A tern for the worse...

The departure from Skaftafell to Snaefellness was a long one - 11 hours travelling in total including a brief dinner in Reykjavik but a heck of a lot of bus stops. Halldor Laxness captured the soul of bus travel in Iceland perfectly in his very silly but wonderful book "Under the Glacier":
The few folk who are on the move... sidle off the bus at unexpected places and vanish into the moorland beside the road as if they lived in some bog there; or else the driver pulls up at some unaccountable point in the middle off nowhere and tosses out of the window some trifle, which usually lands in a piddle: a bundle of newspapers, a small bag, a parcel.
This book quite an interesting read - it just so happened to be set in Snaefellsjokull (jokull in icelandic just means Glacier) which was wonderful and has a very interesting commentary to make on Christianity. 

It goes a little demented in the middle but is generally hilarious (and surprisingly informative, apparently the best time to eat fermented shark is after it has been fermenting for a good 13 years, before that the ammonia hasn't left it. My desire to try this is nominal at best...).
Anyway, so we got into Snaefessness at around midnight and the "sunset" was absolutely stunning (it still doesn't really get dark here at all), the colour burnt orange was everywhere. Also a plus at this site - we were staying in a house! Beds! Joy!
This placement's aim was to put in a wheelchair friendly path in an area called Arnarstapi where this is a massive statue of the giant Barthur Snaefellsas who got pissed off at humans and sodded off the glacier forever and apparently protects the area from evil. Sadly he doesn't do a very good job of it as there are a multitude of evil little artic terns who love dive bombing everyone (it seems that they have singled me out as a character to be particularly mean to. I've been dive bombed countless times, during two of these the arsewipes made contact with my head which hurt a lot and, icing on the cake, one day when I had both hands full one of these bastards shat on my face. Yes that's it, right in the kisser. Thankfully I had my mouth closed, my cheek/hair was no so lucky. The reaction of my charming team was first to laugh and then take photos. Fail. Why do so many animals hate me? A stupid chihuahua peed on my bag in Skaftafell (I would have kicked it but I had steelcaps on), these terns loathe me, what next?? Will I be attacked by a puffin? A skua (I bloody well hope I don't get attacked by a skua, those mofos are big). That said, there was a pretty incredible sight on the second day we were working here, for some reason they terns got all riled up and started bombing horses that lived across the road (Icelandic horses are stunning) and, if you ignore the fact that being bombed by these birds is seriously unplesant, watching these horses tear around wildly was a fantastic sight to behold. 

Anyway most of the work has been great (some is experimental so it feels like significant amounts of arsing around have occurred at various stages which can be a little frustrating but I wont bore you with the details), the work site is just on these cliffs made of beautiful hexagonal basaltic columns, there are huge numbers of nesting gulls who aren't kamakazi birds at all and we've been getting in some pilot shark watching in our down time (we may have seen an orca once and whales are known to hang out in this area but no major sightings as of yet). As well as the path I've worked on fixing a bridge (a poxy job had been done with the rails) and today I helped fix a path on a volcanic crater, Saxholl, as the steps had become dislodged recently due to bad weather.

The crater work was great but my arms are a little worse for wear after having to carry rock from the crater's base to steps/other sections that required modification (the crater itself is very fragile so rocks couldn't be removed from areas off the path). It wasn't that they were heavy, far from it - when they erupted they must have been filled with air pockets - but they were pretty sharp. I'm building up quite a sexy collection of scabs and bruises I must say. Oh and my tan lines are exceptional - sock line, neck line, arm line, I possibly even have a fun little tan on my lower back due to riding up tshirts. I'm quite clearly irresistable :)

Also got to do some touristy things on the weekend - stopped at Djupalonssandur Beach and Dritvik Bay to look at the remains of a ship that had been wrecked there as well as the stunning coastline. They had some fun lifting stones at the beach as well but were used by the old fishing communities for people to prove their strength before they were hired. There were "fullsterkur" (full strength) weighing in at 155kg, "halfstekur" (half strength) at 140kg, "halfdraettingur" (weakling) at 49kg and "amlothi" (useless) at 23kg. If they couldn't at least lift the last two, they could forget it. Sadly my rock skipping skills which improved dramatically due to my trip to Alaska have diminished. Upper body strength has considerably improved though in part due to some yoga positions given to me by Angie, a fell trail teamer (but in a different group) and the work as well. I'm going to have quite the pair of guns by the end of this let me tell you!
Loving Iceland to bits, the weather on the whole has been pretty good and there's nothing like falling asleep on a pile of moss. The only complaint I have so far is that the absense of trees and often rather smooth topography often make it rather challenging for one to see a man about a dog discreetly. This is especially hard when certain tourists follow certain people "too see what nook and cranney they were heading into" while possess freaking telephoto lenses. That tourist fails.

Today involved going into lava caves and observing human feces at light houses. Those tourists fail as well.
More to come as life progresses!

Week 1 in Iceland

"Mother Earth" by Einar Jonsson

I have just had an absolutely fabulous week! Last friday saw me fly into Reykjavik where I frolicked around for a day in a dazed and slightly confused state (approx 3 hours sleep and a 4 hour time difference can do that to you).
Flying into the main Icelandic airport was such a refreshing change to border security in the USA. No one took my finger prints nor did a retinal scan. No one tried asking me questions in an overly aggressive manner in order to try and catch me out on anything. They simply SMILED at me, asked me how long I'd be in Iceland and told me to enjoy my stay.
My baggage was also out for me in 5 minutes and I have a sneaking suspicion that the baggage handlers didn't throw it around. Everything was smooth, efficient and clean. I think I fell a little in love with the place :) 

Mysterious knitted tree

Reykjavik is a lovely little place filled with street art. There's a lot of really interesting architecture and a looming church that just towers over the city. It's fun to play the game "guess who has pure viking ancestory". It's very easy. They're the ones who have white-blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and are far more attractive than they have any right to be. No complaints from this end.

Things are freaking expensive though, food from a supermarket was fine but many other things are just ridiculous (i.e. buying one of those hand knitted jumpers would set you back around 20000 kr ( the exchange rate is something like US$1 is 125 Kr. )) That said I had a lovely morning wandering around the church, headed to the museum (very ambitious of me considering the amount of sleep I'd have and the time zone I was operating on), found some music for a friend of mine and went to some art exhibitions, one which included a knitted tree that was about twice my height. Caught up with Michelle (who I met in Portland) in the hostel which was lovely, also met a couple of guys on their way to Greenland, wicked.

The next day saw Michelle and I head to the bus going out to Skaftafell where we were to spend out training week. The bus ride was fabulous - beautiful waterfalls, haunting wastleland, turf covered houses, fields of green, fields of lupins (boo), sheep! Surprisingly there was only a little bit of ash as we passed Eyjafjallajokull (which I can pronounce there - it's not actually so hard!), sadly there was a lot of low cloud so we didn't see the perpatrator of all the hassel. In an hour or so we head back to Reykjavik so I might have more luck then.
During the bus ride Michelle and I worked out that everyone still on at the end was part of the team. Everyone is absolutely lovely and although I'm sure it will be character building at times due to being around the same people on an almost 24/7 basis, it'll be an amazing summer (there were 9 people on my trail team and this group was subsequently divided into 2). So we met the people running the course, this weeks team leaders (Vasilis and Damien, both experts in shameless greek and french style flirting respectively :P it's all in fun though) set up our tents and wandered around Skaftafell. 

Sel

Skaftafell is a stunning spot, it's at the southern point of a massive ice cap (approx the size of Yorkshire) and we had glacier "tounges" on either side of the park. Apparently the place gets rather exciting every 10 or so years as underneath the massive glacier is a volcano - it erupts, melts ice (but not all of it as the glacier is about 1km thick) and the melt water eventually finally finds its way to the weakest part of the glaciers and spews out. In the eruption that occured in 1996, this was to the tune of 3-4km3 of water in 11 hours. Not a heck of a lot was left after that. I'll have you know that you've all seen a glimpse of Skaftafell, well those of you who have seen Batman Begins - the bit where he goes to tibet to get all trained up was actually done here for reasons beyond my comprehension. 

Tiny tiny hot pool

This week I'd discovered a new appreciation for rocks, primarily because our task was to build a few ditches and drains to help limit erosion (both from spring ice melts and people walking off the trail which is really just a glorified sheep path), and if this week is anything to go by, my dream of having decent upper body strength will certainly become a reality. While the work is exhausting I feel like I have so much energy here, but not like I'm buzzing with it, just that it takes ages for it to fade away. Consequently the hikes some of the guys here and I did after work didn't kill me as much as I had anticipated 
- (i.e. one day we went to a hot springs which was 1.5 hours fast walk one way over gravel. This was a lovely experience especially arriving back at midnight but still having plenty of light (unlike Alaska, it never gets dark here. This is both good and bad, good because you can hike at any time and it's not dangerous bad because my body goes "oh it's siesta time" and I wake up approx every two or so hours.

View from the top of Kristinatindur

Getting back to sleep is usually pretty easy but was less great last night when people were singing "She'll be coming around the mountain" at 2am in Icelandic. The Icelandic people clearly having partying down pat - we were invited to a bonfire at the park a few days ago which was just a big singalong which was fine. Attempting to sing songs in Icelandic is hilairous. One song, however that translated amazingly well was the "Hokey Pokey"- especially the "in, oot, in, oot" part. I would like to add that unlike the lame American version, they have "wooooooah the hokey pokey section. Americans, you don't know what you're missing out on. This has gone rather off topic. Back to the topic )), we also did another one to the top of a mountain called Kristinartindar. We were told it was about a one hour walk from our work site (which is in turn about a 1.5 hour walk from where our tents were set up) so thought it would be fine to go up and get back before dinner.

View number 2

Two hours later we had finally gotten to the top...we got back at 9pm freaking starving as we hadn't really had anything substantial to eat since lunch at 1pm. When I asked Damien (the french team leader) that he'd gotten the time slightly wrong he just replied "Well, it's easier for the brain to think of one hour not two, if you thought two you wouldn't have done it, so it's good, no?" I said something very rude to him in French. 
The food here has been surprisingly good especially skyr a special kind of yoghurt (although some of the confectionary is a little questionable).


Must Dash!


B

Monterey: "Heaven can wait we're only watching the stars" - Forever Young

Monterey Beach - seals in the background

 Now I am well aware that the original singers of this song are german and not from the USA, and that Youth group who covered this song are Australian. I am being dodgy and will use the fact that Jay Z just massacred the song by remixing and adding some terrible rap.

So I'm in Monterey for the next few days, Steinbeck country for those of you were are inclined towards American Literature (I even passed the river where the final sequence of "Of Mice and Men" is set). Well at first glance I'm completely in love with the place. Hey, John Denver liked this area so much he decided to stay here...permanently. Sorry that's rather tasteless and no one likes plane crash jokes.
Still, it's a gorgeous place and I could easily see myself living the kind of life outlined in Tortilla Flats (although I would love to hang out with Danny from the novel, I don't think I'd have the tolerance of he or his friends who regularly down gallon bottles of wine).

Matching the scenery in Monterey

A bit tired to do a proper entry today (probably something to do with getting up at 3am this morning to Skype with the parentals and 4am for Brendan. Crazy.

I will however share with you a poem I wrote while waiting for the train today. 
"I wish all RV's would spontaneously combust" (works to a general country/western tune, I recommend Tim Minchen's "the Good Book" for an idea)

I wish that all RVs would spontaneously combust
I say this in America, where "In God we Trust"
I hope that someday soon I'm going to leave them in the dust
With their owner's lookin' helpless an' their engines turned to rust

Watching the sunset with Franke

I say this 'cause the drivers seem to drive when they are high
They hog the road (they're so damn large) and never let you by
10 miles neath the speed limit? I guess they might get nigh
The frustration brings an angry little tear unto my eye

So please dear God almighty let the RV's all explode
Someone attack the factories and then get the mother load!
And to all the scumbags to'om* I dedicate this ode
Please find yourselves a smaller faster transportation mode
 *to'om = to whom abbr. 

Proper update later!

The lone pine

Squirrels, sneaky

Seahorses from the aquarium

Stanford: "I wish I could go back to college, life was so simple back then" Avenue Q

Hello all - sorry it's been so long since my last entry! I've been run off my feet. 
I'm currently sitting in a lovely cafe in a shopping centre in Palo Alto - the home of Stanford University (will be catching up with my Perth friend Lauren very shortly (I hope). This shopping centre is like nothing I've ever seen before, well not as far as shopping centres adjacent to universities are concerned in any case. So far I've seen Louis Vitton, Zegna and more
Still I suppose when annual undergrad fees are hitting the US$36,000+, one would expect people with significant sums of money to be present. Luckily, for a mere three dollars I was still able to purchase a hot chocolate which is roughly the size of my head. I am pleased. The campus here is just amazing - what other campus do you know that has a Rodin sculpture garden? I was particularly impressed by the casting of his Gates of Hell (which I believe I may have seen in the Rodin exhibition in the NGA quite a few years ago now) - and wandering around the campus made me quiet nostalgic for undergrad life (not like I'm not carefree at the moment, I just loved undergrad). The sheer number of facilities and faculties here is pretty damn impressive. I think I passed a building advertising the faculty of Slavic languages. It really makes the range of what is offered in Australia (well some unis I can't comment for all of them) pale in comparison. So,  I have a few days to make up!

 However, before I start on the fun I'm having in SF, there were a couple of things I forgot to mention in earlier posts but will now because they are cool (to me at least). Due to my adoration of mountains and my attempts to be vaguely competent at begginer climatology, imagine my delight when I saw the rain shadow effect occuring! This happened twice, once in death valley where I saw the clouds get divided and streak off in varying directions because they mountain peaks of the Panamint range wouldn't let them continue as normal and in Owen's Valley where we saw the Sierra Nevada holding back, all along their range, some pretty nasty looking clouds (apparently that day in Yosemite they got about a foot of snow). It just looked incredible. See australia, this is why there should be some serious tectonic/volcanic activity. Everything would be much cooler, if slightly more dangerous.

 SF: "If you're going to San Francisco. Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair"
- Mama's and the Papa's San Francisco 
Dear contemporaties. I am sad to say that as of today the 12th of April, your humble narrator has been in San Francisco/Bay area for a total of six days. During these days, at all times, she has failed to wear a flower in her hair.
Well an early start saw me grab a lift with my friend Paul (a fun little 17 year old (that you'd never guess was younger than 23)) to Merced. We wandered around, drank bad coffee and then almost missed the train because of poor signs and the sneaky sneaky fact that the tiny town of Merced has two train lines. Very deceptive. But on the train I went and off Paul went back to Yosemite. Unfortunately my day ended a lot better than Paul's did - I heard from him about two days after he had dropped me off; he'd been driving around in Yosemite and his car slipped on ice and flipped off the road into the forest. The poor thing now has a broken pelvis, femur and his face is a bit messed up due to the fact that his car is old and lacked air bags. The paramedics couldn't believe he was in one piece as his car was completely destroyed. He's going to be fine, is in good spirits, but it's going to take a while to recover totally.

 Anyway, the rest of my day was great. I met my first SF host Walee who was just delightful. I dropped my stuff off at her place which was located on the edge of the city centre and a region called the tenderloins (it used to be a butchery district) and headed down the road to the Asian art gallery which had amazing snuff bottle collection (chinese), Indoneasian daggers and Japanese minature carvings (for fun) and samuri collection (clothing, masks and weapons).
After this I caught up with another friend I'd made in yosemite (he was up there with his parents), a fellow originally from Montreal now residing in SF working as a 3d animator. We went out to a lovely asian-fusion place in Haight-Ashbury (there are very distinct suburbs in SF, moving one block along can feel like stepping into a new city entirely) which is where the hippy movement was born and aside from there being a conspicuous smell of pot in the air, it was lovely. Bumped into some of Gab's friends as well (also animators who work for Tidbit? Titbit? I can't remember the name, but they are famous for convincing George Lucas to do something in Jurassic Park that was revolutionary. Anyway they were lovely and had just finished working on the 3rd twilight movie! (At first I was very impressed, but in all fairness every second person you meet here either seems to be working at adobe, at google, at twitter, at bit-torrent (yes they do some things legitimately), facebook or at some small start up company.

Anyway after dinner, we went to pick up Gab's little whippet (it doesn't like being left at home) and Gab gave me a really nice tour of SF in a convertible - not a bad way to see the city and in any case " Cruisin' round SF with a whippet on my lap" has a nice ring to it

I was planning on writing a lot more right not but I have to meet up with the lovely Lauren Hallett so you all will have to wait for more!

Stay tunred for
Day 2 - Exploratorium (us and everyone else), wandering around Presidio. Clothing optional beach. Gum trees everywhere (planted with Monterey Pine and Cyprus to make the park look bigger, now a big weed problem surprise surprise) cemetery, sculpture and inspiration point. CS meet up!
Day 3 - Zip lining hilarity, Chinatown, Coit tower and Alcatraz
Day 4 - Golden Gate Park, the gayest place in the world (seriously), a non David Lynch moment
Day 5 - Frolicking on Angel Island, how America is oddly proud of the wrong things
Day 6 - On a mural mission in "The Mission", getting soaked and bananagrams.

(Day 7 is today in Palo Alto :) Miss you all - new photos up!
B

Rodin sculpture garden

Berkeley Bells

The berkeley bear

"Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?" Colour of the wind Pocahontas

I love Americans. I really do - I just had dinner with an absolutely lovely couple who live just outside of Yosemite. To me they embody the best of the kind of people I've met recently - happy, warm, witty enthusiastic and genuinely kind. 
I've met so many who are great that it completely wipes out, in my mind, the people who live up to the stereotype of "ignorant American" (i.e. guy on the bus who stated "Well, the USA really sucks, but I'm sure it's better than anywhere else." Well done, moron).

SO after waking up in Death Valley and getting a funky picture of a moon set while the sun was rising we wandered around in the Mosaic Canyon and then headed for Owen's Valley. Owen's valley and the towns in it (June Lake, Bishop, Independence) were just lovely, and how could they not be considering they had the Sierra Nevada mountain range behind them? Well one thing certainly bucked the trend which was the Manzanar War Relocation Center - an area, just in front of Mt Whitney, the tallest mountain in the range - this centre was a Japanese internment camp set up after Pearl Harbour was bombed. The thing I found particularly rich about the situation was that all japanese, whether they were born in the USA or not were put in the camp because they threatened national security. Imagine their surprise a few months/years later when they were asked whether they would volunteer to fight loyally for America. Either they're American enough to fight for the country or their Japanese enough to be a threat.

It was also interesting driving through some of the ghost towns in the area which had become ghost towns not because any industry had failed, but because LA had pinched all their water.

Anyway a significant portion of the day was spent hanging out in a hot spring found near bishop. It was a bit of an experience being in my swimmers in a landscape surrounded by snow capped mountains. Beautiful though. Getting out was...not beautiful. After I was all swum out we headed to June lake which was freezing and when we popped into a pub for dinner I was greeted with a "Little lady, you should really be wearing a coat"
Aww small town America,people are so lovely :)

That night saw car camping again, mainly due to laziness rather than cold, but it turned out just as well because the ice forming on the car window was the thickest so far! The next day saw us meet up with Laura's parents (Laura was a friend on mine in Perth over from the States on a fulbright scholarship) in Ridgecrest which was lovely and crashing, after driving through the red rock canyon and seeing massive windfarms silhouetted against the sky (which immediately reminded me of the hymn Jerusalem) with another friend over in Bakersfield.

The next day: SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK.
This park was just exquisite, from the wonderful curving drive up the mountains to the beautiful beautiful trees. There is something very humbling about standing next to, and touching, beings which are thousands of years old, and I must say, I do not take myself too seriously enough to stop myself from hugging them :). The sequoia groves were just magic and this feeling was magnified as it was so misty when we arrived making the whole experience very ethereal feeling. One of the things I loved most about the area is the silence, that and the beauty ...oh words fail me. Needless to say though, should I mysteriously end up living in California, there's nothing I'd rather be than a park ranger

Then onto Yosemite!
Yosemite was just stunning. I arrive in the park early (some others at the hostel had dropped me off) and I just wandered. Eventually I ended up in El Capitan (a massive granite cliff, popular with crazies who like climbing 3000 feet) where there just so happened to be a ranger lead tour of the park (the ranger, Sam (who I now will only think of as Yosemite Sam hehehe) was hilarious and gave me lots of crap for being Australian) which I joined in on. In the middle of Sam's spiel about El Capitan, out of nowhere came A BEAR. It was wonderful, and thankfully not too close. I despair of the morons who, not getting their cameras out fast enough when the bear was in front of us, followed it. Morons.
After the tour I started talking to two Americans who had massive cameras/lenses and I asked if they were professional. Nope, just massive enthusiasts. I perfer my little point and shoot to be perfectly honest. After some banter (pretty much standard with anyone I come into contact with ever) they said they had a job for me - near the yosemite falls there was this old dead tree with a hollow in it. They asked me to climb up and stick my head through, so I did. Hopefully they'll send the photo on and I'll pop it up, for now you'll just have to look at a picture I took today of the same tree. It was fun, they had fun reflector things to get the lighting just right, let's just hope my face complemented the rest of the picture, but considering I have two charming coldsores, I kind of doubt that.

Anyway, later I bumped into a lovely french couple who were in the hostel with me and we wandered over to Mirror Lake. Sadly by this time my camera battery decided to die so I won't have pictures for a while. Saw and heard a woodpecker though! Yay

The thing I really like about Yosemite are the original Native American names (apparently the term Indian now isn't PC but all of the park guides refer to them as such. Confusing) for various waterfalls/rivers. For instance Lake Merced (meaning Mercy) was once called something, I can't remember the name but it amounted to the following Lake "Will kick your arse if you don't treat it with respect" I think this is a fairly healthy attitude towards all things nature! :)

The waterfalls in Yosemite were truly brilliant, especially on day 3 after we'd had some snow. I'd love to come back in Feb sometime as apparently for two weeks, when the conditions are just right the sun sets behind Horsetail falls and makes it look like it's on fire. The waterfall is pretty great in any case and it starts falling as is it's want but then disappears into mist!

Anyway that's all for now! See you in San Francisco. Just need to find some flowers to put in my hair...
B

Death Valley: "As I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I take a look at my life and realise there's nothing left" - Coolio

Joshua Tree

For the outlaws

Set off at a reasonable hour and headed to a ghost town called Rhyolite - it had been a fairly big place in 1908 (10,000) when there was a mining boom (2 points if you guess what was mined), but soon enough the mines failed and in 1910 the population was down to about 400. A few years later there were only about 20 left. The we got to the desired destination: Death Valley - a place with an evaporation rate so high you don't even know that you're sweating because any moisture it evaporates as soon as it leaves your pores. This place was just incredible - the valley had had more rain this season than it has in years and there were some areas covered with colour. It was wonderful. Unfortunately the visibility wasn't great for the afternoon we arrived as there was a massive dust storm but it kept the temperature down to about 34 degrees. It was so odd wandering around in the hottest place in the world looking to my left and right being surrounded by flowers on the ground and snow capped mountains about 5 miles away (the Panamints range reaches an elevation of around 11,000 feet, I on the other hand in bad water was around 290 feet below sea level). My photos will tell you more than my words will ( have a look at my facebook). On a fun note, orchids occur in the springs of death valley! Who said they were pathetic???

We were planning on camping that night but the wind was just insane (guys in the car had set up their tent next to us as the angle of their tent was around 45 degrees for most of the night). Thus the car was our tent!

The next morning saw us walking in the mosaic canyon which was incredible and we were lucky enough to spy big horned sheep (they are rather shy). Oh crap I haven't even commented on the animals I've seen so far. Bah.
I saw deer, elk, squirrels and blue jays in grand canyon NP and heard a whole bunch that I didn't see.
Saw a kangaroo rat yesterday which was lovely.
I think this is enough for now. Stay tuned for tales of a Japanese internment camp, a nice village turned into a ghost town because LA took all of their water, swimming in a hot pool whilst being in a landscape surrounded by snow capped mountains. Icicles larger that my head in June Lake.

Miss you all

B

p.s. The song California Dreaming by the Mama's and the Papa's is silly. Sure LA is warm but I'm currently freezing my butt off in a little place called Bishop which is in CA. They should have been more specific and called it Southern California Dreaming

Sierra Nevada Range

Road trip: "We've been on the run, driving in the sun Looking out for number 1" Phantom Planet

Spent the morning in downtown LA. Tis a funny place, they go from 3 piece suits to sketchy in under a block. The architecture around there is quite fantastic though, especially the Walt Disney concert hall (which apparently had to be dulled down after neighbouring apartment blocks complained that their air conditioning bills were going through the roof!).

Disney Concert Hall

In the afternoon I caught up with host number 2 and, after catching a bus in the wrong direction (I ended up in East LA which is dodgy, and spent the time waiting for the bus I needed listening to two hispanic guys discussing their rap sheet. One has been in prison in and out from age 12. Cute), headed down to San Diego for a looksee. It's a nice little place with a great vegetarian mexican restaurant and a lovely beach. Spent the day wandering around and waved to mexico when we got close to the border. Felt no desire whatsoever to venture into Tijuana. 
San Diego to Flagstaff
Early the next day, by early I mean 4am, we left for the GRAND CANYON. The reason we left so early was because it was a massive drive and because we wanted to see the sun rise over the desert. The round about route we took the 78 route to Blythe and saw some fantastic sand dunes (some folks there had confederate flags, yay racism), were stopped by border control who gave me the a-ok and passed on up through Phoenix. Granted we only drove through Phoenix but, from what I can see, there's really nothing to recommend it. It just seems to be masses of suburban sprawl which emerges out of seeming nowhere in a fairly nothing-y landscape. All the houses seemed to be identical as well. I mentioned that I thought this was a little socialist looking for a place like the USA. I got the desired reaction :D
I feel the need to point out that many of the cacti we passed outside of Phoenix are very phallic in appearance. Just putting it out there.

Headed north to a place called Meteor Crater which is apparently is the most accessible crater in the world. It was incredibly impressive - it's around 550 feet deep and has a massive circumference. The thing I really liked about it was its isolation. You couldn't hear cars, planes, nothing like that. Just the gentle sound of the breeze.

Meteor Crater

 Then it was on to Flagstaff for dinner and a wander around. Flagstaff is a really cute little town and I would have liked to have spent more time there but it was getting pretty dark and we needed to find a place to camp, so off we went.
In the states there's a rule that you have to camp at least 400m off from any main road, so the plan was to find a little bush trail and set things up there. This was a fine plan, but when every access road for about 30mins driving was closed off due to snow we started to lose hope. The drive itself there was fantastic - it was still quite light because of a full moon and the scenery was just small, isolated farm houses and snow capped mountains. It was the kind of eerie situation that you could imagine the crime from "In cold blood" occurring. Eventually, when we'd almost started to worry, we finally found an opening and set up camp. It was bloody cold and setting up a camp when you can't feel your fingers is a little character building. Turns out it was around -7 (we were at an altitude of about 7000 feet). Ice formed on the inside of the tent.
Grand Canyon
Words can not explain how incredible the grand canyon was. I got a little choked up when I first saw it (luckily we got there at about 9:30 or otherwise I swear any eye moisture would have frozen on my face!). The only way to get an idea of how completely grandiose the whole thing is without seeing it would be to grab a copy of Mussorgsky's "Great Gate of Kiev" go to around the last 90 or so seconds of the piece and crank it up to 11. Stunning. Anyway we did a 6 mile round trip on a walk called the Bright Angel trail and that was just lovely and walking down into the canyon just felt like you were being completely enveloped by it. Incredibly place. Slightly worrying was the fact that part of the trail was quiet icey and slippery and there are no guard rails (approx 10 people a year die here from either falling off or dehydration), but I didn't die so all was peachy. After getting back up we took a shuttle bus that went around the rim so see some other areas and all were equally as breath taking. Especially wonderful was watching the sunset. I was pretty impressed by a ranger presentation given afterwards explaining what Teddy Roosevelt and FDR did for the establishment of national parks in the USA. Fantastic day. It was forecast to get just as cold as it had been the night before. We slept in the car.

Grand Canyon