Day 27 - Hoover Dam and the Road to Santa Monica

We checked out early the next morning, everyone met up in the main foyer at 8:30 in the morning so that we could make our way out of Vegas before hitting any peak hour traffic. Our first stop of the morning, was the old Las Vegas sign, after all, we couldn't leave without showing Vegas how to really dress up haha! We grabbed a few quick photo's, but couldn't really take too many, because there was a line up and it started raining as well...

We then headed towards the Hoover Dam on our way out of the city, it was huge! It was most probably over a 100m drop on one of the sides! We walked across the entire length of the Dam but didn't go on any of the tours that took us inside, because the lines were huge and we had to press on to make it to Santa Monica, the end of Route 66!

We stopped of at a few more historical sites along the highway, as well as another original Route 66 Diner called Mr D'z, where we had lunch, they served classic food and drink, it was also were Adam and Myself tried our first root beer floats... I can tell you right now I am definitely not a fan haha! The food however, was really nice!

We then continued on through the desert, realising that we still had an entire bag left of fireworks! There was only one thing for us to do... LET THEM ALL OFF!! We went for about an hour before an off-duty fireman drove up to us in his car and said that there was a $2500 fine for letting of fire crackers in that area and that someone will most probably be along pretty soon, considering how far away he spotted some of the fireworks we had been letting off haha! He did however compliment us on the light show that we provided haha! We continued on and ended up pulling over on the side of the road and sleeping there instead of driving all the way to Santa Monica...

Next stop... Santa Monica and the Road to San Francisco!

Mark

Day 26 - Vegas... The Continuation

Needless to say, we all woke up with extremely sore heads and in need of a greasy breakfast haha! Matt and I didn't even leave our room until about lunchtime that day... (It wasn't too bad of an effort considering we didn't get to sleep until 6am that morning!) We eventually gained the strength to leave the room and head out in search for the others, we had decided that we were going to meet up at M&M World (It has 4 massive floors of just M&M related objects). Matt and I went off to have a look around at a few shops and ended up buying some clothes and souvenirs for ourselves, while Craig had gone of on one of his little adventures by himself as usual... (Craig has a habit of disappearing for periods of time, but we always end up finding him haha!) Danny and Adam continued to walk down the strip having a look at a few other things.

We met up at M&M World and decided to have lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe... Again... This was most probably the 6th Hard Rock that we had eaten at haha, the menu doesn't change that much, I can tell you that. But it was good nonetheless. Our hostess just so happened to share the same birthday as Matt, we didn't get anything special for it, but she let us know that all the 7/11 stores give you a special present if you have the birthday 7/11! I wish there was a store called 26/02 now... After finishing yet another gargantuan meal, we headed back towards the hotel for another quick rest... Adam, Matt and Myself had already had enough sleep so we went and checked out the pool... It took us 30 minutes just to walk to the pool! It was ages away but they had four massive pools and all of them were buzzing! We had a quick gander and then walked back to the room to chill before we went to the Old Vegas Strip for dinner!

The Old Vegas was awesome! They had a giant LED screen that stretched the entire length of the mall, and they played songs with video clips of the artists live performance and everything! Some of the favourite artists were Bon Jovi and Queen, both of them were spectacular, and everyone was singing along to it haha! We ended up having a buffet dinner again at the Golden Nugget, this one was a little more expensive but was still really good! After dinner we went to go and spend some money down on the gaming floor, Danny, Matt and Adam went to the pokies, while Craig and Myself went to the blackjack tables. We played a really strange version, where you put in $5 minimum to play and the put another $5 into the pot, whoever gets the highest hand out of the entire table wins both their original bet and the pot... This was great, except Craig and I were the only ones playing on the table haha! I ended up taking the majority of Craig's money haha!

We met up with everyone outside the front of the casino and headed back towards the MGM in a taxi... Matt and I decided that we were going to stay down stairs in the MGM and continue gambling.. We had a few more drinks and ended up breaking even before heading back upstairs and calling it a night..

Next stop... Hoover Dam and the road to L.A!

Mark

Day 25 - Grand Canyon and Las Vegas!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MATT!! It was the day I had been waiting for, for a long time haha! Matt could finally come out and drink in the bars and clubs! We stated the day out at the Grand Canyon one of the many detours of our trips! Danny wanted to make it there by sunrise, but we got there just after sunrise and got a massive view of the canyon from one of the lookouts! The canyon measures about 16km across at most parts and you can see the Colorado River down at the very bottom if you zoom right in with the camera haha! As usual we grabbed out the morphsuits and took advantage of the spectacular view! One of the guys we had asked to take a few photos of us, was a real tool haha! We went to jump into a different pose and he just looked at us and said "NO!" and shoved the camera back into our hands... We then proceeded to walk back to the van to get changed and got stopped by what appeared to be an entire bollywood film cast! They took hundreds of photos haha, we actually had to tell them we had to go!

After getting changed we headed towards the main information centre, which had only just opened at 9am, and read a few of the information boards before stumbling across a brochure that advertised helicopter flights of the canyon... We were sold! The only problem was, that we had to make it all the way to the airport in under 15 minutes to make the flight! We ran back to the van and floored it all the way to the airport! We made it just in time and the flight crew prepped us for taking our flight over the Grand Canyon! It was an amazing experience and I would recommend that anyone seeing the Canyon, do it by air! You can see so much more!

We then hit tthe road and continued on towards Las Vegas! We didn't get there until about 5:30 - 6pm but as usual it was still bright... We ended up staying at the MGM Grand after I had walked in trying to book a few rooms and getting shot down by the manager after he told me that every single room in the casino was booked out... I walked outside and decided that every room could not possibly be booked out and that it was most probably because I was wearing a singlet and boardshorts, not to mention that I look yoounger then I actually am haha! We went across the road to Hooters and had a few beers while we used their internet and within 30 minutes, we were back inside with three rooms booked haha! You should have seen the look on the guys face when we went back inside and lined up!

After settling into our rooms everyone got ready to go out and have a birthday dinner for Matt... We had a few drinks and each bought a 25 oz alcoholic slushie to have while we were walking down the strip. After checking out a few stores, Danny, Craig, Matt and myself headed to a bar called Centrifuge and had multiple drinks to celebrate, including a few half scotch glasses full of patron tequila, before we headed off to our next location, the Spearmint Rhino... After that it is history, because what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!!

Next stop... The Continuation!

Mark

Day 24 - The road to the Grand Canyon

We got up the next morning and decide that we would have breakfast in a town called Gallup at the restaurant El Rancho. The reason we decide to have breakfast there was because it was a historic location along Route 66. When Western films were a big thing, the majority of them were filmed out in the desert. Gallup was a town where a lot of movie stars stayed, including; John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and many more. It was really interesting checking out how many "stars" had actually stayed in the hotel, the breakfast was most probably the best we had eaten in a while too haha!

We then continued onwards towards Willam, Arizona, which is just past Flagstaff... We decided that it would be better to continue on towards the Grand Canyon from there as it is was shorter then driving from Flagstaff... We stopped off at a few more historic landmarks along the way including a place called Jackrabbit, it kept us amused for a little while as they had a giant rabbit out the front of one of the stores...

We then pushed forward to William, skipping lunch so that we could actually arrive in a camp site before the sun had gone down for once haha! We got there at about 4pm and immediately went to the first pub we could find! Everyone in the bar was extremely friendly and was only too keen to chat, including an old guy by the name of Randy, who taught us how to play shuffle board, which is actually quiet amusing (especially while drinking haha!).

We then set off towards our campsite, and to our surprise they had a mini golf course! This of course meant that the championship was back up for grabs! We even set bets to make it that little bit more interesting, the loser had to do all of the washing and the winner got to select one of the players to scull a beer! Danny ended up winning... Again, and selected me to scull an entire beer (good thing I actually enjoy drinking the stuff haha!) and Adam ended up coming in last place so had to do every ones washing!

While Adam was busy doing his housewife duties, everyone else decided that it would be an excellent time to go and have a swim in the pool and hot tubs. After lots of frolicking about and multiple chin up competitions, it was time for dinner. We had a nice, healthy serving of Hot Dogs and bacon, with a side of alcohol to help wash it down. It was then time to crash because we wanted to be at the Grand Canyon before sunrise the next morning!

Next stop... Grand Canyon and Las Vegas!!

Mark

Day 23 - Albuquerque

Once again it was an early rise for everyone (Craig and Danny), eveyone else decided that a sleep in was in order, so we didn't actually get out of bed until about 11am... Thank god our beds can travel hundreds of miles haha! Danny and Craig stopped of at numerous spots along the road down to Albuquerque, and saw some pretty awesome rock formations, including the Hole in the Rock at Glen Canyon in  Southern Utah...

We ended up stopping in Durango for lunch that day and went to a pub called the Steamworks, they brewed their own beer there, which was pretty cool. Craig wasn't feeling overly hungry so decided to go for a walk around town instead... His loss, the food was pretty good and the beer was even better!

We then continued on towards  Albuquerque, only stopping at Santa Fe to pick up where we left of on Route 66, we checked out the oldest building in the US, apparently it was made in the 1600's, but it didn't look very old, and the inside was closed so we didn't get to check it out.

We stopped at a Burger King joint once we had arrived in Albuquerque because it was the only thing open once we had arrived! We didn't get there until about 10pm, but, all the extra long drives had finally paid off, because we were back on schedule! Which meant that we would be in Vegas in time for Matt's birthday!

Next stop... The road to the Grand Canyon.

Mark

Day 22 - Yellowstone National Park

We got to Yellowstone at about 8am the next morning and had breakfast in one of the general stores they had located throughout the park. We quickly hoofed that down because we were all keen to go and check out the sights and hopefully spot some bear or wolves! Literally 100m down the road and we saw our very first animal! It was a bison and it was huge!! It was just casually walking along the side of the road eating grass, and it didn't seemed phased by the groups of people that had pulled over to take photos of it...

After grabbing a few snapshots we continued along down the road towards Old Faithful the geyser, we stopped to take a few photos of some elks that were in the bushes, but didn't see any bears or wolves before reaching the geysers... We walked into the main foyer area to check what time they had predicted the next eruption to be, and we had just missed one! The next one wasn't for another two hours so we went and watched a documentary about the park and the geysers.. Once the movie had finished we went out side and someone had mentioned that one of the other geysers was just about to go off, so we quickly hurried off towards and managed to get there about 5 minutes before it went off! Afterwards we continued along the path, spotting multiple chipmunks running around and checking out a few of the thermal pools, before eventually arriving back at Old Faithful just before it was about to go off! Both geysers shot super-heated water about 90 foot in the air, it was pretty spectacular to see, especially knowing that the water had actually started its journey towards the surface years ago...

We then had another hours drive to exit the park, and were hoping that we would finally see some bears, but i guess we were just unlucky, either that or we had to spend more time going around the park... You could easily spend 3 weeks camping in the park and still not even see a quarter of it... We then pushed forward towards Salt Lake City to find our camp site for the night, if we managed to make it down to Albuquerque by the next night we would have made up the day we had lost earlier in the trip and arrive in Las Vegas on time for Matt's 21st birthday! We made it through to Salt Lake and decided to go to an all you can eat buffet... Adam died and went to heaven! They had absolutely everything there, from chicken parmigiana to roast lamb, not to mention their massive dessert bar! They had chocolate fountains, soft serve ice cream, even fairy floss! The best thing about it was that it only cost us $10 each haha! After eating twice our weight in food we drove back to the camp site and had an extremely good nights sleep haha!

Next stop... Albuquerque!

Mark

Day 21 - Mt. Rushmore and Sturgis

It was another early morning, not too mention it was a cold one at that haha! Matt, Adam and myself were all wrapped up in our doona's while we hit the road on our way to Mt. Rushmore! We drove the RV all the way to the top, near the viewing platform and they let us park it right out the front, which was good considering that was where we decided to get changed into our Morhpsuits haha! There was about a 300m walk before we reached the end of the viewing platform, as well as a line up to get a photo taken, so everyone got a good look at the Morphs in all their glory... We finally managed to get a spot and have our picture taken in various positions and then we were out of there! I think if we had of stayed out there any longer, frostbite would've set in... We went and visited a few more rock sculptures and formations before heading on to "Bob's World Famous Antique Shed", it had everything in it! Majority of our time was spent looking through piles of number plates for Craig, so that we could find the states that he was missing, but we still went around the store multiple times..

Then it was on to Sturgis to visit the Full Throttle Saloon, the biggest biker bar in the world! Every year they have a motorcycle rally and they literally pack the entire town! We were talking to a few of the bartenders and they said that they were expecting around about 750,000 people this year!! We all had a full throttle burger and multiple beers before we hit the road again heading towards Cody, just outside Yellowstone National Park.

It was my first time in the "Captain's Seat" and everyone was a little worried to start with... I may have tried to take the RV four wheel driving as soon as we left the service station, but it was nothing the RV couldn't handle haha! After the first little hiccough, it was smooth sailing along the freeway for about 4 or so hours and then we hit Bighorn county... I had to drive the RV all the way to the top of a mountain and back down again! That was good fun, the roads were extremely narrow and we had random deer's just jumping out into the middle of the road haha! We ended up surviving the mountain and made it Cody just before 1am the next morning and set up camp before heading into Yellowstone National Park the next morning...

Next stop... Yellowstone National Park!

Mark