Ok, onto post 3. Still on the same flight, I’m continuing right on from the previous post. However, we’re starting our descent into Dallas so I’m probably going to have to stop pretty soon and come back to it later. (edit: I was correct. I wrote the first paragraph on the flight. It almost a week later and FPS is over so I’m way behind, but we’ll see how it go) So I’m in Las Vegas, breakfast was included with the hotel, so I decided to take advantage of it. It was pretty good, I had a waffle, half a bagel with cream cheese (saved the other half for later) and orange juice. I was heading down to Kingman AZ which was a shorter drive than yesterday. Although there were some things I was going to do on the way I decided I had time for a quick swim before I left, so I made use of the hotel pool. My first stop was the Lake Mead recreational area which was the man made lake created after the construction of the Hoover Dam. I missed the first view points but I saw as I drove up the hill and it was super impressive. I stopped at a few lookouts on may way to Hoover Dam and I think the pictures will be better than my trying to explain anything – it’s pretty cool.
What the last two photos indicate (which many people probably know) is that the Hoover Dam sits on the Nevada/Arizona border. There’s another photo later to two towers one saying Nevada and the other Arizona with clocks below them (though at the moment it’s the same time in both states – I don’t know if that changes with daylight savings?) My other reflection at this points was it’s hot! It was about 42 degrees as I was looking at the dam – I definitely found summer! I drove around the dam complex a little bit, but given the heat decided against doing another walk around there. I parked and decided to explore the visitors centre. There were a range of tour options so I chose the standard movie/museum entry + the power plant tour. In hindsight it might have been good to do the extra dam tour too. At any rate I enjoyed what I did, the movie was interesting about the dam being developed and built and it was cool to go underneath and see the power generation. There were some pretty good view from on top of the museum too. There will be some more photos but I’ll add them later as uploading the last lot in Starbucks took forever!
After exploring the gift shop it was time to head off so I continued into Arizona into Kingman where I was staying the night. My sleep still wasn’t in great shape so I fell asleep far too early, once again unintentionally forsaking dinner. Well that’s about if for that day and it’s time for me to leave Starbucks and go an check into my Peoria hotel so I’ll pick this up later. I have some more flights tomorrow so maybe I’ll find some time then to do more entries.
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.
I’m off again, my annual pilgrimage to the US for the future problem solving world finds. My Adelaide trip was a fail in terms of blogging, then again there’s only so much you can write about wine tours. However, I’m still buoyed by my success with Vanuatu, so we’ll see how we go this time. At this point I’m about 20 hours into travel, closer to 24 from when woke up yesterday, which will be today again when we land – date line shenanigans.
The trip has been largely uneventful so far. When I went to collect my boarding passes in Perth, the lady was a little confused, but I think that was because I had checked in for the Perth to Sydney flight, but not the Sydney to LA flight. I actually had checked in, but when you get the upgrade to business apparently in checks you out / tells you to check in again, but I’ve never seemed to be able to do that check in again when the upgrade has come through after I’ve already checked in.
Domestic security was basically empty so it was very quick. I walked across to Terminal 3 departures and it was closed. It said it opened 3 hours before but it was about 2 hours and 5 minutes before my flight, so I found that a little strange. I went back to the toilet, and when I came back it was open. The passport gate didn’t seem to recognise me, but there was no Issue when I went through to the person. International security was a bit of a pain because you have to pull all your electronics out but no issues.
Then it was the international business lounge, coffee, fruit and yoghurt. I tried dragon fruit for the first time and it was actually pretty nice. It doesn’t have a lot of flavour but it slightly sweet with a texture that is probably similar to kiwi fruit. I also had a cheeky glass of sparkling wine.
The flight to Sydney was good. We did leave and board a bit late, but that was no big deal. They announced boarding a bit before they were actually ready. When I did board I had to go aside, I had seen on my app that my seat had changed and sure enough they had to print a new boarding pass. I was in premium economy on the Dreamliner for the first leg and for a daytime flight if you’re not trying to sleep I think it’s almost as good as business. It’s a pretty small cabin, with dedicated staff, you get your glass of sparkling on boarding and the food is pretty decent, not quite as lavish as business but pretty good. Sadly premium economy isn’t usually an option flying domestic, but if it was I’d be tempted to use points to upgrade to that rather than business. The cabin was also very empty, so I’m guessing quite a few people got off the flight in Perth (it was QF6 which started in Rome).
I had a new experience at Sydney airport – international to international transfer which I haven’t done before. Basically it’s just a very long walk that spits you out in front of security so you can go through again. This time my bag was pulled aside, but they checked on the computer and it was fine. I worked out where the gate was and I only had about 15 minutes until boarding but I ducked across to the Qantas lounge and ordered a take away latte. I sat down for a few minutes, then headed across to the gate. After a short wait, there was an announcement that there had been a spill on the runway by another aircraft and the crew and pilots would be getting off while they cleaned that.
(It’s now Sunday and I’m at the Grand Canyon waiting for sunset, so I’m way behind already but let’s see how I go) Myself, and a few others went back to the lounge. They said it was only going to be a 20 minute delay but it was a bit longer than that. By the time we actually departed I think we were about an hour late. The flight was great because I was in business class.I took some photos of the menu and the dinner so you can see those below. I enjoyed the room and the lie flat bed, though I didn’t actually sleep that well the flight was fairly bumpy and that made it hard for me to get off to sleep. I probably got around 4 hours or so which as OK, but not great. I didn’t really do much on the flight, I watched most of crazy rich asians, rewatched some of love actually, read a little and listened to some music. I think I spent a reasonable amount of time lying there not sleeping too. I decided to order a slightly bigger breakfast this time, the fruit was good, but they forgot the yoghurt. I also had an egg white omelette which was fine (though I think they’re yummier if they have yolk in them!)
LAX security took a while (I think DFW is quicker) but I got through OK and the bags were on the carousel by the time i got there. I feel like this was a really long post for just the travel leg, so let’s start a new post.
