USA 2026: More travel, sin city

I’m currently on my next plane, flying from Las Vegas to Indianapolis via Dallas/Fort Worth. That makes me a fair way behind on the trip, but we’ll see if I can catch up a bit now!

After collecting my luggage at LAX I found the shuttle to take be to the car rental centre. From there I found Avis and it was a quick experience through the preferred counter. I got a Ford Bronco (photos below). It fitted the description of a small SUV, it was a decent size but fairly small in the back in terms of boot space, but more than enough for me and it felt like the right sort of car for a fair bit of driving and going through the Grand Canyon. I had a brief fight getting my iPhone connected (I had to work out how to delete phones as the maximum number had been reached). There were a number of things I quite liked about the car. It had adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist which I find helpful, especially when driving in a foreign place on the wrong side of the road! It also turned out (though it took be a day or so to realise) to have a wireless charging pad which was super useful, wireless car play, but if you put your phone in the right spot it would charge too. I also liked the entertainment system, good sized screen for car play and on the right third you could have other info, some of which it pulled from CarPlay. So i could have full screen google maps, but also see what I was listening to on the right. Google Map directions and song playing also linked into my instrument display and were shown there which was super helpful. I hope the other cars I get on this trip are as good!

After that it was to the hotel, which wasn’t far away. Remind me to check the cost of paid parking at hotels in the future it was US$70 for one night! I wasn’t expecting that. $20 is fairly standard if parking isn’t free but that was ridiculous, next time I’ll use the shuttle and pick the car up the next day! I was pretty tired and this is where my sleep started to get a little bit messed up. I ordered room service for dinner and had a shower. (If you remember back to my US trip in 2022 -see here, I had a real struggle with the shower. I’m not sure if this was the same hotel and it was similarly difficult. However with the aid of the instructions now written above the tap I managed to get in working!) I slept, but not that well. My memory is that I slept for a few hours then woke up and couldn’t get back off for a few more hours. I had a relatively leisurely morning with more room service for breakfast – it was pretty good, yoghurt granola and Starbucks coffee – my firsts of the trip.

It was a longish trip to Las Vegas (somewhere around 5 hours) so I think I set off around 11ish or maybe just before. I was able to checkout on the Hilton app which made like nice and easy. (I didn’t book through Hilton, I can’t remember if it was booking.com or Qantas, but somehow the stay added itself to the app which was clever and handy albeit slightly scary that it can do that. Maybe it was linked to my email?) From my memory the drive to Las Vegas was uneventful. I had planned a few stops along the way and I’m pretty sure one of them was Walmart where I got snack for lunch and some sparkling water. Amazingly, I don’t think I actually got coffee on that drive, but I could be wrong. I’m struggling to remember all the details, so when I have the benefit of internet I can check my wise card and it will remind me what I’ve spent, when and where.

Once I had arrived at Las Vegas I checked into the hotel. I was obviously tired as I somehow walked straight passed the elevators and thinking the hotel didn’t have any I begrudgingly hauled my bags up the stairs. It wasn’t until the next morning i found the elevators did exist. My tiredness had another negative effect – I had booked to go and see Bryan Adams but I was feeling so tired. I decided to take a nap in the hope that would wake me up. I did wake up but I couldn’t muster the energy, and fell asleep almost straight away. I was pretty annoyed as it was a waste of money – I think I need to plan slightly better, knowing I’ll need rest on arrival after a lot of travel. I also missed dinner as I kept sleeping. I had a very broken sleep and was slipping into a less than ideal pattern.

This post is starting to feel long so I’ll end here. This post does’t have many photos sorry, just the car. Don’t worry, future posts will have lots of good ones. I keep meaning to take photos of my accommodation, but routinely forget. I like them, but I imagine you don’t really care much so it probably doesn’t matter.