robbo and leeazaa’s travel adventures

We arrived safe and well in San Antonio yesterday. Walking through the airport with no idea what Uncle Bob looks like was a strange feeling. Then a man in cowboy boots came up to embrace us – Uncle Booobbbbbbbbbby!

His house is on a 5 acre block and is really ‘neato’. So far we have been very spoilt with a seemingly endless supply of beer and wine and a pool to use at our leisure. Here are some pics of the property:

the backyard and porch

the pool

It’s a bit of an animal haven here with an incredibly friendly golden retriever (Duffy) and beatiful Clydesdale horse (Clydester). There’s also a couple cats and wild deer which wander around on the property a fair bit. Uncle Bob is a regular Dr Do-Little I think – he has all the animals ‘whoosed out’ just as much as Don.

MacDuffy

bonnie and clyde

He must have been a bit hungry because he stopped by the kitchen for some drive-through carrots:

Clyde gettin' his drive-thru Happy Meal!

He then got a bit thirsty and Uncle Bob gave him some nutrient rich beer to quench his thirst. You will see a bit of a trend with Uncle Bob feeding animals beer…

Miller beer ofcourse!

Later on we went to a very strange local pub close to home which is a kind of aviary/pub. Very strange but incredibly cool at the same time. Dave’s pub is located just up from the actual riverbank and all the various ‘rooms’ have been built by Dave himself. The rooms vary from a 2-storey greenhouse, the second story of which is hot as hell to a pool room (complete with jukebox) which overlooks the river.

Uncle Bob trying to get Bambi drunk...see the trend??

A stairwell runs down the side of the pool room all the way to the water’s edge and each flight of stairs has a table where you can sit back for a coldie and look out over the river. Probably not the best location in the event of a flash flood.

View from Dave's Pub

As I mentioned to Uncle Bob, a place like this in Australia would NEVER see a liquor license and I think the local council would have a field day with the red pen what with all the illegal extensions and all. There’s also random birds roaming around the pub, leaving their droppings everywhere.

The drinks we bought there were dirt cheap too. I had a couple 20s out after ordering 3 drinks expecting to get some loose change in return but it turned out to be under seven bucks all up. Needless to say I bought the next couple rounds.

So having a great time with Uncle Bob – he certainly has some interesting family stories he is slowly letting out! We will have to keep feeding him beer and getting some more blackmail material.

Rob & Leeane

Tags: texas

We got to the Las Vegas airport pretty early this morning so we had some time to kill. Luckily for us they have recently introduced free WIFI so we can geek it up pre-flight.

It’s funny that the airport here actually has slot machines, in fact convenience stores and petrol stations also have slot machines. I never thought anyone would actually use one in a convenience store, but we’ve seen the odd gambler hitting the slots at the old 7-11 Casino….pretty sad if you ask me.

Another thing I’ve discovered here is my love for post-mix Dr Pepper in the diabetes causing ‘Super Gulp’, 2 Litre cups. Not everywhere has Dr Pepper here, but I noticed today when I got desperate for some that Pibb Xtra is essentially the same thing.

Now I never need go 20 minutes without a Dr Pepper tasting beverage again…

Rob

Tags: food, las vegas

Today was a big day for us as we decided to splash out and go for a flight tour of the Grand Canyon. Much like a Vegas casino, the tour is HUGE and well worth seeing. First up was a 45 minute flight in a two prop plane which was pretty cool. The views from a smaller plane are amazing since you fly at a much lower altitude however the trade off is that if a large size bird farts somewhere in front of the airplane then you are going to feel a jolt of turbulence. Maybe not quite so bad, but you get that picture. Speaking of which, here’s a couple from the flight.

Preflight check

nice and cosy, no free booze though

Me and Princess Leia

We flew over Hoover damn on the way there and got a few in flight pics.

Inflight pic of Hoover dam

After we touched down in Arizona, we boarded a bus and were driven to the Skywalk lookout at Eagle point. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take cameras on the Skywalk which sucked since it has the potential for some really great photos. Instead you have to pay $30 for them to take photos for you doing stupid poses, naturally we didn’t bother. Stepping out on the Skywalk felt really unnatural, not that I’m afraid of heights but walking over 1 inch thick plate glass didn’t feel all that safe to me.

The eagle watching over the canyon

After the Skywalk we waited for the bus to take us to the next stop, ‘Guano Point’. As we were waiting we overheard a tourguide mention that the Teepee we were waiting next to was a traditionally made Teepee. I figured as much after seeing that it was stacked full of traditional propane tanks and traditional slabs of bottled water.

Fortunately for us, Guano Point was alot more open for photos and exploring. In fact, they didn’t even bother with guard rails and we were only warned by the bus driver to stay a body length away from the edge. However I got the feeling it was only a recommendation. We got some great shots here, the view was awesome. The Grand Canyon is definitely a must-see in America, a big hole in the ground might sound boring but it is actually very spectacular, beautiful and mesmerizing. Words cannot describe it – and photos don’t really do it justice either. But here are some anyway:

Grand Tourists

After that we took the bus back to the terminal and the plane back to Vegas and stopped by the casino next door for some $1 pints of microbrew for dinner and a final hit of the pokies.

This day really wraps up our Vegas trip nicely, looking forward to seeing Uncle Bob tomorrow and San Antonio / Kerrville. Can’t wait to see what Texas has instore for us.

Tags: grand canyon, las vegas

It’s incredibly hot here in Vegas – 41 degrees every day. So that gives us even more excuse to go into the casino’s and enjoy their ice-cool air conditioning as we are walking along the footpaths.

Today we started off the day at Denny’s. Wow that place is a 24 hour breakfast heaven. I don’t know why they don’t have such a thing in Australia – it would rake in the money! $6.99 for 2 plates worth of breakfast goodness – what more could you want!

After  we had stuffed ourselves silly, we explored a few more casino’s and gambled a bit more. Hey it’s Vegas afterall! Not a good gambling day for us today, I think we ended up losing more than we won. I did manage to win 2,500 credits on a pokey machine -which is absolutely humungous! Unfortunately, it was a 1c machine so it ended up being only $25. Doh! If only I had been on a 25c or $1 machine at the time!!!

striking a pose

the half size eiffel tower

One thing we didn’t realise about the Casino’s here is that smoking is allowed inside all of them. Makes them feel a little more seedy – as if the 40+ year old waitresses in skimpy outfits weren’t bad enough. Definitely can notice the smell on your clothes and dry throat if your in a casino for too long.

To get away from the heat and smoke, we went and saw The Dark Knight movie at one of the local cinema’s. We both thought it was pretty cool.  Heath Ledger really is good in it – you really hardly notice it’s him because he is so much in character. So if you haven’t seen it, you should, even if you don’t like Batman (I don’t!).

To round out the day, we watched the Bellagio fountain display which runs every 15 minutes after dark. I think we need to get a bit closer next time, but it’s definitely quite spectacular.

Tomorrow we will be watching the Rugby sometime (carn the Wallabies!!!) and then checking out the remaining casinos. On Sunday we have a light airplane and skywalk tour of the Grand Canyon booked. Should be awesome!!

Then on Monday we head off to San Antonio to stay with Uncle Bob (is it weird if I call you that???). We are definitely looking forward to seeing some of countryside America and getting into a home environment again.

Leeane

Tags: las vegas

There hasn’t been a post here in a few days and the truth is that we have both come down with something….Vegas Fever. This condition is usually brought on by dazzling, seizure inducing colours, free booze and the chorus of little melodies that churn out of every slot machine 24 hours a day. The symptoms are actually quite enjoyable and we’ve been wandering the strip every day so far exploring all the casinos and the multitude of over-priced shops littered everywhere and of course, enjoying the free booze when we can.

The casinos are amazing, my personal favourite style of casino is what I like to call, ‘the outside-inside’. It’s where the corridors snake around, lined with shop fronts that look like separate buildings and the entire roof is painted skyblue and cloudy. Stunning.

Leeane in Pseudo-Tuscany

Me in Pseudo Tuscany

Of course at the end of the winding corridors they all suspiciously end up at the casino. You can’t help but feel obliged to stick a buck into a slot to pay for what you have just seen. Word of caution though, don’t take photos of the pokey machines or you end up with a big-ass security guard waltzing up to you and telling you off. Luckily before he decided to belt me I was able to show him the innocent photos we took, which seemed to put him at ease. Even still, he said ‘a little less of the gaming machines in future photos’. Fair enough, at least we got a couple.

ching ching

Spending her hard-earned.

It’s true what they say about the strip at night, I’m sure there’s enough electricity being consumed to fuel a medium sized island nation for a year, it’s worth every megawatt though. The hotels look especially good at night with the Nevada hills in the background.

The strip at dusk

New York New York Casino is based on the NY skyline, quite remarkable. We are going to check it out tonight.

new york new york

OK, now some of the not-so-great. At night, when the walkways are crammed to capacity they are flanked by guys ( and occasionally girls ) in ‘GIRLS! DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR’ t-shirts handing out stiff little flyers to every bloke they see. The funniest thing about it is that they don’t just hand out the flyers, they click them together to get your attention first, then thrust them out in front of you as you walk by. When you walk along a footpath lined one either side with 20 or so of these guys it sounds like walking through a plague of chirping cicadas.

A downside to having porn thrust in your face every 5 seconds ( if it is a downside at all ) is that the flyers are littered everywhere on the ground as you walk along, especially off the main strip. Other than that though, the place is alot cleaner on the surface than what I expected. Beneath the surface though, who knows…

i forget the name of this one

Outside of one of the casinos

Mum in case you were wondering if I’ve lost everything and your house now belongs to the casino, don’t worry we actually won yesterday and we are up about $150.

Tags: las vegas

No, not another post about getting grifted by a hobo (although there have been a few more) , this one’s about an old salty called The USS Jeremiah O’Brien.

After our visit to the decommissioned submarine a couple days before, we caught glimpses of the Jeremiah behind a locked gate and despite our efforts of finding an alternative entrance amongst a teamster filled car park we settled for the common sense approach and asked someone. He told us, “Tis’ closed, come back ‘tween nine ‘n four ta’morrow” – which we did, as tomorrow is now today.

Old' jezza

Old jez, up close

This ship was actually a Merchant Navy ship in WW2 and is 1 of 2 of this class that is still on top of the water, alot of them were targeted and destroyed during the war and others were salvaged post-war. Remarkably the Jeremiah is still in working order and regularly takes people out on cruises….. the bugger of it is, one of those days was tomorrow, which is the day we fly out! The plus side of it is that there were doing final engine checks which meant that during the tour we got to hear, feel and see the ship engine cranking.

First things first, lets check out the guns, unfortunately the really cool mounted machine guns which are dotted all over the ship are off limits so no cool Rambo photos folks… We do have some good 3 inches though!

these are awfully complicated bagpipes!

phallic symbol?

I’ve been on a few ship tours before, but this is the first that let you actually go into the engine room. One of the old engineers poking around in bowels suggested that it was probably an insurance thing, since the engine room is basically a tangled mess of greasy, low hanging pipes and potential concussion inducing steel girders. They don’t seem to care here though, in fact they even had the engines on at the time.

into the boiler room

The first thing you notice when you start making your way into a working engine room is that it is HOT, real sweaty hot.  The first thing I thought when I felt the heat and then saw full jumpsuit clad, engineers working 3 decks below us was, ‘Poor fellas probably pray for leaks in the hull so they can cool off’. Then as you descend deeper into the lowest levels, it becomes cool again. Thankfully.

some reflective, polished steel thing. Perhaps an entertaining circus mirror for the engineers

Two Big Tools

The final part of the self-guided tour is a diorama of the Normandy invasion, situated in the main cargo hold next to some army jeeps and trucks – ( DAD: you would love these jeeps, painstakingly restored and immaculate).

sample cargo stored in the hold

Normandy Invasion

Leeane, describing the length of the ship

Poster boy for the Navy

We head off to Vegas tomorrow. All in all, I think we covered everything we possibly could in San Fran, except maybe the Zoo and Coit Tower but we can see all these when we come back in October for the flight to Tokyo. San Fran is a great place, it has really grown on us these last ten days. Even the bums.

Tags: san francisco

This afternoon we headed over on the Alcatraz tour. There’s only one ferry company which is allowed to dock at Alcatraz so we were quite lucky to get tickets – most people book about a month in advance.

The ferry docked at Alcatraz and then a National Park Ranger gave us a talk on a bit of the history of the island – such as how the native Indians lived here for 2 years after Alcatraz shutdown – in a kind of “Mabo”-equivalent protest over native land-rights. Seeing as the island has no natural source of freshwater, it was a big task to survive there.

We then headed up a series of hills to get to the cell house. Along the way we visited some of the other buildings around. Most of them are pretty derelict now and there’s a lot of areas on the island where civilians aren’t allowed.

It was also interesting to see some apartment style building where the families of the prison guards used to live in – including many children. That would have been pretty crazy!

Alcatraz island is pretty much overrun by birds. There are massive seagulls and bird droppings everywhere!

Once at the top of the hill, we went inside the cell house where they hand out an audio tour thing (on an ipod-like thing). The whole prison is actually very small – it only house around 250 prisoners at any one time. The cells themselves are pretty tiny – doesn’t seem like a great place to have been as you can imagine.

The audio tour was great and explained all of the attempted escapes and major events that happened at the prison.

If you look at the photo above (click on it for larger view) you can see the hole in the back wall dug out by spoons and used to escape through.

The guards control room and view from the warden’s house area is below:

So overall it was something good to see. The only downsides are that there are so many other tourists there that you have to shuffle around the cell house cos of the crowds. Rob and I couldn’t even be bothered waiting in the line to get a photo of ourselves behind bars. Also, as you can imagine, the gift shops have a ridiculous amount of merchandise on offer. Alcatraz this and Alcatraz that – you name it, they’ve got it.

Earlier in the day we went on board the S.S. Jeremiah warship – which was an absolute highlight – Rob will post about that soon.

Leeane

Tags: alcatraz, san francisco

Leeane’s parents will be very happy to know that I took their daughter to somewhere romantic yesterday afternoon, a fine little establishment called ‘Hooters’. They should also be happy to know that even after the experience we are still together, in fact Cindy, Amber, Leeane and myself have never been happier. Not sure who that third girl is on the right of the picture but unfortunately I have to draw the line at three girlfriends….sorry honey.

From Left: Cindy, Stud, Amber & Soh-Lonely

In all seriousness the place is actually pretty wildly overpriced. They sell Fosters there but I think they had to dust off the taps when I ordered a pint. The kitchen is probably the most hilarious, it consists of half a dozen deep fryers and a table. Everything is super-fried by the looks of it, even the four cheeseburger ‘starter’ plate has some friend onion rings dumped on it. Mmmmm

A nice, local we propped up the bar next to, who assurred us that he only comes into this place once a year, advised us that the San Fran zoo is worth a visit if we have time. Unfortunately I don’t think we will have time, perhaps on the way back. He also put me onto this little number, a aluminium bottle of super-cold bud.

crazy, super cold aluminium bottle.

Lazed around a bit today, an injury I got to my foot just before we left Perth flared up again last night so we just took it easy so it wouldn’t be too painful for the big day we have planned tomorrow… the Rock!

Tags: beer, san francisco

After yet another big breakfast Diner meal (no more for the rest of our time in San Fran I promise) we headed up to Lombard Street. It is known as the “crookedest street in the world” because they had to zig-zag the road because the road was too steep for cars to travel safely down it.

It also has some great views of the city and the bay from up there:

After that we headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf again where we went on the submarine tour. It was similar to the one we have in Fremantle, but this sub was much bigger and we could go at our own pace through the sub (no guide) and no nauseating diesel smell.

There is also a warship (S.S. Jeremiah) which was closed by the time we finished the submarine tour, but we plan to go on that tomorrow.

We also stopped into Barnes and Noble (similar to Borders) and had a browse round there. And we found a shop called “Steve and Barrys” which sells clothes – nothing over $8.98 (including jeans). Rob got a Cobra shirt – something to do with G.I. Joe I am told.

After that we went to Hooters – but I will let Rob do his own post about that experience…. and yes there are photos.

Finally, we took the cable car home. It was great fun and sure beats trudging up the hills.

Leeane

Tags: san francisco

The title may sound like a campy childrens book but the Wallaby’s vs South Africa game was a strictly grown-up affair. Although not as many moments of brilliance like against the French B-side the other week there is definately a different edge to the Deans-Team. I really look forward to seeing them match up against the All Blacks next weekend, should be a corker of a game.

After watching the game in the morning we decided to take it easy after our 40+ kilometre bike and walk trek yesterday and what better way to rest and recoop but in an 50’s style diner with a traditional ‘country’ style breakfast. Techically it was brunch since we didn’t get make a move until about 11am hoowever the cook at Lori’s Diner must have known we had missed breakfast as he piled on enough food to fuel us for the entire day.

Two fried eggs ( cooked how you like them) on top of two massively and fluffy pancakes and surrounded by three small ‘links’ (sausage) , crispy bacon and freshly made hashbrown. Furthermore there is a piece of watermelon wedged onto the side of the plate which probably contains most of the nutrional value for the meal. Oh yeah, and they give you a tablespoon of whipped butter and a small jug of maple to use however you see fit. It was a coronary delight! It’s great to be able to sit and eat in an ACTUAL diner after seeing them so many times in the movies.

There are so many damn homeless people around this city, every street we go on we see at least one or two and more often than not they are ones we haven’t seen before. We’ve started to notice that some of them carry around a bundle of the same newspapers with them and try to flog them off to people for a buck, at first we thought it might be a scam and that what they are trying to ‘sell’ is actually a free paper (called ‘Street Sheet’) that they’ve picked up from somewhere. As we were sitting around in union square today,  a homeless guy quickly came up to us and explained that the paper they sell is actually designed for homeless guys like himself to sell and try and make some money. I think it’s a pretty good idea personally – not that I bought one!

Rob

Tags: san francisco