Trip to San Francisco (Friday 25.05) - Las Vegas and to Grand Canyon
Tuesday, 5. June 2007, 20:16:14
Today was the day I should start to try my driving skills on this land of straight roads and multiple lanes. Quite different from what I'm used to from Ireland and here in Norway, but not a big problem really. The "rally" roads and right side driving in Ireland made me more nervous.
Got the car and investigated it. Not completely filled up, hardly any window cleaning fluid left but at least it started. Good for me a "normal" automatic stick between the seats and not this american thing placed at the steering wheel. Threw my backpack into the car, set the iPod to charging and turned the aircondition on (excellent feature this "fridge in a car feature").
Found the correct street and got myself out of Las Vegas driving north east. Multilanes are quite fun and it keeps you awake and "on" when people are jumping lanes like the frog in the old computer game. Anyway, turned on the radio and outside Las Vegas I had 4 options. Country, classic rock, political discussions (public radio of some sort) and even more country music. After 3 hours I used the iPod and with a lot of Muse in my ear I drove north on highway 93 and shortly interstate 15).
A lot of warm wide open spaces and can see why cruise control are a must here.
Took a lot of pictures of the sorrounding area while driving so I think I'll put up an entire gallery just of that. I suddenly noted a big caravan car towing a regualr car right behind, but with no driver in the towed car. People actually bring their regular cars with them on holiday, together with their entire hosue. Bicycles I can understand, but with boat on top, motorbikes in front, the car in back and God know how much stuff in the caravan car itself it looks more like people moving than someone going away for the weekend.
Also haw a couple of road trains on the road. (Trucks with 2 or three wagons.) That worked well as long as the road was flat but when a hill going up or down came, speed went down quite a bit.
Did not stop so much on the road, but had to fill gas a couple of times so had a short stop just outside St. George (Washington) and then another stop just around the area of Harrisburg Junction to get some food.
Quite some strange city and name on some of the places I passed: Mesquite (reminds me of mosqito), Littlefield (have they grown big?), Hurricane and then Fredonia ("Fred" in Norwegian means Peace).
Sadly I did not have time for a drive up to the Zion National Park but I took a short stop at Pipe Spring and got there 5 minutes before a guided tour of the main house. A lot of history in one small place from American Indians to Mormon pioneers and how the area changed from fertile grass land to almost desert. More info can be found here: http://www.nps.gov/pisp/
Image showing the view from a little right of the Pipe Springs main house.
Very warm in this place but the main building was cool because of thick walls and also the smart thing with the water going underneath the floor so that kept the temperature down in summer and made the house never freezing cold during winter. An old fashion air condition. Smart people!
After the stop at Pipe Spring I just had another quick stop at Jacob Lake to clean the front window of the car. A lot of killed bugs made the driving not pleasant (and also not so easy to take pictures while driving since I had to worry about avoiding "roadkill").
Between Fredonia and Jakob lake the sceenery changed quite a lot. From very warm almost desert low in the terrain to higher up and to a large forest. If it had not been for a big fire here a few years back it would have been a lot of driving with only green forest to see. Now, because of the fire, I could see more of the landscape around the road. But soon the burned forest gave way to green trea's all around and except from a few fields it was all forest now down to Grand Canyon North rim. (Road 67). Since this road is closed during winter I believed it would a quite narrow bumby one, but to my surprise it was as driving on the main roads of Norway.
After a couple of miles I arrived at the North rim just before sunset. So I parked the car, ignored that I was hungry and got my camera warm taking pictures from the different viewspots around the area. some good ones that I will put in the gallery and some that will not be worth keeping. Not so easy to take pictures of myself with only a tripod, but got a couple shots of myself with the Grand Canyon in the background.
After the sun went down I could not take more pictures so went to the reception to get my room. A very "wildlife place" becasue the bar closed at 11, and after trying every speciality they had that day I went for some food across the little parking area in front of the lodge. The early closing hours probably a result of most people are getting up early to see the sunrise (5.17 when I was there) or do walking trips early in the mornings. The pizza was not very good (nothing that you will remember because of the taste, but for the 2 cm layer of cheese). the little baguette was much better.
Since sunrise was 5.17 I went to bed quite early too.
Got the car and investigated it. Not completely filled up, hardly any window cleaning fluid left but at least it started. Good for me a "normal" automatic stick between the seats and not this american thing placed at the steering wheel. Threw my backpack into the car, set the iPod to charging and turned the aircondition on (excellent feature this "fridge in a car feature").
Found the correct street and got myself out of Las Vegas driving north east. Multilanes are quite fun and it keeps you awake and "on" when people are jumping lanes like the frog in the old computer game. Anyway, turned on the radio and outside Las Vegas I had 4 options. Country, classic rock, political discussions (public radio of some sort) and even more country music. After 3 hours I used the iPod and with a lot of Muse in my ear I drove north on highway 93 and shortly interstate 15).
A lot of warm wide open spaces and can see why cruise control are a must here.
Took a lot of pictures of the sorrounding area while driving so I think I'll put up an entire gallery just of that. I suddenly noted a big caravan car towing a regualr car right behind, but with no driver in the towed car. People actually bring their regular cars with them on holiday, together with their entire hosue. Bicycles I can understand, but with boat on top, motorbikes in front, the car in back and God know how much stuff in the caravan car itself it looks more like people moving than someone going away for the weekend.
Also haw a couple of road trains on the road. (Trucks with 2 or three wagons.) That worked well as long as the road was flat but when a hill going up or down came, speed went down quite a bit.
Did not stop so much on the road, but had to fill gas a couple of times so had a short stop just outside St. George (Washington) and then another stop just around the area of Harrisburg Junction to get some food.
Quite some strange city and name on some of the places I passed: Mesquite (reminds me of mosqito), Littlefield (have they grown big?), Hurricane and then Fredonia ("Fred" in Norwegian means Peace).
Sadly I did not have time for a drive up to the Zion National Park but I took a short stop at Pipe Spring and got there 5 minutes before a guided tour of the main house. A lot of history in one small place from American Indians to Mormon pioneers and how the area changed from fertile grass land to almost desert. More info can be found here: http://www.nps.gov/pisp/
Image showing the view from a little right of the Pipe Springs main house.
Very warm in this place but the main building was cool because of thick walls and also the smart thing with the water going underneath the floor so that kept the temperature down in summer and made the house never freezing cold during winter. An old fashion air condition. Smart people!
After the stop at Pipe Spring I just had another quick stop at Jacob Lake to clean the front window of the car. A lot of killed bugs made the driving not pleasant (and also not so easy to take pictures while driving since I had to worry about avoiding "roadkill").
Between Fredonia and Jakob lake the sceenery changed quite a lot. From very warm almost desert low in the terrain to higher up and to a large forest. If it had not been for a big fire here a few years back it would have been a lot of driving with only green forest to see. Now, because of the fire, I could see more of the landscape around the road. But soon the burned forest gave way to green trea's all around and except from a few fields it was all forest now down to Grand Canyon North rim. (Road 67). Since this road is closed during winter I believed it would a quite narrow bumby one, but to my surprise it was as driving on the main roads of Norway.
After a couple of miles I arrived at the North rim just before sunset. So I parked the car, ignored that I was hungry and got my camera warm taking pictures from the different viewspots around the area. some good ones that I will put in the gallery and some that will not be worth keeping. Not so easy to take pictures of myself with only a tripod, but got a couple shots of myself with the Grand Canyon in the background.
After the sun went down I could not take more pictures so went to the reception to get my room. A very "wildlife place" becasue the bar closed at 11, and after trying every speciality they had that day I went for some food across the little parking area in front of the lodge. The early closing hours probably a result of most people are getting up early to see the sunrise (5.17 when I was there) or do walking trips early in the mornings. The pizza was not very good (nothing that you will remember because of the taste, but for the 2 cm layer of cheese). the little baguette was much better.
Since sunrise was 5.17 I went to bed quite early too.
WIDGETIZE