Tanya's Blog

Oh my soul are we having the time of our lives here, yes the mosquitoes are plentiful and annoying, not to mention the rather loud campers two sites up but all that pales into insignificance when we think of the wildlife we’ve managed to see, in only two days!

Six bears, yup you read that right – 3 grizzlies and 3 black bear, the first grizzly we saw in Grand Teton not twenty minutes into our drive, the other five were all seen today. ‘Course a bear sighting causes much excitement and traffic jams and the photo opportunities aren’t the greatest, but I can still claim the kudos.

A bull moose, big guy was taking a drink early this morning, we got up at 4 figuring we might catch some early risers – so far he’s the only moose we’ve seen. As it turns out, having spoken to Mike the camp orientation bloke, the moose are dwindling and the park is considering starting a program to help boost the numbers again. Mike said we were more likely to see bear than moose so we feel very fortunate to have spotted one.

Bison – plenty of them, in fact we’re so blasé about them we don’t even stop, unless of course some big mother of a bison forces us to..

We’re having a little bit of trouble differentiating between the Elk and the Mule Deer, we’ve definitely seen both just not sure half the time which is which. We are sure this big fellow who kindly sat patiently whilst the paparazzi clicked away madly is an Elk.

The cutest yellow bellied marmosets you have ever seen, little blighters every time I turned the video camera on them would then stand stock still staring at me, doing nothing at all..

Pronghorn antelope – again seen on our early drive this morning.

An osprey – quite chuffed with some of the photos I got of him.

Old faithful (yea I know he’s not wildlife) but he sure was impressive.

Three coyotes, the one was just happily running across the field completely oblivious of the consternation he was causing. The last one we saw caused much excitement for the crowd mainly because they mistook it for a wolf, having examined the pictures I took the consensus on our side is it is definitely a coyote and not the elusive wolf. We’ve pretty much resigned ourselves to not seeing any, sadly.

Browsing Michaels yesterday rekindled my obsession with buying scrapbooking products and seeing as how the modern version was born in Utah how could  I pass up the opportunity to visit an LSS (Local Scrapbook Store), course the nearest one was back in Salt Lake City. Batting my eyelashes I convinced Wouter to drive the 30 odd miles back the way we came encountering nasty traffic along the way only to find the stupid shop was closed – bitterly disappointing.

Because of my fruitless expedition we ended up being a little behind schedule and while Wouter went round the Browning museum, the kids and I had breakfast in the restaurant. Seems most restaurants will refill your drink when you’re finished for no extra charge which can be nice if you’re really thirsty but somewhat daunting when not.

Inside the Union Station building where the museum and restaurant was

The scenery travelling through Idaho and then Wyoming is utterly beautiful, chocolate box beautiful.

Tanya’s travel tip no. 34 when travelling from Ogden in the direction of Jackson and you happen to mention how close the snow seems to be and your driver spots a patch really close to the road when you stop to frolic in it – do not, I repeat do not walk on it in flip flops and try to do your world famous (at least soon to be) ski’ing impersonation – “swish, swish” because you will find yourself flat on your back, ask me how I know. Side effects of trying to impersonate one of the cutely clad skiers one sees on tv – vicious headache and rapidly stiffening neck, hmm wonder what the signs for concussion are?

I am now relaxing on my bed in my hotel room figuring it’s more whiplash than concussion.

Tamsyn devouring her dinner

Not as long a drive as yesterday and less bickering this time mainly because the car we’ve hired plays dvd’s, it’s a Chrysler Town & Country and has all the mod cons a person could ask for which makes a road trip with a teenager and a soon to be one more bearable (not sure Wouter agrees).

The scenery this time was much more to my liking, lots of green and even snow on the mountains, really beautiful. We were meant to see a dinosaur museum along the way but it was closed, dawned on us that we may be on holiday but that doesn’t mean the rest of Utah is, it being a Sunday and all, have also discovered Utah doesn’t sell wine at the local stores only at a state liquor store which is a bit of a bummer.

Lunch was burgers and fries at the Roosters Brewing Company where Wouter got to try out their various beers.

The kids have been nagging ever since they got here to go to a cinema and as we didn’t have anything planned and they cleverly spotted the movie house in our driving around Ogden, they got their wish. Whilst they were watching Cars 2 and munching on popcorn we raided the local Walmart – twice. Second time wasn’t exactly planned, a certain loskop settling down to blog suddenly noticed her camera bag wasn’t with her. Yup, I’d managed to leave it at Walmart (don’t ask how, it takes a lot of effort to be as doff as I can be) – fortunately the very sweet lady at our checkout counter had hung onto it for me.

The rest of the evening was spent much the same as the previous evening, blogging, surfing the internet and watching tv.

Waking up at 4:30 does not make for happy people, there were no rousing choruses of Kumbaja from either of my two kids it was more like grumbles and dirty looks. They didn’t half look a bit odd wrapped up in their sleeping bags but I’ll give them their due they braved the time and watched a sun rise over one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

Condor

We then packed up and took a bit of a scenic drive around the various viewing points waiting for the general store to open so that we could have breakfast before we headed for Green River, Utah.

Many miles and a few tiffs on the way we arrived at our Motel in Green River having passed through some rather dramatic scenery on the way.

Our motel

We pretty much vegged in our rooms blogging and surfing the net. The rooms aren’t bad for the price.

South Africa has warnings about not feeding the animals which are generally geared towards saving daft tourists from baboons. America has similar rules however evidently the tourists here are just as stupid as those back home.

The scene went like this – having driven for several hours to get from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon (naturally first visiting the gigantic M&M store to stock up) we were understandably keen to see the wonder. We bounced out of our vehicle and rushed off to the viewing spot – many ooh’s and aah’s later we started to move to another spot when we noticed a small crowd oohing and aahing over the local wildlife. “So cute” many whispered and not to be left out we sought to capture the moment, no sooner had we sat than we were overrun, fearing for our lives we sat stock still hoping to survive the onslaught, sadly one of us didn’t fare so well.

*ouch*

The ferocious beast

For the record we weren’t the idiot tourists feeding the wildlife, unless you call Tamsyn‘s finger food.

The canyon definitely lives up to its name and anyone going too close to the edge made me feel decidedly uncomfortable, way too easy to fall off. Its incredibly beautiful and incredibly difficult to encompass all that beauty in a photograph.

There had been a sign at the booking gate indicating the camp was full for the following three nights and there certainly were a lot of people. Consulting our trusty guide we opted to have an early supper at Bright Angel Lodge which was pegged as being a good place to have a beer and a burger. Not sure if they’ve changed their menu since that was written but I’d heartily recommend their specials, you get a main meal with the option of either a salad, red pepper soup or corn chowder. I had the chowder, Jessica the salad and Wouter the red pepper soup, all three were really good although the consensus was the red pepper soup was the nicest. Mains were lasagna, spaghetti with meat balls and a creamy alfredo pasta – too much food, really tasty but way too much. Have to say on the whole the food may be expensive but it is really good. Tamsyn didn’t feel like anything too heavy so she chose a toasted chicken and cheese sandwich with fries.

For some reason we seem to end up doing our laundry at camp sites – $1.75 per load and a dollar for 25 minutes of drying time. Our plans of sticking the washing on and then nipping off to watch the sunset went somewhat awry, we managed to catch the tail end of it which had us all resolving to wake up at the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise.

There is a very comprehensively stocked general store near the camp site including a rather well stocked liquor section, in fact most of the ‘café’ type stores we’ve been to have well stocked liquor aisles, even the chemist in Hollywood was an alcohol lovers paradise. So armed with a cheapish bottle of Australian bubbles Wouter and I sat waxing eloquent whilst our washing dried.

Virgin America is now officially my favourite airline, true they’re mercenary and charge for just about everything, $8 to watch a movie, $2 for a headset (good thing we nicked the ones from Delta) and $6 for a glass of wine but their tv sets are touch screen and you can place your order for refreshments via the tv console, how cool is that? The other cool thing about them? The flight took just under 2 hours to get from San Francisco to Las Vegas, literally felt like we’d just got in the air and then we were descending again.

The pilot did warn us saying the temperature outside was 108 deg but when you have no real idea what Fahrenheit to Celsius is it comes as a flippen huge shock. HOT, we’re talking STINKIN’ HOT.

Some of us (names are withheld to spare the innocent – but if you see a huge blinking arrow pointing towards Jessica follow it) were extremely grumpy when they got off the plane and it lasted till the hotel room. Our hotel may be the kitchiest (according to my trend conscious kids) but we ended up with an awesome room. Not sure why but the lady booking us in took a shine to us (then again we are great people) and upgraded Wouter and my room to a deluxe suite, and it was gorgeous – that is until the kids got hold of it (lets just say that popping back to check on them only to find the housekeeping dude using a massive vacuum cleaner to suck up the water off the carpet was disturbing).

Grumpy and slightly less grumpy opted to stay in their room with room service whilst Wouter and I first went to the pinball museum and then hit the strip, course I wore the wrong shoes and very soon was hobbling much better but it was fun. A colleague at work had warned me about the pimps handing out ‘business cards’ and he didn’t exaggerate within half a block Wouter had enough cards to paper the inside of a small bathroom, they’re sexist though they only give to the men on the street. The strip was crawling with a wide assortment of people from bridal shower parties, drunk youngsters, drunk oldies to newlyweds and birthday parties. And oh my gosh it was still hot – 22:00 and 41 deg Celsius.

The deal was I went with Wouter to the pinball museum and he’d let me gamble for a bit in the hotel casino. The fact that no-one got a hysterical call from me means I didn’t win the jackpot, didn’t even win my money back, those casinos are mean.

Leftover pizza for supper and then bed.

So, as it turns out the Casa Loma isn’t a derelict building rather the building next door to it is. In my defence it looked derelict and uninhabited as we were whizzing by trying to keep pace with the traffic.  (a very expensive mistake as it turns out – they charged us $110 for not pitching up) Although  having the car longer turned out to be a real boon because our luggage doubled in size over night and I cannot imagine how we would have schlepped that lot on public transport to the airport.

Chinatown doesn’t wake up very early so we passed the time by trying our first (and last) Starbucks. Really have no idea what the fuss is all about, it’s expensive and the drinks taste weird. We picked up an extra bag to put the sleeping bags and pillows in and headed off for the Golden Gate bridge. Despite last night’s weather report we got to see the bridge in all its glory.

A scenic drive past the Painted Ladies and we headed off to the airport for the biggest burgers we‘ve eaten so far and our flight to Las Vegas.

The chappy who booked us into the hotel gave us a really informative info pack which included a map of the city with a recommended route on it, figuring it included all we wanted to see we loaded up on breakfast bagels from George Zoo’s Deli and found the bus which takes the L-Taravel route. Lots of Chinese people live around the area and were hopping on and off at various stops along the way. The route took us under the mountain and reminded me very much of a certain scene in Men in Black.

First stop Chinatown where we spent a couple of happy hours browsing as many shops as I could persuade everyone to go in. A lot of the stuff was cheap and very tacky but it was still loads of fun.

A rather long walk took us down to Fishermans Wharf for lunch, where Wouter had a really cute clam chowder in a sour dough pot  The waterfront is not dissimilar to Knysna’s only bigger, got to see Alcatraz and eat chocolate coated strawberries.

The Musee Mecanique was fascinating although the modern pinball machine held more appeal for us girls than anything else, I’ve now decided I want a Pirates of the Caribbean machine for my birthday (a girl can dream).

A bit of bargaining with Wouter involving us agreeing to go around the submarine museum and him agreeing on us heading back to the hotel afterwards saw us crawling through small spaces whilst the damn thing rolled back and forth. Dunno how submariners cope with such confined spaces and according to Wouter this one was a lot bigger than our Daphne class back home.

Naturally one can’t visit San Francisco without taking a ride on the historic cable cars, little did we know that the wait would be so long, not sure why really as there seemed to be a lot of cars available. Got crowded but was fun.

Back onto the Munti (the bus/train) for the trip back, deli sandwiches from George Zoo’s Deli and another picnic in the kids room.

An odd thing to get excited about much less blog but I managed to sleep the whole night without needing the loo, this is huge when you’re sleeping in a tent and in order to go to the bathroom you have to find your shoes, the torch, wiggle your way out of the sleeping bag, unzip the tent and not fall flat on your face in the process.

Had to bribe the kids with promises of hot chocolate to get them out of bed which I have to say wasn’t greeted with a whole heap of enthusiasm, they’re really not morning people.  It’s taken a couple of days but the jet lag seems to have gone now I don’t feel like I’m in a walking dream state, thank goodness.

(Oh as an aside for any Red Bull addicts out there this is the place to be)

Do you see that big one?

First stop Monterey Bay Aquarium, it’s bigger than ours but on the whole we can hold our heads high. They do have a stunning collection of  sea horses and the otters were just adorable.

Apparently one can’t head towards San Francisco without stopping off at Alameda to see the pinball museum.

Jessica figured finding reeds for her clarinet would be cheaper in the US and as it turns out she was dead on the mark – back home a reed costs us R50.00, here we managed to get a box of 10 with each costing a mere R18.00. However stopping at the music store did mean we were running late for dropping off the car and found ourselves smack bang in the middle of home time traffic.

And thus ensued a chain of events which lead us to staying at a completely different hotel, in a completely different section of San Francisco at a somewhat elevated price, with us keeping the car. Wouter has been worried about our accommodation in San Francisco since we arrived in the US, they never confirmed and when he phoned all he got was an answering machine. Turns out he had good reason to worry, the place appears to be derelict which is not something you want to encounter having driven all day and have 5 minutes to return a hire car. Out came the trusty guide book and armed with a cell phone I started making calls, third time a charm and that is how we have ended up at the Ocean Park Motel. Looks more glamorous on their website but we’re very happy with it. We have a room with two separate bedrooms, small bathroom and a bar fridge plus a microwave, what more could we ask for? Opting to stay in we raided the local deli for provisions (sandwiches and cool drink or in Wouter’s case as many different types of local beer he could carry) and had a picnic in the kids room.

San Francisco is beautiful (what we’ve seen of it so far and that’s been quite a bit with all the driving around trying to find accommodation) and I can’t wait to explore it more tomorrow.