Las Vegas.......

The girls going for it on the far outside arm of the ride.

I'm glad I'm not scared of heights! It was pretty exciting and I didn't even feel sick when it was all over. That was my buzz for the day.
Vegas was pretty out there. Samara and I spent the day walking down the Strip looking at the amazing hotels. The Luxor was rather impressive with its Sphinx out the front and Pyramid Building. The Venetian was lovely with the Italian Piazza and canals. There was a thunderstorm when Samara and I were walking back and that was the biggest show of all.
Samara got drenched when a car driving past went through a puddle and it waved up over her. She let out an almighty scream. She wont let that happen to her again, I hope. (Wendy)

Las Vegas.......

Wendy and Samara on the ride from hell on top of the Stratosphere hotel building in Vegas, this thing goes out over the side of the building at nearly 1000 feet above ground level.

Hi its Samara......this ride looked really scary but I went on in the end with mum. It is 112 stories up and the seats face a 70 degrees towards the ground, its juts out over the edge of the Stratosphere.
It was really fun...we had to wait a few minutes because someone had thrown up on it, because it spins as well.
Bye

Arizona

Our guide with his guitar running through the canyon....this shot is just a one in a million and I absolutely love it.

Will add more later tonight. We are in Vegas right now so I'd better go down and give the gaming halls a bit of a nudge. Back soon hopefully, the girls are out on the town somewhere and it's 10pm friday night..... I'm in our "Stratosphere" hotel room blogging..... but now I'm going down to the place of ringing bells and weird noises...see ya !

OK, I'm back........about this shot. I had spent the last 5 minutes trying to set the camera up on the tripod in such a confined, tight space ( the canyon floor here would have been all of about 400mm wide) from where I am shooting. I got it all organised and set the timer to go off in about 10 seconds and pressed the go button, it starts counting down and just before the shot's about to happen I hear a noise comig from that direction and then the guide with his guitar just appears running around the corner in front of me and into the photo while looking back over his shoulder.
Just after the photo has been taken he turns around and spots me and the camera and apologises for running into my photo...........I say to him, "dont worry" and set the timer up again and take the exact same shot for the second time while he goes back around the corner while I do it as I thought that the first shot would have been stuffed with someone in it.

Anyway, I downloaded all my photos from that day when we got to Las Vegas a day later and then go through them all to find this.

I could'nt have set a shot like this up with a weeks planning.........It's priceless.

Arizona

Slot canyon in Arizona.

This place was just something else. I have never been in anything like this in my life, and was totally blown away by the place. Where you are looking at in this picture is where we just walked through..........impossible to describe as far as sheer overwhelming presence and beauty go.....definitely an enlightening experience.

You can only go down this canyon with an Indian guide as it is on Navajo land, and also for the safety aspect. Eleven people lost their lives in this canyon in a flash flood 10 years ago............you are literally up to 15 to 20 meters or maybe even more below ground level in an extremely narrow canyon with no way out except the way you came in, (they are open at the top) and some of the places are that narrow that you have to squirm and slide through them and down to the next level.

Every photo I took in this place has come out pure gold.

Utah...

The Checkerboard Messa in Zion.

This national park is incredible.........the texture and colours throughout the place have to be seen to be believed. I personally could easy have spent another week here without trying to hard and you still would'nt cover it all.
This shot was taken along the road through the park that goes into Arizona, there is another road back down the hill that you can't drive up ( park shuttle is the only way into there) which takes you into the deep canyon walk that is in one of the previous photos with the shallow river running through it.
All of this place is highly impressive. The day I took this picture we drove through three states within a few hours.......Nevada, Utah and Arizona.......all to get to that slot canyon in the above photos.

Utah...

The view from our campsite at Zion.........pretty good.

Utah...

Zion national park.

Utah...

The girls standing in the river in the canyon at Zion. We did the hike from the end of the walking track up this canyon and a lot of it was walking in the river.
They are slot canyons and there is no other way except for in the water a lot of the way. It was a great hike as usual.

Wendy here. This was a great walk......even though the water was freezing. When Samara and I first entered the water we took our shoes off and it was painful to be in the water. We didn't think we could do it! Mal was already ahead of us taking photos so if wanted to share the experience we had to do it. We decided to keep our shoes on and it seemed to help. (Maybe all in the mind). We needed shoes, as often there was rapids and rocks. I lost my good walking stick and nearly my dignity, in a rapid and had to scrounge for another stick which is the one I have in this photo. This canyon became narrower and narrower the further upstream we walked. It was great experience.

San Francisco..

You tell me...!

San Francisco..

The city from Alcatraz with the Oakland Bay bridge to the left. We would take the "BART" ( bay area rapid transit) subway train into the city from where we were staying if we did'nt drive.

San Francisco..

The "Trans America Pyramid" building in downtown San Francisco..definitely a happening city.

San Francisco..

Another BIG thing....!

San Francisco..

Lombard Street in San Francisco, the most crooked street in the world........it was quite an experience driving down it.

San Francisco is a cool city...very busy and hectic driving ( especially when you are driving on the "incorrect" for us, side of the road) but I love the place, Wendy and Samara had a great time there too.

We stayed there for three nights with Rebecca and Jane, (and we thank them very kindly and sincerely for their hospitality)........ some girls that we met in Hawaii while we were on the big island, they were staying in the same hotel as us there.

San Francisco..

Wendy and Samara walking across the Golden Gate bridge.......quite an experience for me I have to say.

Even though it was a warm day, it was windy and cool on the bridge. There was low cloud on top of the bridge for some of the time. We saw a helicopter fly under the bridge which looked pretty cool and watched a huge cargo ship go under the bridge. (Wendy)

California.....San Francisco.

Alcatraz.

This was taken from a boat that we went out on for a bit of a look around...........we actually went out to the island the next day to go through the prison.
We went on a self guided audio tour and it was excellent, you did the tour at your own pace and took all the time you wanted.......I think Wendy will come back to this pic and add some more to it later.
Hi, Wendy here. This was a very interesting experience. The audio was the actual voices of previous inmates and correctional officers so you got a real feel for what the place was like. They told of riots and escapes that happened. There was no successful escapes from Alcatraz......though 3 men did escape on a makeshift raincoat raft and were never seen again.....they believed they drowned or were taken by sharks and the water is freezing. (who knows they may have made it to South America). They were fed well at Alcatraz to keep them fat and lazy. The audio also had lots of sound effects in the background to accentuate what the men were talking about.

California.....

A short time exposure of our campsite on The Avenue Of Giants where we stayed for the night......I loved this spot, it was a perfect campsite.

ps...... April 2012.
Going back over this blog entry 4 years 7 months after I shot this image and posted this entry, it is one of my all time favourites. (Yeah, I know.....blurred and out of it) but for me it is loaded with feeling, emotion and meaning. There is nothing quite like it on earth as far as I am concerned than camping in the Californian Redwoods. They are fully imposing and beautiful at the same time and really make you realise where you sit in the big picture that is life itself.
Just being in this place is extremely "self leveling" if I can use such a phrase. The size and scale of the forest itself makes you aware that basically we (humans) are just a little piece of nothing compared to nature itself  (and the tsunami in Japan last year demonstrated that with vivid clarity)

Look at the girls faces....it says it all.

California.....

Yeah.............it's dam big. Driving the family truckster through one of them.
And NO, I didn't take the fresh chunks off the this side of the exit.

California.....

One of the "Giants" laying down with Wendy standing next to it for scale. There would be about my next three lifetimes supply of timber in this thing alone as a furniture maker, but this is it's final resting place as all timber in these parks is protected, so it will just rot away over the next thousand years or so giving nutrients back to the environment to nurture the next generation of monster redwoods.

California.....

This was taken right beside our campsite this evening. It is on the "Avenue Of Giants" in the California Redwoods....these things have to be seen to be believed. The size of them is just something else.
This road is now a fairly quiet little tourist route as a new highway has been built a bit to the east of here to take the main traffic, hence I have taken the shot from this angle on the road...............and yes, it was a quiet nights camping, I think about half a dozen cars all night would have gone through after I took this.

California.....

Wendy and Samara jumping for joy at crossing the border into California........11.30am 11-09-2007.

hi its samara...
look at mums pathetic jump:)

Oregon.......

This is along the mid coast of Oregon, a little lighthouse near a town that I forget the name of at the moment, but will come back and tell you when I find out...........sorry !

Astoria...

Taken from the top of the hill at Astoria just inside the top of the state of Oregon....the four and a half mile bridge you can see in the background leads over to the land visible in the background which is the state of Washington...we crossed the border on the way south and stopped up here for lunch, the weather was as hot as.

Mount St. Helens...

When Mount St. Helens let go, this lake is where it blew a lot of the trees that used to on the side of it into.....and they are still floating around in there.

Mount St. Helens...

Mount St. Helens.............20 odd years since it blew a thousand or so feet of the top of itself when it erupted, and still smoking and doing it's thing waiting for another go.

Mount Rainier........

This is John Huston.........I met him and two other mates of his up on the glacier ........they were on a three to four day climb to the summit camping at base camps along the way. This guy has led an expedition to the South Pole and was here doing crevass training in preparation for an unassisted North Pole expedition in 2009.
I will come back and talk on this and the next photo when I have more time....this little climb up onto this glacier on my own (Wendy and Samara turned back down at the glacier base camp) was definitely one of the absolute adrenalin pumping highlights of the entire trip for me so far and deserves a full rundown on it.

In the meantime check out John's website, here's the address. www.forwardexpeditions.com

Mount Rainier........

This shot was taken from under the glacier up near the top of Mount Rainier.......I will come back when I have a bit more time and explain as there is a really good story with this shot.

Mount Rainier Cloud Cap

Mount Rainier with a cool looking cloud cap...............

Astoria....

Hey, aren't these Sea Lions just wonderful!! We thought so! They are big, shiny, scarred, beautiful, whiskered, barking beasts. They are so noisy. We heard them in the distance and began to make our way towards them. We found them on this abandoned jetty, petty fighting with each other. There was quite a few in the water as well. they also went up onto the other jetties, where the fishermen and yachties had their boats. The men would just walk toward them, and they would peel off into the water. I thought that they might get a bit aggressive if people disturbed them, but they didn't seem to. We were told that these were all males and that they come up from Southern California, and then go back for the mating season. Apparently, the females stay down there. This photo was taken at Astoria, in Northern Oregon on the West Coast. We are now travelling down the West Coast towards California and Mexico. The weather has got warmer, and the winter clothes may be relegated to the bottom of the suitcase, until more camping in the National Parks. There is so much to do and not quite enough time. Choosing the most interesting spots for us now is the hardest decision we have to make. (Ah, life is tough). Samara is now getting her hit of unnatural things, as we have been window shopping and we all had some fun racing in Go Carts. (I got lapped by Mal and Samara......oh dear!) Luv Wendy.

Samara...

This is another pic but this is me doing an aerial.....hehe I like this one too because I'm uspside down. The other one I like because it is a good split and everything is straight...k bye

Samara.........

hi :)
its samara...this is a bit old because this was in Canada, Ucluelet. Dad took photos of me on the beach doing aerials and split leaps and this was a good one so i asked dad to put it up. We are in Florence at the moment and the motel that we are staying in has a nice lobby with a computer and board games. Mum and I played Giant Drafts but it got boring and mum wouldn't let me stop. I was winning but I was bored so I just set it up so mum could win so we could finish.

Mount Rainier Campsite...

This is the beautiful Mt. Rainier. This mountain looms on the horizon at Seattle. We travelled about 2 hours to get to the Mt. Rainier National Park and it sure was worth it. The first day we arrived it was raining and cloudy so instead of finding a campground we went back to the nearest town (Enumclaw) and stayed there the night, in a motel. The next day was beautiful and we travelled up to the National Park and stayed in a lovely campsite at "White River". This shot shows the river in the foreground. Our campsite was just a few feet away from where this photo was taken. We did a lovely hike up to the "Glacial Basin". It was a picturesque hike which went through a variety of landscapes. Everything from pine needled covered forest floors, rock hopping over river crossings, steep ascents to wild flowered meadows. Samara and I stopped when the trail was marked as being unmaintained from a certain point, which was at the glacial basin, but Mal decided to go on, as he wanted to actually get to the glacier and touch it. Of course, that is another story and I will leave that to him. Samara's love of hiking hasn't improved and she is longing to get back to the coast and the bigger cities. (she loved Seattle). The scenery around here is spectacular. There is 25 glaciers on Mt. Rainier. Today, we drove around the National Park but due to a particularly bad flood in November, 2006, the road that we would of taken had been washed out in 4 places and we had to do a 3 hour detour. Luckily, it was a very scenic route and well worth it.
Luv from Wendy.

Seattle...

The "Experience Music Project".......a must do for all music lovers right under the Needle.........this was taken the day after we went to "Bumbershoot"...... we had all just finished a tour of the Seattle Underground which was really interesting.
Wendy and Samara went their own way shopping etc,etc, while I walked back over to this end of town to go to this exhibition (which is permanant)................this was where the festival was on the weekend, but we did'nt make it in there as we were too busy at the bands.

I love the architecture of this place, it reminds me of Federation Square in Melbourne.

Inside I saw a lot of what you would expect...........Jimmy Hendrix' old guitars, (smashed of course).......... hand written sheet music, movies, etc, etc,.............Pete Townsend and the Who stuff,.......... Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, and so on ..........even "Heart" and their song "Barrucuda".......a great little sojourn if your into your music history, I loved it, and at times while watching one of the Hendrix movies, I got the goose bumps as they were interviewing a lot of the current days stars mixed in with old original clips of Hendrix ( at Woodstock and various gigs ) who were all saying what a huge influence Hendrix was, and still is on them all..........an outright genius gone before his time that will never be eclipsed.....it was good without a doubt.

Anyway..........we have just made it to Mount Rainier, a bit south east of Seattle tonight and are hanging here for a bit ( weather permitting, you have to remember that this is the "Festival Of Rain" area)..........if there's rain tomorrow, we will probably head straight to Mount St. Helens , and if it's still raining there , it will be off to the coast and start heading down towards Oregan, as I reckon I am just about "mountained, glaciered,forested and rivered out" after the beauty of Canada, and we need a good hit of the Pacific Ocean and the waves again before we go stir crazy.
Samara commented today on the way here that she will have forgotten how to swim if we dont hit the surf again soon, and I am getting a bit twitchy for the same reason I think also.........the trip from here on down the Pacific Coast Highway is a spectacular thing in it's own right, and we are really looking foward to that.

KD.............good to hear that you are following us on the blog, I was talking to Derek tonight and he mentioned that you were keeping an eye on us, I'm guessing that a few of the Canadian shots may have been getting close to familiar for you and Maureen...........punch in a few words sometime if you feel the need, and I will get back to you when I can.

Cheers to all,
Mal.

ps............And if anyone is wondering...........Yes, that is the reflection of the Space Needle that is visible in this photo.

pps.............well, its the next morning and we are greeted with a blazing blue sky and a positively throbbing Mount Rainier, soooo, it looks like I've got to go and climb another monster mountain again.......will post some pics of it as soon as I get a chance. Bye for now.

Seattle...

Hey everyone, Wendy here. Love the mermaid pig. Around the city of Seattle there is many artistic pigs....all about the same size but with a different theme. There was one which was half salmon half pig, another was covered in one cent coins, another with wings and the list goes on. Seattle is a lovely city: many harbours surrounding it plus mountains and especially the magnificent snow capped Mt. Rainier (14,400 ft).....it looms higher than anything in the area. Downtown is near the harbour and has many hills which make it interesting and gives views. The Pike Place Market is known for the fish throwing and singing from the vendors...quite a theatre. There is many interesting and quirky little stalls which were fun for all of us to look through....even Mal enjoyed it. While we have been in Seattle we have had the joy of staying at the Sheraton. From camping to 5 star, it makes a luxurious change. (Mal has been able to get a good price by going on the Net). Until next time. Luv Wendy.

Seattle.........Bumbershoot Festival.

Dusk over the Space Needle from the festival...(Starbucks Stage) 2-09-2007

Seattle.........Bumbershoot Festival.

Wendy and Samara at the Bumbershoot music and arts festival with "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club" playing on stage behind them. Seattle, Washington. This festival is held right under the Seattle Space Needle.

What can I say about this place, I love it. We arrived in town on the 1st September totally oblivious to the fact that this festival was on. That day we just wandered around the city checking it out, enjoying ourselves, relaxing and taking it all in.

On the next day, the 2nd, we decided to get on the monorail and go over to the music district...Seattle Central. When we got there we found this festival just kicking off for the second day of the three days it runs for.......we checked out the lineup for the day and that was it...........bought three tickets @ $35 each and in we went .......approx 40 bands for the day and numerous comedy and stage acts also, quite a bargain compared to prices for the same calibre show at home.
This was Samara's first big rock concert, and first major live band.... and she had a ball, it was great for Wendy and I to share it with her. We arrived at the show at 10.30am and left at 11.30pm.....(13 hours, not a bad effort).

I will probably come back to this post a bit later tonight and add more to it, at the moment it is 11am the next morning and it's time to hit town again.

its samara now :)

the festival was really fun and we saw Fergie at the very end of the nite but there was only limited tickets to see her...they were free but we got some...she finished at 11pm and dad got me a blue singlet with her on it.....first i wanted a white t-shirt but they only had a XXL in mens so it may have been a teenie bit big... :)

today we went on an underground tour of some old buildings in seattle....when they first built them they were at street level but now they are underground....you can see windows and stuff that are still there..
k im going now.....
bye