USA: Luxury and whales

Where did I leave off last week? Oh yes, I was in Salt Lake city again. This week I've been from there, down to California and now I'm across back east a ways in Flagstaff, Arizona. Here's how I got here.

I bought clothes...

I had one more day in Salt Lake City before I had to get back on yet another bus. Having covered the Natural History Museum and Temple Square already I found myself running out of places I was actually interested in. Instead, I went shopping. My family will tell you this is kind of a big deal. I am the most useless shopper ever unless it's for food or music or books. If I need clothes, my mum or sister have to come with me as moral support. And to help pick things out, because otherwise I wander round aimlessly for ages getting weirded out by the whole thing. No idea why.

Anyway, my trusty jeans that have lasted 3 months of this trip are starting to get a bit holey, so I needed a new pair. An expedition to the shopping centre was in order.

Somehow I came away from said expedition with jeans and a jumper. Well done, me.

Not that that's particularly interesting for anyone who isn't immediate family...

On a more interesting note, I also saw a trio of Disney Princesses trying to buy tram tickets while I was on my way up to the State Capitol building.

Pretty good views from the hill the Capitol's on. Although once again thanks to the haze, I couldn't really see Great Salt Lake. Ah well.

And then I spent the rest of the evening wasting time in Starbucks because like a genius, I'd booked a bus that left at 11pm. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Bus journey was once again uneventful. I managed to sleep most of the night, although every single stop I got woken up again. This was courtesy of the route taking me into Nevada where every little town is full of bright lights and casinos. Or so it seemed to my grumpy, sleepy brain on each rude awakening. I should have taken photos...

Oh my, the luxury

After a night of interrupted sleep, I arrived into Reno, Nevada. I'm not sure what I was expecting from Reno - more casinos, maybe. As it was, the downtown area was very quiet, although that might have been because it was a Sunday morning.

I managed to waste an hour of my layover at the station and had been debating spending my entire time there, but there was a creepy dude who wouldn't stop smiling and then came and sat next to me. Something about him really freaked me out, so I ran away and spent the rest of my morning in Starbucks.

Which was nice, apart from the fact that he then turned up there, albeit briefly. Ugh. Fortunately for me, he sodded off again and I didn't see him again after that. Which is nice, because then I had to get back on the bus.

This time we were heading for San Francisco. It would seem that Monterey is a really awkward place to get to on public transport, although the drive is pretty. This is looking over towards the Donner Pass, on the border between Nevada and California.

In 1846, a pioneer party got stranded there in heavy snow. 80 odd people. Only 41 survived and some of them had resorted to cannibalism. The pass, then known as the Truckee Pass, got renamed Donner after the name of the party. Random fact of the day! 

Anyway, it turned out that I'd been a bit of a div. See, I expected the bus station in Oakland, my next layover, to be open 24 hours. It seemed to be a fairly busy stop.

But it isn't. And I had a 10 hour layover between buses. Overnight. Not like my Salt Lake ones where I could doss around the city all day. No way was I wandering around Oakland at night.

So as the bus is pootling across Nevada and into California, I'm trying to find somewhere to stay. Hostels are out - no hostels in Oakland. Bugger. Motel? Not near the station and I'm getting in at 9pm so I don't fancy trying to negotiate public transport.

So I figured I'd treat myself to a bit of luxury. After all, I'd spent 4 out of the last 7 nights sleeping (or attempting to) on buses. I booked myself into the Marriott. Cost a hell of a lot more than any of my previous accommodation, but bugger it, I wanted somewhere I could actually sleep.

Oh, so glorious.

Yup. One night in a proper bed was enough to recharge my batteries a bit, especially armed with the knowledge that I only had a few more hours of buses before I hit Monterey.

Is this the only bus?!

Back to Oakland station and onto my penultimate bus for the day. This one took me to Gilroy, south of San Francisco, where I was to wait for my connection to Monterey.

And here, Greyhound screwed up. I knew that the final bus was run by a different company - my ticket said so. So I pootled around the station at Gilroy trying to find a route number and time that matched my ticket.

No luck. Damn.

I did, however, find the only bus stop in the entire station that seemed to be for buses to Monterey. Problem is, neither the route number nor the timetable matched up for my info. I tried and failed to find an open WiFi connection so had to settle for sitting around and waiting for this mystery bus.

When the bus did turn up, an hour before my ticket claimed and with a completely different route number, I was brave and asked the driver if there was any other service to Monterey.

No.

I say brave, because before this trip I would probably just have got on and paid the fare without saying anything. Woo, confidence building.

Anyway, the two of us compared my ticket with the info the driver had. Definitely no match. In the end he agreed that Greyhound had cocked up somewhere along the way, since his company was the partner service listed on the ticket. And he let me on the bus. Nice guy.

Anxiety abated, I enjoyed a blissful hour ride into Monterey. And then a not so blissful half hour walk to the hostel. Dear California - it is September. Please stop being so hot.

Oh, and I stopped along the way to book a whale watching trip, because I'm organised like that.

Unfortunately, I'm not so organised as to have remembered to pick up any groceries. Even after my night in a big squishy hotel bed, I was knackered and so I went for a walk along the seafront to Fisherman's Wharf where I picked up a huge bowl of clam chowder. In a bread bowl.

And ate it overlooking the bay.

I did pretty good that first night in Monterey. I saw seals, sea lions, pelicans, cormorants and even a sea otter eating a crab.

Not bad for being in town just a few hours.

Whales and dolphins and sea lions!

It got even better the following morning. Having dragged myself out of another comfy bed (yay, memory foam), I boarded the good ship Blackfin and set off on a 4 hour whale watching trip in Monterey Bay.

Monterey Bay is famed for its sealife. It's the reason I wanted to come here. There's an underwater canyon in the bay that causes upwelling, which basically means that cold, nutrient rich water floods towards the surface of the sea. This means there's an abundance of prey species and as such it attracts the big guns - whales.

So, here is a humpback whale.

Here is another one, complete with super wonky horizon.

I do have a video of humpbacks, Pacific White Sided dolphins, sea lions and various bird species engaging in something of a feeding frenzy, but it's too big to upload, apparently.

Yeah. I think that was worth the money. Our guide reckoned at one point there were around 30 humpback whales feeding together. I know I saw at least a dozen over the course of the trip.

I must say though, I've never seen so many people being sea sick. My friend Claire gets badly seasick, but she's not actuallly sick. I saw at least 4 people vomming over the stern rail. Not great. It wasn't even rough.

That trip only took up the morning, so I had to find something to do with my afternoon. First I went shopping again, because my limited wardrobe is getting boring and evidently I feel more confident shopping for clothes.

Somehow (probably courtesy of the shopping centre being an hour's walk from the hostel) that managed to fill most of my afternoon. Go me.

Free museums? What is this madness?

I spent my final day in Monterey exploring the town, especially Cannery Row, formerly home to a whole load of sardine canneries, and the old town.

Poking my nose into the old Custom House, oldest government building in California, I discovered that the little collection of mini-museums and historic buildings were largely free. After 3 months with not a single free museum, this was heaven. So I made the most of it.

First I poked around the old Custom House, which doesn't have displays as such, but does have all sorts of random artefacts, probably to demonstrate the sort of things the Custom House dealt with.

Then I checked out the First Brick Building (yes, that's it's name) in California, built by a chap called Gallant Duncan Dickinson.

This also ties in with Monterey being Steinbeck country - John Steinbeck, that is. Steinbeck used to visit the First Brick Building when it belonged to the Garcia family.

Just along from the First Brick Building is the Old Whaling Station, which has this odd pavement made out of whale vertebrae.

It also has a beautiful little courtyard garden.

After that, I checked out the Pacific House Museum. Plenty downstairs about the history of Monterey, but I really liked the collection hiding upstairs, which is Native American artefacts from across the country. Some really beautiful pieces, especially basketwork, which is a significant craft among many Native cultures.

So ended my final day in Monterey. I took a quick walk down the breakwater to see the sea lions again, but otherwise I just wanted an early night - another 24+ hour bus awaited in the morning.

Let me get that

My next bus trip was to take me across to Flagstaff in Arizona. It started with a quick trip on the local bus, followed by a random chat with a British couple - Monterey is the only place in the US that I noticed a significant number of Brits. Very odd.

Anyway, conversation over, I boarded the express bus towards San Jose, driven by the same crazy but nice driver who'd driven me into Monterey a few days earlier. Fortunately I had no problem with the tickets this time - the times matched up, even if the schedule number didn't. A brief worry when we got stuck in an enormous traffic jam proved to be unfounded - I still had 3 hours to kill once I reached the little town of Gilroy.

There isn't a whole lot to do in Gilroy, so I found myself a coffee shop to while away an hour or two. It was nearly empty but I got talking to the lady in front of me who then very kindly paid for my cuppa and cookie. I could have hugged her. She just said it was nice meeting folks from elsewhere and that she hoped I enjoyed my time in the US.

After leaving the coffee shop I got chatting to a lass at the bus station and might possibly have convinced her to go travelling or at least visit Europe once she's finished her studies. That was a good conversation. She wanted to know whether she'd be safe in Europe so I had to try to explain that I felt Europe was probably safer than the US. Somehow I managed not to bring guns into it. Well done, me.

She soon left to get on another bus and I was left trying to avoid the weird man I'd seen wandering around trying to talk to people. I heard more than a hint of evangelism to his talk and I really didn't want to get into a conversation abotu religion.

Unfortunately I was at that point the only person sitting at the station. So he homed in on me. Hello, he says, I'm Steve. I'm an evangelist. Do you know what that means?

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and tell him I wasn't an idiot. Yes, I say, I know what an evangelist is.

My brain at this point is swearing. A lot. How did I go from having nice little chats to getting stuck with this guy?

Steve the Evangelist proceeds to question me about my beliefs and is most put out when I tell him I don't believe in any form of higher power. He puts on a sad look and says it's a shame "such a pretty girl" is going to go to hell. I am creeped out more by the fact that he insists on calling me a pretty girl than the fact that he thinks I'm going to hell. My Aussie housemate already told me I was damned 6 years ago. I don't care.

Steve continues for the next hour to try to convince me that there is a god and that I just have to believe and all the good things will come to me. I point out that I don't need a god to give me the things I need, so he switches back to the "but aren't you scared of what happens when you die?" track. I tell him that as far as I'm concerned you cease to exist as a person once you're dead. I'll get eaten by worms and stuff. No worries.

Steve is incredibly put out by this. We are joined by his friend Jorge who is much fortunately much more interested in hearing about England than trying to save my soul. I like Jorge. He brought me a bottle of juice even after I told him I was fine, thanks.

To my great relief, the Greyhound managed to turn up on time. I said a hasty farewell to the evangelist and his friend and boarded before he could make any more attempts to save my soul. He did supposedly prophesy that I'd find proof of the Lord before I left the US. Spoiler: It didn't happen.

Fortunately, I got sat next to a cool chap called Marshall on the bus. We spent the rest of the afternoon in comfortable conversation and he very kindly bought me dinner when we stopped at Avenal. When we parted at Los Angeles, he left me his contact details wih the comment "if anything happens while you're in the US, call me. I'll be able to reach you quicker than your parents." If I hadn't spent the afternoon chatting to him, I would have found that a bit creepy. As it was, it's one of the sweetest things anyone's done for me on this trip. Marshall is going in the box of cool people.

Sleep? What's that?

Unfortunately, my otherwise wonderful bus journey was ruined overnight. I boarded my connection at Los Angeles fully expecting to repeat my previous success with sleeping on buses. Instead my brain went into overdrive and refused to shut off. I spent the entire overnight trip to Las Vegas writing emails in my head for some bizarre reason.

Of course, this meant when I arrived for my 2 hour layover in Vegas, I was knackered. The station was heaving, my stomach felt awful and my mouth felt like something had crawled into it and died. I've had bouts of insomnia before and I really didn't want this to be another one.

I'd also been grinding my teeth... I think. My jaw ached and when I did eventually try to eat something after the bus left Vegas, it hurt. I had no idea how I was going to deal with the rest of the day. I'd thought I could explore Flagstaff when I arrived but the most I could do was stumble to the hostel, force down a couple of paracetamol and fall into bed for the afternoon.

Sometime later in the day I staggered to the kitchen, made the smallest bowl of pasta and took an hour over eating it. I haven't felt that shit in ages. It was awful.

On the plus side, I did manage to get a shuttle booked to go to the Grand Canyon with my Aussie roommate, Maddy. The one good thing of the day.

So, in the next week I'm going to the Grand Canyon and then on another bus journey. This one will take three days and I'll end in Fort Lauderdale where I'll get a flight to Peru.

Let's just hope I can sleep...

USA: Buses, bison and more buses

Good evening from the comfy little spot I've grabbed in Starbucks. Be warned: I've spent a large part of the past week on buses, but I promise other interesting things have happened too.

Want all the toys

Saturday was my final day in Seattle. First stop, Pike Place Market yet again for a brunch of currywurst. Om nom nom.

After that, I took a stroll across to Union Lake, which is kind of pretty.

It also happens to be home to the Museum of History and Industry, where I spent the rest of the day playing with interactive displays. They had an excellent exhibition about toys from the 50s through 80s on, which meant I got to play with Slinky.

Yes. I am a child. Deal with it.

Oh, and another tiny display of Microsoft related things. Including these floppy disks. Any readers remember the really huge ones? 3.5 inch ones were just on the way out when I was at school.

That is pretty much all I did with my Saturday. I had wanted to have an early night since I'd be spending about 24 hours on a bus in the near futre, but that plan was thwarted by the Night Market going on across the street from the hostel. I'm not sure why the Night Market warranted thumping bass-heavy music, but apparently it did. Ugh.

Where is the bus?

At any rate, I managed to wake up early enough to catch my 9am bus. The drive out of Seattle was lovely - out through the mountains - but once we got beyond that it turned into pretty bland rolling yellow hills. High point of the initial drive was going through Yakima, which long-forgotten GCSE Geography lessons taught me suffered from ashfall during the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens.

Despite my initial excitement, that mountain turned out to be Mount Adams, not St Helens. Damn.

The bus then booted us all out in the middle of nowhere, aka Stanfield, Oregon, to await our connection. Seriously, middle of nowhere. Look.

I have no idea where the town/village/farm is in relation to this service station. We should have been waiting about 20 minutes. 40 at the most. The bus finally turned up an hour later. And then the driver proceeded to take a half hour break while the half-dozen of us poor buggers who'd come from Seattle stood around in confusion.

Anyway, we made it onto the bus in the end. Bearing in mind this was at nearly 5pm and we'd left Seattle at just after 9am. Boredom was setting in as anyone who's seen my Facebook feed for the period could have guessed...

Sometime after 10pm (or was it 11?) we arrived in Boise, Idaho and state number 4 on my trek, where we proceeded to wait another 45 minutes for the bus to be cleaned. So bored. So tired. Dreading at this point that I wouldn't be able to sleep on the bus.

Apparently I needn't have worried. Once we were back on the bus, I fell asleep almost straight off and stayed that well until just before we arrived in Salt Lake City just after 7am the next morning.

I slept on a bus. Oh my god.

Dancing coffee cups

I spent my Monday in Salt Lake. Most of that time, from memory, was spent in Starbucks or McDonalds, downing caffeine like there was no tomorrow. My somewhat sleep brain found this very amusing, since Salt Lake City is the heart of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons and Mormons aren't supposed to drink tea or coffee.

Unfortunately, I'm also a huge fan of the musical The Book of Mormon, which addresses the above doctrine in a song called Spooky Mormon Hell Dream using dancing Starbucks cups... which in my sleep-addled state filled my brain.

This was even more hilarious when I decided to check out Temple Square and had a chat with a lovely young lady named Sister Gunther who kindly gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon and also asked if I'd seen the musical. I admitted that I'd had various songs from it stuck in my head all day, to which her response was "yes, my friend told me it was catchy." She didn't seem offended, at least.

Temple Square is actually a pretty cool area. Here is the Temple, which as a non-Mormon more than likely going to a firey hell, I'm not allowed in.

I also visited the Church History Museum. Very interesting, although I did have to resist the urge to laugh at certain things. That would have been rude and disrespectful. Some of the early history is pretty bizarre though - another testament, written on golden plates in an unknown language and script? Okay... Here is an early print of the Book.

While perusing the book selection in the shop I got talking to a couple from the Church who were fascinated by my Englishness and offered to take me to lunch. It was very sweet of them, but I worried we'd end up having a discussion about my religious beliefs (which are non-existent) and so I tried to politely turn them down. They were quite persistent.

Bless. They probably wanted to save my soul or something...

After many more hours mooching around or drinking tea wherever I could get my hands on it, I finally got on another bus. Yes. Another bus. Off one in the morning, onto the next one at 10pm.

This one took me as far as Rexburg, ID and then I had to spend 3 hours waiting in the lobby of a hotel where a friendly staff member offered me breakfast. Lovely lady.

When I finally got onto the next connecting bus, I was knackered. I hadn't slept as well on the way to Rexburg and had only managed an hour or so at the hotel, so I wasn't all that surprised when I awoke at West Yellowstone, 2 hours after leaving the hotel with aches in weird places because I'd clearly fallen asleep as soon as I got in the seat.

It's fucking freezing

West Yellowstone is not within Yellowstone National Park. It sits in Montana, just a mile or so from the park entrance. Indeed, it's the main gateway into the park. I'd like to say that's why I chose it, but it's not - it's just the only place I could find almost reasonably priced accomodation, courtesy of the Madison Hotel which has a couple of dorm rooms.

Pretty cool place, the Madison - it's one of the earliest hotels catering to the park and in the early days even hosted a couple of presidents of the USA.

Anyway, I was too knackered to do much that first day and despite a suggestion from the lady at the hotel desk of a walk down to the river, it was much too cold venture out. There was snow on the fricking mountains. Instead, I first visited one of the tour companies to get a trip planned into the park and then checked out a film about the park at the IMAX. Not too bad.

The Yellowstone Historic Center Museum was much more interesting. It's housed in the old Union Pacific train depot from the days when most of the park's visitors came in by rail. Really fascinating little place and great for killing a few hours. Covers everything from the park's foundation in 1872 to the 1959 earthquake at Hebgen Lake and the devastating 1988 wildfires.

That's Snaggletooth the bear, once a famous fixture in the park until 2 idiots inexplicably shot him.

I then spent the evening reading and trying to convince my brain to go to bed at a sensible time so as not to bugger up my body clock. Somehow I succeeded...

Get him, Bison, get him

On my second day in West Yellowstone, I took a bus trip into the park, driven and guided by the excellent Laurie. Yellowstone is beautiful. Really, stunningly beautiful. There's wildlife everywhere, from elk grazing by the Madison river.

To bison calmly sitting in the many meadows alongside the road.

Of course, with the wildlife so close by, it makes for some great photo opportunities. It also makes for human stupidity. Such as the guy we spotted taking a photo of a bison at the side of the road. He was out of his car. The bison was maybe 5 metres away. They might look dopey, but they can run fucking quick when they feel like it.

Laurie up front started chanting "get him, bison, get him" before we spotted a ranger coming down the road ready to chase the guy back into his car. Stupid man,

We stopped at several of the park's famous hydrothermal features during the day. One of my favourites was the Fountain Paint Pots area, not so much for the features themselves, although they were awesome, but for these trees.

They're known as bobby socks trees because of the white patch at the bottom of the trunks. They're dead, killed off when the hot, acidic water from the nearby hot springs changed course and flowed around them. The dead trees still soaked up some of the water, which is rich in silicate minerals and this turned their bases white.

Of course, this being Yellowstone, we also had to check out Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the park.

I finally got that photo after waiting about half an hour. It's pretty impressive - the eruptions last about 3-5 minutes on average. Glad I arrived well before the predicted eruption time though - look at the crowd.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Old Faithful isn't all that faithful. It goes off every 92 minutes on average, but that's give or take 10 minutes, hence why I made sure I got there early.

Brits looking for good geysers - go to Iceland. Strokkur goes off every 10 minutes more or less. Means less time standing out in the cold.

Our final big stop for the day was at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. And yes. It is grand and it's a canyon. It's also likely where the Yellowstone River, for which the park is named, got its name.

It's yellow. No filters required. All that hydrothermal activity has chemically altered and stained the rocks over the years and now the whole canyon is streaked with these amazing colours.

So, yeah, Yellowstone is beautiful. I need to go back when I get a chance. There's so much more of the park to explore.

You're back again!

I spent my final day in quaint West Yellowstone exploring the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Centre. The centre operates as both an educational facility, bringing people up to speed with the habits and dangers of bears and wolves and also as a rescue centre for bears removed from the park and surrounding areas for safety reasons. The wolves came from a breeding facility for movies. Poor things. They're gorgeous creatures.

The bears also help out with testing supposedly bear-proof containers. I'm sure this sleeping looking dude could get into most coolers in a matter of seconds if there was something yummy smelling in it.

Despite being a pretty small place, I spent a good 4 hours there. OK, so that might be partly because I got into a staring contest with one of the wolves...

But I also went to three of the naturalist talks, where I met this lovely owl, who is tiny.

And this gorgeous rough-legged hawk.

Oh, yeah, the centre rescues birds too. They have a trio of bald eagles who reminded me very much of the vultures in The Jungle Book...

Not a bad way to spend my last day in the area. After that, I took a brief walk around the historic part of town, which included the pretty cool Dining Lodge that was owned by the Union Pacific to feed the many rail passengers when they got off the train.

Also, this row of buildings which includes my hotel.

Looks just like something out of the Old West. Much of it is original, having been built in the early 1900s.

Sadly, I had to abandon the town to get yet another bus back to Rexburg. The 2 hour journey was rather more interesting than the one inbound, given that I was more awake and also the only one on the bus, so I ended up having a conversation with my driver who mostly wanted to know about differences between the US and UK. I tried to explain the concept of the monarchy and the Royal Family, but I'm not sure he quite got it.

And then I had to spend 6 hours in the hotel lobby at Rexburg waiting for my connection. There was no mention of this when I booked the ticket, otherwise I might have booked a different bus. Fortunately, one of the staff members said I was welcome to help myself to the free hot drinks and then the friendly lady from my previous visit popped in again. Her response was "you're back again!" Followed by a suggestion that I should try to get some sleep. She also said it was nice to see me again, which was a lovely little comment for my sleepy brain.

Screaming children, everywhere

At any rate, I got my bus and arrived back in sunny and hot Salt Lake City bright and early on Friday morning. I wasn't able to leave my bag at the hostel, so I had to lug it onto the Trax light rail and take it with me on the suprisingly long trip up the hillside to the Natural History Museum of Utah.

That place is awesome. I was expecting a pretty small museum, since it seems to be attached to the university. It's actually quite a big place - I easily spent 4 or 5 hours there. The collection includes a great selection of fossils, courtesy of Utah's famous fossil beds. Here is a wall of ceratopsian skulls.

Harold was not impressed about nearly being fed to a Deinosuchus...

There's also loads of interactive displays. I would have played with them a bit more, but the place was crawling with school kids. Obnoxious, rude school kids who didn't understand the concept of not pushing and actually giving other people a turn.

Also, the small child who pretty much shoved me out of the way so he could play with a thing about the tree of life that was way beyond his age range. Yeah, kid, if you know the terms eukarya, archaea and prokarya at the age of 4, then I'll accept that you'll understand this display.

I am not at all annoyed because a tiny child stopped me from playing with the geekery...

As always, I found the one gallery not full of children was the small minerals and gem section. Apparently kids aren't interested in shiny  rocks.

There's pretty good views from the terraces around the museum as well. If you squint, you might be able to pick out Great Salt Lake towards the right hand side of this photo.

Unfortunately, the haze made it a bit difficult to photograph anything with any precision. I know the lake is there, but even without looking through the camera it only showed up as a faintly blue sheen through the haze.

Tomorrow I have one more day to spare in Salt Lake City and then I'm on my way south to Monterey in California where I hope to go whale watching.

Just got to survive 2 more days of buses first...