Goodbyes

Our final day on the ranch was very strange. It was odd to be leaving a place which had
practically been our homes for the last month. We didn't really do much on the actual ranch that day. Just woke up, got ready and packed. Lillie took a group photo of us, Mike and Ella and the French WWOOFers in the back garden and we all said our goodbyes. We were told that
we were welcome back at any time and I'm sure if any of us return to the US it'll be on the
to-do list.

Mike offered to drive us back into town and as usual he entertained us with some stories. We eventually arrived at the airport to find out about our rental car. We shook hands with Mike and said goodbye. It was a very weird experience to be saying goodbye to Mike after getting to know him so well. We all said we'd come back and see the McCracken's if we were ever back in Arizona.

The car turned out to be a fair bit more expensive than we expected but we just had to bite the bullet and accept it as we had no other choice. It was Sam's first experience driving and he was a bit nervous but he quickly got used to it.

Chloride...

The first night after we'd parted ways with the Gold Bar we stayed in a quaint little town called Chloride not too far from Vegas. We managed to get a camping spot in an RV trailer park. The guy who ran the place was one of the friendliest people we'd met on the whole trip and he sounded like someone from Fallout 3. He kept coming over to help us with inflating the air beds and even offered us a camping lantern.

The next day we headed towards Nevada with Vegas in our sights. First of all we crossed the Hoover Dam which I thought was incredibly underwhelming. I expected it to be a lot larger and to be honest the water was far more interesting than the actual dam.

Vegas!

We decided to spend 2 nights in Sin City so we could make the most of it. We managed to book a hotel online and got a pretty good deal. Las Vegas is a very unique city indeed. It seemed to be one huge theme park with all the casinos/hotels linked together with walkways, and everything was themed around other cities such as New York and Paris. We walked around to get a feel for the place and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for a night out. There was a very strange and annoying bunch of people who would slap these little cards with numbers for prostitutes and escorts. It was funny at first but after the 100th time it started to really grind on us.

Our first bar was Coyote Ugly where there was a 2 for 1 deal on. We took full advantage of that offer and got 4 drinks and then headed elsewhere. There was an Irish bar in New York, New York which we thought we'd give a go and then wished we hadn't bothered when the pints turned out to be $8 each. We thought we'd try out the MGM and the drinks there weren't much cheaper. I gave the roulette table a try but I didn't have much luck and managed to lose $30. We met some guy that promised us he could get us into clubs, but he didn't seem to be able to make good on his promise so we left and went home.

The second day we went to see The Dark Knight Rises 2 days after the "Movie Massacre" which was a slightly edgy experience. we all agreed that the film was pretty darn good, but it couldn't have lived up to the hype surrounding it. That night we went back to Coyote Ugly and found out we had to pay to get in after 9pm and that it wasn't 2 for 1 so we had 2 drinks to make the 10 dollar entry fee worth it. We went off in search of some more cheap drink and found a very strange "rock" bar which didn't actually play rock music, but instead played shitty pop, dance and chart music. The Belagio was just down the road so we thought we'd check out the water display but we got there a bit late and only caught the last 2 minutes. After that we called a night and went to the Mad Onion for some drunken grub.

The day after we went to see Savages which I didn't think was all that great but Sam and George seemed to enjoy it. I bought my brother some cards which he'd requested as a souvenir and bought Sean and Sarah a post card but I ended up losing them somehow (sorry).

The tree of Joshua

Sick of the big cities we thought we'd try something on the opposite end of the scale, and decided to exchange a nice hotel for some camping. Joshua Tree is apparently famous for its rock climbing and that's no surprise; the scenery there is nothing short of spectacular. The drive there was incredible. There was literally miles and miles and miles of road stretching out across the desert without seeing 1 building. All of our iPods had died so we had to deal with the very limited choice of radio channels; 1 of them being a religious channel, 1 of them was an angry guy giving his opinion on the Colarado shooting, amongst other things, and the other channel just being insufferable country music.

We reached a town close to the Joshua Tree state park. It was pretty unsure whether we'd actually be able to stay there but we thought we'd drive about and see if we could set up camp. Luckily there was campsites available and better yet... we didn't have to pay any additional fees to camp there!

San Diego?/Calarnado?/Carlsbad?

San Diego was next on the list. It was an amazing feeling finally seeing the other side of America. We had actually done it, we'd gone from coast to coast and we were all dying to get into the sea. After a fair bit of driving about we decided to stay in a low cost chain of motels called Motel 6 and go for a dip. Mike had warned us that the West coast sea was actually really cold due to the water being pulled down from the Arctic. Unfortunately he wasn't lying and it was incredibly cold. Still we had a pretty good time in the sea and it was good to finish one of our goals of making it from Coast to Coast.

Laguna Beach

Laguna Beach was a pretty interesting experience. After just watching Savages (which is partially set in Laguna Beach) it was weird to actually be somewhere from the movies. Everything and everybody seemed to be incredibly well off and pretty fancy. That night we found a place right next to the beach and had a walk downtown to grab some food. We got some ice cream and had a romantic stroll on the beach which happened to coincide with some mental guys stroll on the beach where he spoke to himself loudly, so we left.

The next morning we went swimming again and went down to a little cove. We made a game out of getting wiped out by the waves. I've never experienced anything like it. The waves and currents were so strong that it literally flipped you over and twisted you on your head. The lifeguard asked us to dive under the waves but that kind of killed the fun so we headed to another beach to carry on the game. We found another beach where the waves were even bigger and more deadly, again the life guard came over but he just asked if we were ok and then let us get on with almost injuring ourselves.