particularly in blister form, and the weather was swinging around too. We also noticed, to our pleasant surprise, that the camp site was completely empty – we knew there had been three other groups booked into this site, so we had expected to find a few people already there. An empty campsite seemed to good to give up, and with a shower coming through we decided we might try for the pass the next day and took shelter in the tent instead.
It was only about thirty minutes later that we were woken up by the inquiring voice of a Park Ranger
“Hello? Anybody there”
I assumed that he wanted to check our camping permits, so I started fishing around for ours, when he told me that he wasn’t here for that.
“We’re evacuating the campsite due to a bear incident” he told us.
As it turned out, the reason the campsite was empty was that, no more than an hour before we arrived, a grizzly bear had torn open the tent of two Swiss campers staying there, and all the other campers had already been evacuated.
So, for the second time, our planned two-night hike became a one-night hike, but, to be honest, it wasn’t all bad. We were facing a 10km walk back along a track we’d already covered, carrying packs that seemed to be getting heavier. Instead, we jumped in the boat on the lake that took us right back to our car, which in turn took us back to a shower and a proper bed, courtesy of the local YMCA. I’ve never stayed in a “Y” before, but, other than the range of community outreach flyers at the counter, it seems like any other hotel. Fun to stay at? Really depends what you make of it.
Kate and I couldn’t quite agree on the Swiss campers. I felt that, given they were actually unhurt, they should count themselves lucky to have seen a grizzly bear so close up. Kate did not agree and forced me to admit that I would indeed have been terrified if a grizzly tore open our tent.
The bear incident, combined with the unremitting rain (we are now into our 25th consecutive day with at least some rain) dampened our enthusiasm for Banff and the Rockies a little, so we decided it was time to move on, first to Glacier National Park in Montana, but shortly thereafter 800km south to Yellowstone.
At Glacier all we wanted was to do one day walk and move on, so we went into the information centre to check out the options. Our first walk of choice was closed because it was still waist deep in snow. Second choice was closed because there was a carcass there that bears were feeding on, and the third choice was ‘open but not recommended’ due to excessive bear activity; it was being patrolled by a grizzly mother with two cubs in tow. Kate pointed out that, as the bear always attacks the smaller person, this was really her choice, and there was no way we were going on that walk. I couldn't fault that logic, so we joined the rest of the park on the only trail that was open.
I actually preferred Glacier to Jasper and Banff. There is only a small, poor quality road into the park, which contains campsites with cold water and little else, apart from the obligatory railroad built hotel from the early part of the century. In short, far more of a wilderness feel than Banff, which has chef hat restaurants, multiple Starbucks and McDonalds and even a Louis Vuitton boutique in the park. And on our walk we added moose, accompanied by two calves that can’t have been more than a few days old, to our list of spotted wildlife.
Nevertheless, we’ve had our fill of that part of the world, and we are now on our way to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, which, I gather, is still mountainous, but a different eco system and, importantly, a different climate.
I’m blogging from the car, which might give you a clue as to how straight to roads are. Kate is driving, but if I had to, I think I could just about set the cruise control and blog as I drove. There are very few turns to negotiate.
Once you leave the mountains, it’s a fairly dramatic change in scenery. Montana contains less than a million people. From the map I would say it looks at least the size of France, so you can imagine it’s fairly sparsely settled. While the mountains are still in the distance to my right, apart from that it is green fields, dotted with the occasional herd of cattle, as far as the eye can see. Over the gentle hills it’s occasionally possible to see the road for many kilometres in front of us, and there is rarely another car in sight.
Once we were back in the USA I spent a while searching my IPod for the song of the same name, before I realised that I was looking for “Back in the USSR” by the Beatles, which is not quite the same. The next best song I could think of was Born in the USA. When I asked Kate about Bruce Springsteen on her Iphone, she asked whether he was the guy who played at the Sheaf just before we left. I said I thought that was unlikely.
Actually, Kate’s knowledge of all things pop culture and music is proving to be almost as bad as my own. When I suggested a game of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon o our last hike, not only had she not heard of the game, she had no idea who Kevin Bacon was.
“You know, the guy from footloose”
“Footloose? – is that a movie or something?”
You may be wondering why we would want to play a game like “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” anyway. The answer, like so many things in this part of the world, has to do with bears. A bear is at its most dangerous if you surprise it. If the bear hears you coming, it will generally get out of your way before you get anywhere near it, but if you are walking silently around a corner and happen upon a bear, it may be startled and tempted to attack. Accordingly, it’s important to keep talking and making noise as you walk. However when you have 22km day of walking planned, it’s difficult to keep the conversation going for the entire time. Hence games like the Kevin Bacon one, just to keep you talking.
Having found that pop culture based games were of limited use to us, we found other topics to talk about. Kate gave me an extensive briefing about the rules of the Americas Cup, which remain a mystery to me. As I understand it now, the holder of the Cup gets to decide a venue and accepts a challenge every couple of years. There is a series, called the Louis Vuitton series, which, ostensibly, decides which boat gets to challenge. But, the holder is obliged to accept a challenge from anyone, and in the recent series, Oracle, the challenger, simply ignored the LV series and made its own challenge. If this is possible, why is there a challenger series? Apparently there is no answer to this question.
One way or another, it worked, because we made it to our campsite without any bear incidents. There is always a balance to be struck here – you want to see a bear, but not get killed by it. Unfortunately, when you are hiking, ensuring the latter generally means making sure of the former. So no bear sighting either.
We were in Banff, on a hike recommended to us by the parks service as ‘just about the only option at this time of year’. The entire hike followed Lake Minnewanka, first out to LM22 (the campsites are named for their distance from the trailhead, then back over two days, camping at LM 9, with the plan to head up to a pass and lookout after setting up our camp. By the time we got to LM (however (still bear free) the previous day’s walk was taking its toll, particularly in blister form, and the weather was swinging around too. We also noticed, to our pleasant surprise, that the camp site was completely empty – we knew there had been three other groups booked into this site, so we had expected to find a few people already there. An empty campsite seemed to good to give up, and with a shower coming through we decided we might try for the pass the next day and took shelter in the tent instead.
It was only about thirty minutes later that we were woken up by the inquiring voice of a Park Ranger
“Hello? Anybody there”
I assumed that he wanted to check our camping permits, so I started fishing around for ours, when he told me that he wasn’t here for that.
“We’re evacuating the campsite due to a bear incident” he told us.
As it turned out, the reason the campsite was empty was that, no more than an hour before we arrived, a grizzly bear had torn open the tent of two Swiss campers staying there, and all the other campers had already been evacuated.
So, for the second time, our planned two-night hike became a one-night hike, but, to be honest, it wasn’t all bad. We were facing a 10km walk back along a track we’d already covered, carrying packs that seemed to be getting heavier. Instead, we jumped in the boat on the lake that took us right back to our car, which in turn took us back to a shower and a proper bed, courtesy of the local YMCA. I’ve never stayed in a “Y” before, but, other than the range of community outreach flyers at the counter, it seems like any other hotel. Fun to stay at? Really depends what you make of it.
Kate and I couldn’t quite agree on the Swiss campers. I felt that, given they were actually unhurt, they should count themselves lucky to have seen a grizzly bear so close up. Kate did not agree and forced me to admit that I would indeed have been terrified if a grizzly tore open our tent.
The bear incident, combined with the unremitting rain (we are now into our 25th consecutive day with at least some rain) dampened our enthusiasm for Banff and the Rockies a little, so we decided it was time to move on, first to Glacier National Park in Montana, but shortly thereafter 800km south to Yellowstone.
At Glacier all we wanted was to do one day walk and move on, so we went into the information centre to check out the options. Our first walk of choice was closed because it was still waist deep in snow. Second choice was closed because there was a carcass there that bears were feeding on, and the third choice was ‘open but not recommended’ due to excessive bear activity; it was being patrolled by a grizzly mother with two cubs in tow. Kate pointed out that, as the bear always attacks the smaller person, this was really her choice, and there was no way we were going on that walk. I couldn't fault that logic, so we joined the rest of the park on the only trail that was open.
I actually preferred Glacier to Jasper and Banff. There is only a small, poor quality road into the park, which contains campsites with cold water and little else, apart from the obligatory railroad built hotel from the early part of the century. In short, far more of a wilderness feel than Banff, which has chef hat restaurants, multiple Starbucks and McDonalds and even a Louis Vuitton boutique in the park. And on our walk we added moose, accompanied by two calves that can’t have been more than a few days old, to our list of spotted wildlife.
Nevertheless, we’ve had our fill of that part of the world, and we are now on our way to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, which, I gather, is still mountainous, but a different eco system and, importantly, a different climate.
I’m blogging from the car, which might give you a clue as to how straight to roads are. Kate is driving, but if I had to, I think I could just about set the cruise control and blog as I drove. There are very few turns to negotiate.
Once you leave the mountains, it’s a fairly dramatic change in scenery. Montana contains less than a million people. From the map I would say it looks at least the size of France, so you can imagine it’s fairly sparsely settled. While the mountains are still in the distance to my right, apart from that it is green fields, dotted with the occasional herd of cattle, as far as the eye can see. Over the gentle hills it’s occasionally possible to see the road for many kilometres in front of us, and there is rarely another car in sight.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Snow, Bears and Billy Joel
The weather forecasters in Canada leave a lot to be desired. I'm sure their argument would be that weather in the mountains is unpredictable, that each valley can have its own micro climate, and that the weather changes more quickly than people can check their forecasts - in short, that predicting the weather in the Rockies is a difficult thing to do.
I would be forced to disagree. I do not think typing in the words "overcast, with a high probability of precipitation", and then copying those words each day, should be too much of a challenge. But apparently it does present problems for some people, because, while the weather never really changes, the forecasts certainly do. I think the forecasters might be a bit like sports journalists, always wanting to be the one who picks the upset. In the same way as there is no glory is picking Roger Federer to win Wimbledon, there is no praise to be gained from predicting cloudy, rainy weather in Canada. Everyone wants to be the one that successfully predicted a sunny day, leading to many more sunny forecasts than sunny days.
Before we were aware of the low reliability of the weather forecasts, we relied on them to plan a hike. We waited two days until the weather was predicted to improve, then set out for Jacques Lake, a scenic 12km walk from the trail head, where we planned to spend two nights. The weather forecast for day one was 13 degrees and clearing, while day two was predicted to be a positively balmy 17, and sunny.
When we set out, it was already apparent that 13 degrees was optimistic, and the clearing had not yet begun. Nothing an extra layer of clothing couldn't fix though, so off we went, still hoping for better conditions.
I've posted some photos of the hike, so I will spare you the flowery descriptions of breathtaking scenery, and simply say that surrounds were very much what you'd expect from picture books of the Rockies. Small, still and isolated lakes, surrounded by steep hills absolutely covered in pines trees, with huge rock walls climbing out of the forests and leading to summits that were, for the most part, hidden in the clouds.
By the time we arrived at the campsite, the only thing that was clear was that the weather was not going to clear, and that it was not remotely close to 13 degrees. It had in fact begun to snow. Not real snow that stays on the ground, but just small flakes of frozen rain.
A new experience for me was the bear pole in the campsite. When you camp in a campground, you are required to leave all food and related items, as well as toiletries, in your car, to avoid attracting bears and other wildlife. In the back country, you obviously don't have a car, so designated campsites are equipped with a cable and pulley system that lets you suspend your food in the air. All the food goes into one backpack, which is hooked onto a steel cable, and pulled up between two trees. As the bears can climb trees and jump surprisingly high (allegedly) the food has to be at least 5 meters in the air and two meters away from the tree.
Having safely secured our food we made some conversation with the only other hiker staying at the campsite that night. An aspiring biologist, he was researching frogs for Parks Canada. He shared an interesting piece of information with us. If you want to see a bear, the best place to do so is actually by the side of the road. This is because bears seek out open grass where berries grow, and most of them have long since figured out that along the highways in the national parks are hundreds of kilometers of nature strip, bursting with the berries they seek. I was struck by the irony that by trekking as far as possible into the wilderness, I had apparently reduced my chances of encountering the wildlife. Kate, who, on being told that if a bear attacks a group of two or three people, it will always attack the smaller one first, recently purchased a canister of bear spray (capsicum spray), seemed mildly relieved.
We went to bed that night still hopeful that the weather would clear overnight and the promised sun would come. Instead, it got seriously cold overnight. While I had struggled with the boats in Central America, where Kate was very much in her element, the mountains saw a role reversal. Kate, it turned out, was not designed for the cold. She eventually got to sleep wearing two pairs of thermals, an ice breaker, a fleece and two (hers and mine) down jackets, which meant she barely fit into her sleeping bag.
Despite the cold, I wasn't entirely prepared for what greeted me outside the tent the next morning. Yesterday's half snow had turned into very real snow, and the world as I saw it was covered in 15 to 20 cm of the white stuff, which was still falling heavily. It was quite early, but I sensed that this was not how an 18 degree and sunny day would be likely to start. If I'd been skiing, it would have been the best day of my life.
A quick look around the campsite made clear that hanging around for a day making short walks and enjoying the outdoors was not really an option, and we had no trouble deciding to head back to civilization. While we couldn't stay there for a whole day, we could still enjoy the snow while we got ready and packed up. Again, there are photos, but I'll say that it was beautiful. The dense green forest had been transformed so completely that it was like waking up in a completely different place, where everything was clean and white instead of the slightly foreboding dark greenery.
As we hiked back and considered stopping for lunch, the unthinkable happened. It stopped snowing, and within twenty minutes there was as much blue sky over our heads as there was cloud. That triggered an almost euphoric feeling in both of us, as we soaked up some much missed vitamin D and admired the Rockies that finally looked the way they do in the postcards.
It didn't last, and by the time we had finished lunch and taken a large handful of photographs, the clouds set in again and the snow restarted. By then we were close to the car though, and unconcerned by the weather. While it had been only 40 minutes out of two days, overall I think we were lucky with the weather - the chance to see everything covered in fresh snow and glistening in the sun far outweighed the disappointment at the cold and cloud.
As we drove back to town, and the snow turned to rain, we had one more stroke of luck. We came up to an apparent accident on the road. There were three or four cars pulled over on the shoulder, hazard lights flashing. As we got closer, we saw that hadn't been an accident - the cars had all pulled over to watch as, unconcerned by his (or her) audience, a black bear feasted on berries, right by the side of the road.
It's actually been a few days since the hike now, and in that time we've seen a total of 5 bears, including one grizzly. I therefore retract any snide remarks I made regarding excessive warnings about bear safety.
Most of the bears we saw in the Icefields Parkway, the 200km road that goes from Jasper to Banff and claims, repeatedly, to be the best scenic road in the world. Well, Canadians claim that. Obviously the road itself doesn't claim anything.
It's hard to argue with the claim. Stops along the way include the Athabasca waterfalls and the Columbia Icefield, the largest glacier in North America. At the glacier there are signs to mark out the point which the glacier reached in each past decade. The sign for 1900 is hundreds of meters from the current glacier, and even since 1980 it has retracted by about 50 meters ( do assume it grows back out a bit each winter). More spectacular than the individual stops are the mountains either side of the road, which follows the Continental Divide, the very spine of the Rocky Mountains.
At the far end of the parkway are Lake Louise and Morain Lake. These two lakes must provide as many postcards as any other place on the planet. Anyone who has picked up the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald has seen a picture of Lake Louise, on a clear blue day (I wonder how long that photographer had to wait around) adverting organized tours to Canada.
Before checking out the lake, we checked into the local hostel and dropped into the attached bar for a late lunch / early dinner. It was happy hour, so we stayed for another beer. By then it had started raining again, so we pushed back the lake visit till the next day, and stayed for another beer. Before we knew it, the evening's main event kicked off. Karaoke.
You probably know where this is heading. Let me simply say that, despite claims sung (under a broad definition of singing) to the contrary, neither Kate nor I is in fact, the Piano Man, and we owe both Billy Joel and anyone present at Lake Louise HI last night an apology. When I first met Kate's sister, she told me that if I ever heard Kate sing, I would probably break up with her. Obviously, I didn't, but I can see how Rachel might have thought that I would. But something about stones and glass houses is coming to mind, so I should move on.
We did visit the lakes the next day, but with somewhat reduced levels of enthusiasm. It was such a familiar view that I felt as if I'd seen Lake Louise before, only in much nicer conditions. Moraine lake just didn't seem ready for tourists yet. In summer it is filled with water melting from the surrounding mountains, and its turquoise colour contrasts with the grey rock and white snow caps on the mountains that rise directly out of it. When we got there, the snow hadn't melted yet, so the lake was half empty. What water there was in the lake was still frozen, and covered by the same greying snow as everything around it, so it was hard to see where the lake started and finished. This has been a slightly frustrating theme of this trip so far - that June is still considered Spring here, and the Summer conditions don't really start until the latter half of July.
In other news, I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that I am rather enjoying writing this blog. As it turns out, there is a deeply frustrated writer somewhere inside me. Travel writing is great, but the football world cup is coming up - and when the world cup is happening, I have a very hard time thinking about anything else. With that in mind, and because I'm a member of the twitter / facebook inspired generation that believe any thought they have should instantly be shared with the whole world, I've started a second blog, all about the world cup. To create some interest in Australia, my first entry is my assessment of the Socceroos prospects. http://max-worldcup2010.blogspot.com/
I don't want to be spamming everyone's email, so I won't be sending out any notifications when I update this one - unless you ask me to.
I would be forced to disagree. I do not think typing in the words "overcast, with a high probability of precipitation", and then copying those words each day, should be too much of a challenge. But apparently it does present problems for some people, because, while the weather never really changes, the forecasts certainly do. I think the forecasters might be a bit like sports journalists, always wanting to be the one who picks the upset. In the same way as there is no glory is picking Roger Federer to win Wimbledon, there is no praise to be gained from predicting cloudy, rainy weather in Canada. Everyone wants to be the one that successfully predicted a sunny day, leading to many more sunny forecasts than sunny days.
Before we were aware of the low reliability of the weather forecasts, we relied on them to plan a hike. We waited two days until the weather was predicted to improve, then set out for Jacques Lake, a scenic 12km walk from the trail head, where we planned to spend two nights. The weather forecast for day one was 13 degrees and clearing, while day two was predicted to be a positively balmy 17, and sunny.
When we set out, it was already apparent that 13 degrees was optimistic, and the clearing had not yet begun. Nothing an extra layer of clothing couldn't fix though, so off we went, still hoping for better conditions.
I've posted some photos of the hike, so I will spare you the flowery descriptions of breathtaking scenery, and simply say that surrounds were very much what you'd expect from picture books of the Rockies. Small, still and isolated lakes, surrounded by steep hills absolutely covered in pines trees, with huge rock walls climbing out of the forests and leading to summits that were, for the most part, hidden in the clouds.
By the time we arrived at the campsite, the only thing that was clear was that the weather was not going to clear, and that it was not remotely close to 13 degrees. It had in fact begun to snow. Not real snow that stays on the ground, but just small flakes of frozen rain.
A new experience for me was the bear pole in the campsite. When you camp in a campground, you are required to leave all food and related items, as well as toiletries, in your car, to avoid attracting bears and other wildlife. In the back country, you obviously don't have a car, so designated campsites are equipped with a cable and pulley system that lets you suspend your food in the air. All the food goes into one backpack, which is hooked onto a steel cable, and pulled up between two trees. As the bears can climb trees and jump surprisingly high (allegedly) the food has to be at least 5 meters in the air and two meters away from the tree.
Having safely secured our food we made some conversation with the only other hiker staying at the campsite that night. An aspiring biologist, he was researching frogs for Parks Canada. He shared an interesting piece of information with us. If you want to see a bear, the best place to do so is actually by the side of the road. This is because bears seek out open grass where berries grow, and most of them have long since figured out that along the highways in the national parks are hundreds of kilometers of nature strip, bursting with the berries they seek. I was struck by the irony that by trekking as far as possible into the wilderness, I had apparently reduced my chances of encountering the wildlife. Kate, who, on being told that if a bear attacks a group of two or three people, it will always attack the smaller one first, recently purchased a canister of bear spray (capsicum spray), seemed mildly relieved.
We went to bed that night still hopeful that the weather would clear overnight and the promised sun would come. Instead, it got seriously cold overnight. While I had struggled with the boats in Central America, where Kate was very much in her element, the mountains saw a role reversal. Kate, it turned out, was not designed for the cold. She eventually got to sleep wearing two pairs of thermals, an ice breaker, a fleece and two (hers and mine) down jackets, which meant she barely fit into her sleeping bag.
Despite the cold, I wasn't entirely prepared for what greeted me outside the tent the next morning. Yesterday's half snow had turned into very real snow, and the world as I saw it was covered in 15 to 20 cm of the white stuff, which was still falling heavily. It was quite early, but I sensed that this was not how an 18 degree and sunny day would be likely to start. If I'd been skiing, it would have been the best day of my life.
A quick look around the campsite made clear that hanging around for a day making short walks and enjoying the outdoors was not really an option, and we had no trouble deciding to head back to civilization. While we couldn't stay there for a whole day, we could still enjoy the snow while we got ready and packed up. Again, there are photos, but I'll say that it was beautiful. The dense green forest had been transformed so completely that it was like waking up in a completely different place, where everything was clean and white instead of the slightly foreboding dark greenery.
As we hiked back and considered stopping for lunch, the unthinkable happened. It stopped snowing, and within twenty minutes there was as much blue sky over our heads as there was cloud. That triggered an almost euphoric feeling in both of us, as we soaked up some much missed vitamin D and admired the Rockies that finally looked the way they do in the postcards.
It didn't last, and by the time we had finished lunch and taken a large handful of photographs, the clouds set in again and the snow restarted. By then we were close to the car though, and unconcerned by the weather. While it had been only 40 minutes out of two days, overall I think we were lucky with the weather - the chance to see everything covered in fresh snow and glistening in the sun far outweighed the disappointment at the cold and cloud.
As we drove back to town, and the snow turned to rain, we had one more stroke of luck. We came up to an apparent accident on the road. There were three or four cars pulled over on the shoulder, hazard lights flashing. As we got closer, we saw that hadn't been an accident - the cars had all pulled over to watch as, unconcerned by his (or her) audience, a black bear feasted on berries, right by the side of the road.
It's actually been a few days since the hike now, and in that time we've seen a total of 5 bears, including one grizzly. I therefore retract any snide remarks I made regarding excessive warnings about bear safety.
Most of the bears we saw in the Icefields Parkway, the 200km road that goes from Jasper to Banff and claims, repeatedly, to be the best scenic road in the world. Well, Canadians claim that. Obviously the road itself doesn't claim anything.
It's hard to argue with the claim. Stops along the way include the Athabasca waterfalls and the Columbia Icefield, the largest glacier in North America. At the glacier there are signs to mark out the point which the glacier reached in each past decade. The sign for 1900 is hundreds of meters from the current glacier, and even since 1980 it has retracted by about 50 meters ( do assume it grows back out a bit each winter). More spectacular than the individual stops are the mountains either side of the road, which follows the Continental Divide, the very spine of the Rocky Mountains.
At the far end of the parkway are Lake Louise and Morain Lake. These two lakes must provide as many postcards as any other place on the planet. Anyone who has picked up the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald has seen a picture of Lake Louise, on a clear blue day (I wonder how long that photographer had to wait around) adverting organized tours to Canada.
Before checking out the lake, we checked into the local hostel and dropped into the attached bar for a late lunch / early dinner. It was happy hour, so we stayed for another beer. By then it had started raining again, so we pushed back the lake visit till the next day, and stayed for another beer. Before we knew it, the evening's main event kicked off. Karaoke.
You probably know where this is heading. Let me simply say that, despite claims sung (under a broad definition of singing) to the contrary, neither Kate nor I is in fact, the Piano Man, and we owe both Billy Joel and anyone present at Lake Louise HI last night an apology. When I first met Kate's sister, she told me that if I ever heard Kate sing, I would probably break up with her. Obviously, I didn't, but I can see how Rachel might have thought that I would. But something about stones and glass houses is coming to mind, so I should move on.
We did visit the lakes the next day, but with somewhat reduced levels of enthusiasm. It was such a familiar view that I felt as if I'd seen Lake Louise before, only in much nicer conditions. Moraine lake just didn't seem ready for tourists yet. In summer it is filled with water melting from the surrounding mountains, and its turquoise colour contrasts with the grey rock and white snow caps on the mountains that rise directly out of it. When we got there, the snow hadn't melted yet, so the lake was half empty. What water there was in the lake was still frozen, and covered by the same greying snow as everything around it, so it was hard to see where the lake started and finished. This has been a slightly frustrating theme of this trip so far - that June is still considered Spring here, and the Summer conditions don't really start until the latter half of July.
In other news, I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that I am rather enjoying writing this blog. As it turns out, there is a deeply frustrated writer somewhere inside me. Travel writing is great, but the football world cup is coming up - and when the world cup is happening, I have a very hard time thinking about anything else. With that in mind, and because I'm a member of the twitter / facebook inspired generation that believe any thought they have should instantly be shared with the whole world, I've started a second blog, all about the world cup. To create some interest in Australia, my first entry is my assessment of the Socceroos prospects. http://max-worldcup2010.blogspot.com/
I don't want to be spamming everyone's email, so I won't be sending out any notifications when I update this one - unless you ask me to.
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