Turd

We've spent the last two days away from the Turd staying closer to Bryce Canyon (which is about 50 miles away).

I was going to make a nice post today wrapping up our time in Page, and wooing you all with the enthralling time we've had here in southern Utah.

Instead, I received this in an e-mail:

"i would suggest that you research what the cost of a rental would have been and then come up with a fair price."

This, from David's MOTHER. I think you'll all recall my slightly irritated outburst at the thought of giving the turd back for free. Sadly this has upset my balance also.

GRRRR!!

Tomorrow we head north towards Salt Lake City. I hope to post more interesting news then.

Toodle-pip!

Vegas, Grand Canyon, Page

Willikers!! What a long time off the ‘net! Was beginning to get withdrawal symptoms trying to figure out how to organise my life with the complete lack of Battlestar Galactica instant information.

First some explanation – the previous post from Death Valley was in fact drafted a while back, but sat in Live Writer waiting for a proper connection – so I uploaded it today. Sorry, the pictures don’t get bigger if you click on them.

This post will also come from Live Writer, although I might add some pics manually after its done.

Sit back, relax, this is gonna be a long ride.

Vegas Day 1
We arose at around 0530 to ensure our journey out of Death Valley was trouble free, and we’re both glad we did. The heat and steep ascent out of the Valley might have been the death of the Jeep or the Turd had we left later…

Several hours later we arrived in Vegas.

After surveying the lie of the land at the Broadmeadows RSL Sam’s Town (and being served tinned corned beef) we decided that we would spend as little time as possible there.

Thankfully they have a free shuttle bus into the main strip, which is about 5 miles away, along what seems to be a strip of the Vegas Ghetto. We had entertained getting public transport back, but on seeing the other clientele we decided that the 21:30 return shuttle would be the go. Unless I wanted some crack, in which case we would be catching the bus.

It could just be me, but I don’t see what the fuss is all about. Yes it’s large, yes it’s gaudy and extravagant, but…. so what? It’s like a giant glittery Crown Casino, and there’s plenty of bogans to boot.

One thing that seems VERY cool is the fact that booze is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are allowed to drink booze wherever you like (in the streets is fine) and it is LEGAL to be intoxicated – in fact, there are state laws that expressly forbid intoxication to be made illegal by local government.

P’raps it’s one of those places in which you need to spend a truckload of money to have fun. One thing we did spend money on was dinner.

I’d gotten pretty excited at the thought of a Vegas staple – the buffet. After a quick online browse (thanks to whoever had left their Sprint wireless card open to outside connections) there were a few places that were mentioned a fair bit – the Bellagio and Paris.

For our first night we headed to the Bellagio. The amount of food both available and consumed was frightening. I was a bit put off though by watching some of the other patrons. There’s something very wrong about the way some of these people eat – there doesn’t seem to be any pleasure, just the frenzy of trying to stuff as much in your face as quickly as possible.

We returned home, ridiculously full.

Vegas Day 2
The power steering in the Jeep has been playing up recently, and while in Death Valley I’d noticed a fair bit of fluid had been leaking out. A quick diagnostic indicated that the power steering fluid return line was the most likely culprit, so with this in hand I trundled off to Autozone to get a new hose. On the way the pump was making some nasty noises (thankfully just due to low fluid).

To cut a long story short, the hose I bought was about 5cm too short (of course) and I had to ride back to the store to get some more. Finally it was all done successfully, but there went the morning.

I cleaned up, and we headed into the strip again, hoping to win big on a random 20 million dollar jackpot. Unfortunately we didn’t, and soon grew tired of the machines relentlessly eating our money.

So we decided to eat relentlessly. This time at the buffet at Paris.

The food was French themed, and very nice – even better than the Bellagio. Again, we ate too much. By the time we arrived home I was worried I might have a cardiac arrest from too much food.

And thus our time in Vegas was over.

Vegas to Grand Canyon
Here’s a tip from the (now) wise – while Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon appear very close together on the map (they are) there’s nearly 300 miles of road that need to be covered to get there….

….and so we drove. Over the Hoover Dam, and into Arizona. Arizona is frickin’ hot, windy and dusty. It was not pleasant at all.

We pulled into a gas station in Kingman, where a friendly attendant seemed concerned by something under the Turd. Apparently broken shock absorbers are no good.

An hour or so and 800 dollars later we pulled we were on the road again. This time on I40 – surely the least maintained of any US Interstate.

As the sun began to set, we arrived at the Grand Canyon. The top of the canyon is over 7000ft. The undulations of the land in the USA will never cease to surprise me.

Sleep was welcome that night.

Grand Canyon Day 1 – The Rim
Learning from our experience at Yosemite, we decided to do something easy for the first day – so the Rim Trail, which involves barely any up or down, seemed to fit the bill.

Of course part of the trail is closed for roadwork, so we hiked from the Visitor Centre to Hopi Point, which was a pretty leisurely few miles.

We intended to catch the sunset, but…. missed the bus. Oops.

Grand Canyon Day 2 – Kaibab Trail
Kebab trail. Mmm. Kebabs. I was hoping that someone might serve me a kebab when we reached the bottom, but alas this wasn’t the case.

The Canyon is much more interesting when you are actually inside it. The layers of rock are very distinct.

Downhill was very easy. We stopped, had a bite to eat, took some photos, and headed back up.

Uphill was marginally harder, but nothing compared to the falls at Yosemite.

We caught our first glimpse of mules on the trail….

…and I managed to rip off a quick panorama (which I will add at the end of this post!).

This Condor is one of the rarest birds in the world….

….so of course it is in black and white to show this off.

That night we went out to Yaki Point to catch the sunset.

Despite all my fancy equipment, Kat best captured the essence of the sunset in the Canyon.

Grand Canyon Day 3 – Bright Angel Trail
With our appetites whetted by our success on the Kaibab Trail we set off towards the Indian Village, which is at the plateau floor of the canyon. In case you’re wondering, we didn’t get to the Colorado River, in fact we barely saw it – something I was pretty disappointed about, but hey, that’s what you get for not being prepared.

This outcrop is called “the battleship” for reasons that seem quite obvious.

The hike down was quite easy.

Three hours later we were having lunch at the Indian Garden – which is a lovely oasis in comparison with the heat of the canyon.

We decided not to hike on to the edge of the plateau, something we would regret later.

So we started the journey back up. By now it was getting close to 100F.

Boy it was hot. The trail is very steep, and the going was slow. We made full use of the rest houses at 3 miles and 1.5 miles. We met a guy from Phoenix who told us we should have hiked to the edge of the plateau, as it was flat, and the view was supposed to be excellent. Argh.

We learnt that on average 12 people need rescuing each day, of which 4 are by helicopter – and that 2 people a week die in the canyon….

Cheery thoughts on our ascent upwards in the heat.

Finally at nearly 5pm we arrived at the top, half dead. A quick ice-cream sure did hit the spot. We headed to the grocery store and picked up a few well earned beers.

Beer, dinner, bed. What a day.

Grand Canyon Day 4 – Nothing Much
We were pretty knackered after the previous day’s activities, so we took it very easy.

We unhooked the Jeep and went for a quick drive out to the East Rim.

There were HEAPS of tourists there, and it was very hazy in the Canyon – but we did get our first real glimpse of the Colorado River.

One day we’d like to return, as you can do 14 day raft trips down the river through the Canyon – that would be AWESOME.

The vista from the east is totally different to what you see at the South Rim. There’s so much canyon, and so little time. We’ve learned that to fully appreciate it, you’d want to be doing multi-day hikes into the canyon and staying at the bottom.

Grand Canyon to Page
Only around 130 miles to travel today, which seemed like a short drive down the road in comparison with our previous journey. The break from driving had been great and I was feeling refreshed.

The landscape (of course) changes, yet again.

We’re in Navajo land now, and there’s plenty of roadside stalls selling rugs, jewellery and jerky.

Everything is stunning, but hot… so hot…

We arrived in Page just before lunchtime, witnessing some of the worst overtaking manoeuvres I think I’ve ever seen. Double lines? Who cares! Can’t see what’s coming around the blind corner? Doesn’t matter!

The Turd wasn’t doing any overtaking, but was running super strong.

Did I mention it was hot? We checked in with the guy sporting “thug life” tattoos on his fingers, and got set up. A quick trip down to the local auto parts store yielded a brand new power steering pump, and a power steering pump pulley removal tool. Yes they really do have a tool specifically for removing the pulley from a power steering pump.

We did a bit of shopping, indulged in some Smirnoff Vodka Mojito, and met our next door neighbours who have an awesome RV. I trundled off to bed quite wasted.

If you’re reading this you made it to the bottom of this post!

Congratulations! As a bonus, you get to look at (and download if you like) these full resolution panoramas from Kaibab and Bright Angel.

First up Bright Angel. We hiked down to the trees at the very bottom. Phew.

Best to click on this one.... it's large... this is a view from the Kaibab Trail. Best to download the file from Picasaweb if you can.... for full panoramic goodness. Careful though, it's over 7MB.

That should be enough for today I think…. tomorrow I’ll finish up with our time at Page (including the thrilling saga of the power steering pump).

Death Valley Day 1

We weren't sure what to tackle here in Death Valley. Stupidly I hadn't realised that winter was the peak season here - not surprisingly since the average June maximum temperature is around 46C.

We filled up our nice 20L Jug'o'Water (enough for about 2.5 days in the heat) headed up the road towards Stovepipe Wells.

A short (long) 2 mile trip up a heavily corrugated dirt road brought us to Mosaic Canyon. You will not be surprised to learn that this is a canyon.

I don't think I've ever been in a canyon before, but it was fascinating to see the hard rock (marble) where it has resisted the water, and the masses of little rocks caught up in silt which still form the canyon walls.

The marble is super-smooth - I'm not sure whether this is from the passing of the water, or the many people who touch it as they go past.

Even though it's desolate, the landscape is stunning.

There are no clouds in the sky here in Death Valley. The sun is relentless. There is very little shade, even in the canyon. It's stinking hot in the sun, but surprisingly in the shade it's relatively cool. There was a slight breeze too which was lovely.

We saw this little lizard running around. He has HUGE feet, and a tail that he holds up like a scorpion's stinger when he runs around.

There's some guy with a tripod in this photo.

I don't even know what this is a picture of, but I still think it looks cool.

To be honest most/all of my photos from yesterday really sucked ass. Oh well. All pictures today presented to you by Kat.

After we'd finished at the canyon we wandered down the the Stovepipe Wells General store to ponder the heat. Boy it was hot. Hot, hot, HOT.

Somewhat foolishly we set off up the road to Titus Canyon. The drive there was fine, but the 3 miles uphill at slow speed really heated the Jeep up. So much so that when we got to the top, the cap popped off the water reservoir and we had a nice coolant explosion.

Hmm.

We went for a short hike, but it was so hot we soon abandoned it.

Returning to the Jeep I added some more water, and we set off down the hill. Everything seemed fine, until we started up the hill back to the turd. The temperature kept spiking up so we had to stop a couple of times.

Good thing we had a couple of beers to keep us busy while we waited. I added some more water, we let it cool down, and finally set off back up the hill.

Seems like initially I hadn't been revving the engine enough, so the main fan wasn't spinning fast enough to offset the heat. Finally we made it to the top of the hill, and everything was good.

Even though none of these photos are mine, we still get to have some still life. I've never seen cacti in their native habitat before.

Let me tell you that Death Valley is not to be treated lightly. Whilst there are always cars passing, and there's a good chance that you'd be fine (as long as you were sensible and packed enough water) it's not the sort of place that you'd want to get stuck.

Sadly, in that frame of mind we didn't venture out today. Perhaps we're just overcautious, but sitting around in the desert waiting for help doesn't sound like a whole bunch of fun to me.

I'm disappointed that we didn't get an opportunity to see more, or photograph more, but I guess it'll always be here. Even with the changes in our environment the desert is something that's going to remain.

Yes We're Alive

Alas here in Page, we've had no innernet.

Tomorrow I hope we return to online love, there are many stories and pictures to be told and shown.

Lots of love....

Death Valley to Las Vegas to No WiFi

Well here we are in Vegas.

We got up at 0530 to leave the Valley, and let me tell you, I'm glad we did. Even though we went at the coolest time of the day the Jeep still had some issues with heat. If you ever get to read the Death Valley entry (I'm running on hijacked wifi here in Vegas) you'll understand what I mean.

Sam's Town sux. That is all.

I've spent all morning replacing the power steering fluid return line on the Jeep, so am a little short on enthusiasm for blog writing.

Tomorrow we leave for the Grand Canyon, and I'm not sure whether we will have access for the next week or so.....

......so it looks like there will be a big Death Vally/Vegas/Grand Canyon update when we can.

In the meantime, hope life is good....

Internal Server Error

As you may know, I'm not the typical nerd, in that I don't have an overwhelming hatred of Microsoft and their products. Sure I'm not a lover of Vista, but doesn't seem like many other are either.

Today I've been trialling Microsoft Live Writer. I don't think it's going to be a regular thing for me.

With Daniel's help I got over the issue with not being able to centre images, but unfortunatly you can't see the fruits of my labour - as when I try to publish to Blogger it fails.

It could be the net connection here, so until I'm on a faster one we'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Early tomorrow morning (before the heat) we're leaving Death Valley and heading to Vegas - yes the real thing, not the Brisbane imitation. Wish us luck, and we'll present our full report on Death Valley from there. I hope.

Mojito Wednesday, Yosemite to Death Valley

Wednesday - Mojito Day/Night
Neither of us felt a whole lot like driving a long way given the nightmare awaiting us on Thursday. So it seemed like a perfect opportunity for Mojito Wednesday.

Not sure what Mojito Wednesday is, but it involved (for us) a 1.75L bottle of Bacardi Mojito. Pre-mixed, and ready to serve ladies and gentlemen.

Let me tell you Mr. Bacardi didn't disappoint. Not quite the same as a Mojito with brown sugar and muddling and such, but from a bottle, not too bad.

The afternoon and evening progressed as one might imagine. Despite my idea of getting up early and not being hung over, this was not to be the case....

Thursday - Yosemite to Death Valley
It seems that when I planned some of the legs of this trip, I only paid attention to the relative distance of places on the map, and didn't check the actual distance using Google Maps.

This really caught up to us on Thursday - as we spent nearly 10 hours on the road.

But I'm pleased to note that the day passed without any incident from either Turd or Jeep, which is impressive since we ascended to nearly 10000ft, and then returned nearly to only about 2000ft in Death Valley.

Sadly we didn't spend any time at Yosemite on the route we took out, which turns out to be stupid, as it was even more stunning than the valley. The granite peaks are covered in snow and trees and look simply stunning. Of course I don't have any pictures, don't be silly.

This is the view from just past Tioga Pass, the highest point of our trip. The lake is still partly frozen as you can see.

This is the view from one of our (many) stops on the way down from the pass. You can see the steep grade of the road winding down on the left side of the picture. The Turd is like a giant brick in this circumstance, and picks up speed like you wouldn't believe. Happy to report that the overhauled brakes were functioning perfectly, and apart from the 8% grade, the trip down was fairly relaxing.


Once we were over the pass, we hooked the Jeep back up. It was great to have some company at the helm again.

The scenery changes dramatically once you leave the park - the Sierra Nevada mountains stretch up on your right hand side, and on the left, there are smaller hills. It's wide open and fairly desolate.


As you can see there's still plenty of snow on these mountains.
Probably not enough to ride on, but it still looks beautiful.


It seems that in California they still haven't realised that they shouldn't be growing crops in the middle of the desert. What country does that sound like to you??


About a billion hours later we turned off towards Death Valley, and the landscape changed again. It seemed to be getting hotter and hotter the whole time (even though it was now around 6pm).


The land is dry here, and looks more volcanic. The hours passed....


Finally a sign that we were nearing our destination.


But don't get too excited, still 12 miles of 6-8% grade to go down. That's just what we needed.

Finally we arrived at Panamint Springs Resort - and it was like a little oasis in the desert. The neon Land Shark sign in the bar/restaurant was like a beacon for thirsty travellers.

Abandoning our budget, we decided to have dinner - and a great dinner it was - one of the best burgers I've ever eaten in my life. I've rarely (if ever) been asked how I want my burger cooked, and medium-rare was a great choice. Mmmm... burger.

The atmosphere was great - eating dinner looking out onto the mountains. Mmm... Land Shark.

The sunset was spectacular, so I decided to fiddle with a long exposure. It turned out ok I suppose.


Even though it was dark it was still pretty hot - a contrast from Yosemite where it was getting quite chilly at night.

Bedtime.

Big Day at Yosemite National Park

What a big day it was yesterday. I shot over 2GB of photos, which is the first time I've filled a card, ever. Good thing most of them were crap, otherwise we'd be nearly out of space on the laptop.

Today I made the mistake of uploading my images to Picasa first, thinking it would be a breeze to then link to them from within the blog. Not so friends, it's a FUCKING PAIN IN THE ASS.

Next time I will stick to the old skool method (which is also a pain in the ass to be honest).

Merced Grove - Giant Sequoias

First up yesterday was Merced Grove - one of several groves in Yosemite which are home to Giant Sequoias. Surprisingly, these giant creatures are quite used to humans now, and don't get surprised at all when you creep up on them.

This picture of some dumbass trying to take a picture should give you a sense of the size of them.

They are just huge, and words barely begin to describe how majestic they are.

If you look closely at the trunk of this one, you will see what appears to be a figure trapped in the tree. Perhaps this unlucky traveller really annoyed the gods of the forest one day.

Now they must spend all of eternity trapped in the trunk of the tree, gazing out at their fellow man.

As we hiked back up the trail, we saw a giant silver tree stretching upwards. I'd love to say it was raw talent that led to this shot, but alas, it's more a case of serendipity. Regardless, I still like the way it turned out.

Can't have to much of a good thing huh? There are some other ones with the camera shooting right up the trunk which are cool as well but I don't want you falling asleep in the middle of the post.

I really do LUURRRRVE my shiny new tripod, and it seems like the butterflies do as well. I'm starting to wonder how I ever lived without it. It opens up a whole new dimension of photography that wasn't even possible before!

Granite at Play

I've been banging on and on about crappy light (which is really an excuse for my poor skills as a photographer) so we decided to hang around Yosemite until late afternoon. Even though it was a long day, it was worth every second of it.

I continue to be impressed with the quality that comes out of Kat's A720IS. It's a bit annoying that she manages to take such good pictures. I'm almost at the point where I start taking lessons from her.....

This is Bridalveil Falls. Suppose it's named for a bride's veil. I only include this due to the difficulties in getting the shot - the spray is quite drenching, and the stupid people standing IN FRONT of the camera and tripod also make life difficult.

This, folks, is Yosemite Falls. We are standing at the valley bottom in this photo. We are also being absolutely consumed by mosquitoes as well - guess the pools of water in the meadow serve as an ideal breeding ground for the little c***s. We climbed to the top of the fall. Geez it's a long way when you look at it like that. Phew.

The late afternoon really did make the sky (nearly) that blue. I can't help myself but tweak the vibrance slider just a LITTLE bit.

So this is the famous Half Dome.
Nerds among us may draw some similarity to the Sierra Studios logo - this is no accident!

I really love how the granite looks. Over time, giant layers of the rock exfoliate away, forming the strange patterns. Look in the centre of the image - can you see the eye staring back at you?

All right, just to make it easier on you, a close up. You can see the layers that have sheared off much more clearly.

Looking away from Mirror Lake.

I've been thinking about combining multiple images into one for a while. Apparently it's called High Dynamic Range Imaging. Basically it means you can combine multiple exposure levels so that you can bring details out in both shadows and highlight (of which normally you would have to sacrifice one).

My first attempt didn't have enough images (it's only made from two) but you can see that the sky and the tree are now visible. The tree was super dark, and the sky super bright.....

The second is a shot of the North Dome using Mirror Lake as a .... mirror. This one's a bit better, but also suffers from a lack of images - being made only of three, with probably not enough range to do it justice. Still, looking pretty darn cool.

Finally this one, which I think is the best. North Dome, Half Dome and Mirror Lake all in glorious hyper-colour. I think this shall be my style, hyper-real colours and such.

Remind me not to upload my pics to Picasa first. Still it means there's a Yosemite gallery now.

Turd
The turd had its brakes fixed on Monday - the rear pads were fuxx0red. The difference is amazing. Thanks, David. How about telling me they were nearly ready to be changed!! Never mind the small issue with going up a driveway that was too steep. Oops.. good thing nothing's badly damaged....

Tomorrow the Turd crosses through Yosemite, via Tioga Pass. The Jeep will remain unhooked. Today I tried to find an always-on circuit on the fuse panel that we could use for the Brake Buddy but there appears to be nothing without the ignition being on. Perhaps I'll just remove the coil......

Rock on.