I’ve spent the last several days in San Jose with B and L. The time has been filled with stuff like this:
And this:
And even a bit of this:
We traveled far and saw a lot this trip, and it was good 🙂
I’ll sign out with some wise comments from a random used-bookstore cat…
…who says: “Next time spend two nights in Death Valley!“
A six hour drive became nine due to rest stops and food stops and shopping stops and traffic delays. We drove from Death Valley to Santa Barbara, mostly through the eastern Californian desert.
Eventually we arrived at this seaside resort town that isn’t particularly spectacular to travelers such as ourselves.
I’m exaggerating of course, but I was hoping for a dazzling beach but it seems the true appeal of Santa Barbara is in the fishing trips, boutique shopping and fancy hotels. It’s also a bit of a hippy haven it seems.
Yes those are (mostly Star Trek) action figures adorning that vehicle.
Early this morning I went for a walk around the marina.
I learned this is still a working fishing port, providing the world with sea cucumbers, ridged-back shrimps, sea urchin and more. I bet there’s an interesting museum dedicated to the history of the fishing industry here, but we’re about to move on to our next destination farther up the coast…
Yesterday we drove from Vegas to Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California. It was blisteringly hot.
That’s the lowest point in North America. We walked out onto the salt plain you can see behind me.
The heat was like something from another world. It was about 110F/45C but the ground was salt so it reflected up and seemed to be coming from everywhere. B and L came within seconds of death before retreating to the air conditioned vehicle 🙂
We then drove up to Dante’s Peak, a mountain that overlooks the basin from a height of about 2km.
That’s my ‘Attenborough’ pose!
It was majestic up on the mountain – not to mention much cooler than below. To commemorate the moment, a selfie:
Finally, before bed, we took advantage of the darkness of the park to see more stars than you can from almost anywhere else in the USA 🙂
Needless to say, I recommend Death Valley.
Today: a long drive to a beach…
Another day in casinos. We all won money today; it was fun!
There was also time spent in the arcade…
And more of this…
It was our last full day in Vegas and it was good. Tomorrow: Death!
I just wrote and sent ten postcards from my hotel room here:
Yesterday I met with B and L, and we’ve been doing a lot of this:
And a bit of this:
And even some of this:
Even were you to provide a photo of someone else drinking it, I’d never admit that cocktail wasn’t mine 😉
