TRAVEL: USA PART 6 - BIG SUR, SANTA BARBARA AND LAS VEGAS

16/03/04: I’m awake early and decide to use the time constructively – write postcards, post them, and see if I can find a travel agent. N and I have decided we should fly back from Las Vegas to San Francisco, as opposed to travelling by bus. It is for the same reason that we deigned not to drive straight from Yosemite to Las Vegas: Death Valley stands in our way. There may be a way around it but it would be a long an arduous passage and we don’t have the time. I find a travel agent, make enquiries and return to our motel to talk it over with N. Flights will cost us a little over $90 each, to be paid for on my credit card.

It is about now that my hangover begins to kick in, and it’s a nasty one. The others are in a similar state of befuddlement. To exacerbate matters, it’s shaping up to be another very hot day. We return our room keys and climb aboard The Beast, which is almost on fire, but then realise we’re missing something. Where’s our liquor? What did we do with our stash? Flashbacks to the night before, in our room where we carried on drinking until the early hours. A picture forms in my mind, a revelation that we placed our cache in one of the drawers for safekeeping. The owner of the motel has since gone to lunch so we plead with one of the cleaners to let us back into our room so we can search for what it is we’ve left behind. She acquiesces and after much frantic searching we find what we’re looking for.

By the time we reach the travel agent I’m feeling a bit sick. The lady who takes my booking is very helpful, which makes me all the more aware of how awful I must appear. If she can smell last night’s booze on me she does a good job of not letting on. I clock the waste paper bin to my right, her left, and recoil at the thought of throwing up into it, which is a possibility. The whole procedure takes far too long and makes me dizzy, but it’s a relief to know that our passage back to San Francisco has been arranged. On the other hand, we’re now running late. There's no time for breakfast, even if we could stomach it, so we decide to find a supermarket instead. The supermarket, once found, is a wonderful place to be: spacious, calm and air-conditioned with a comprehensive selection of potato chips, fruits and soft drinks to aid us on our road to recovery.

Roof down on The Beast, somebody puts on Harvest by Neil Young. We aren't sure yet where it is we are driving to, but N has warned us that he won't be able to manage more than 250 miles (San Francisco to Yosemite National Park was about 200 miles.) At the very least we would like to make it as far as Bakersfield, although Santa Barbara would be preferable. If we’re really pushed for time then there’s always Santa Maria, although that would leave us with a very long haul to Vegas.

Refractions of light flicker off the Pacific Ocean blue. After Neil Young, The Beatles and The Beach Boys. The Cabrillo Highway winds its way along Big Sur’s coast, keeping N focussed on his driving. After a few hours we stop somewhere for lunch overlooking the sea and could happily spend the rest of the day there.

We are making good time so we decide to press on as far as Santa Barbara. The last 50 or so miles, after Highway 1/the Cabrillo Highway peels off from its coast-hugging tract, aren't much fun. At one point the road takes us into a depression and a horrible mist descends upon us, freezing us to our bones. We’ve had no reason to put the roof up and it’s too late to do anything about it now. We reach our destination before it is dark, find a motel opposite Pershing Park, and walk down to the waterfront in time to watch the sun set.

Big Sur

Tomorrow is going to be the hardest day’s driving yet – something like 350 miles, bypassing Los Angeles and then on through the Mojave Desert towards Las Vegas – and we’ll need an early start. We find an Irish bar somewhere around State Street, order some french-fries and force down a beer. The place is dead so we try somewhere else (possibly the Wildcat on Ortega?) but it's not much better. A couple more beers later and the consensus is that we’ll call it a day.

C and I are talking our way down State Street and M and N are following behind doing the same when suddenly we’re told to stop. N has noticed a lively bar with potential. I am wary, as is C, but we defer to the wishes of our driver, who’s in a gregarious mood. The place is heaving. It’s a ‘student night’, and students in America – and especially Santa Barbara, it appears – can afford to drink whenever they want. There is a yard out the back which is even busier. We engage with the locals and people keep going to the bar and it gets quite messy and we don’t leave until late. When we finally do, C suddenly recedes into the night, M is seen chasing after two girls, N is stuffing his face with food he’s found from somewhere, and I’m doing press-ups on the sidewalk. We had agreed that we need to be up no later than eight in the morning.

17/03/04: My limited experience of American motels has led me to deduce that their exterior mostly betrays the interior. From the outside they look how you might expect, stuck in a pleasing 1970s time warp which fits in with the whole road trip experience quite nicely. But when you actually step inside these rooms the décor can be surprisingly quaint. Everything is very tidy, floral patterns are ubiquitous and there are plenty of little things, like doilies and brass door knobs, that give it an oddly European feel.

Our motel in Santa Barbara is no exception, and the breakfast area wouldn’t look out of place in an English bed & breakfast. We know this because despite sleeping until gone 09:00 in the morning, none of us are in any shape to do anything until we’ve had something to eat, even if that’s only an apple. M is particularly damaged. I knock on his and C’s door. No answer. I shout that they need to wake up, that we have to get to Vegas and we’re already running late. M comes to the door, opens it and then quickly closes it again. It is to be expected. We didn’t even go straight to bed when we finally regrouped back at the motel. Those of us who aren’t feeling so bad are probably still drunk, and N, our driver, fits too easily into this category.

It’s a real effort to eat anything at breakfast, although they’ve not laid on a very inspiring spread. So we will stop at the garage to stock up on water and potato chips. We shall also keep the roof up for a while because we need to be able to control the temperature and stave off loud noise. It is 10:30 by the time we’re ready to go – more than two hours later than scheduled – although that’s quite a good recovery considering our condition.

Leaving Santa Barbara

We pass through LA to the sounds of The Byrds (Younger than Yesterday), HOLLYWOOD visible on the hillside. The thermometer is showing 30°C and it's not even noon. Fortunately The Beast's air conditioning takes it in its stride. The traffic is heavy but flows steadily, and we make our way through the milieu of Los Angeles in reasonable time. After that the road adopts a long but shallow rake all the way to the edge of the desert. The soil glares a bright white but visually softens once we’ve reached the summit of Glen Helen Regional Park.

The Mojave Desert doesn't seem as quintessentially desert-like when you drive through it, but my photographs show otherwise – perhaps the traffic detracts from the sense of wilderness. Just over halfway and there’s about 150 miles of driving still to do. We stop at Lenwood on the fringes of Barstow and to Denny’s for lunch. These irregular eating habits are playing havoc with my digestive system, but I feel a whole lot better after my ample portions.

The Tony Blair-appreciating Marine in Monterrey had warned us that we should book accommodation for Las Vegas in advance, but we’re only just getting around to it. C’s phoning numbers from a local newspaper, without much success. He makes nearly ten calls before he finally find a downtown motel – the Bridger Inn – with room for all of us, corroborating the ineluctable appeal the Marine assured Vegas has for the American looking to cut loose for a few days, regardless of the time of year or day of the week.

Taking into account the hour we took for lunch, the journey to Las Vegas’s periphery takes us a full seven hours. Downtown Las Vegas is located north of The Strip, so it’s almost 19:00 by the time we’ve found our motel. The process of booking-in seems to take forever. The woman who works reception is in no great hurry – you’d think she was stoned or something – and there’s a large party to check in ahead of us. She studiously pores over everybody’s passport, cracking jokes if she spots an opportunity. The atrium’s piled high with luggage and there’s nowhere to sit. M is seething. N has almost lost his mind; he’s standing out on the pavement in a driving-induced stupor, bashing an empty plastic bottle against the side of his head.

Meanwhile, the return of our vehicle is now overdue and I’m given the unenviable task of phoning ahead to tell them that we will be there as soon as our receptionist decides she’s done with her comedy routine. The woman at the car-hire place is laying it on thick, explaining that she’ll need to charge an extra day’s rental if we’re late, which we almost certainly will be. I’m not so worried about that, but I am concerned that in establishing how much that extra cost should be our rental scam will be blown apart. I fancy, though, that she’s not quite grasping the nature of our predicament: 'No, we’re already in Vegas – we’re just tied up at the motel. We shouldn’t be more than about half an hour.' She finally understands me: 'Oh, you’re here in Vegas NOW? Why didn’t you say, honey?'

An hour passes and we almost have to manhandle N back into the car. He tells us his concentration is shot to pieces and the only way he can make it to the airport, where the car needs to be deposited, is by relying on us completely for directions. This seems fair, and to start with it goes very well. However, at the first major intersection this system shows signs of breaking down. It takes ages for him to commit to making a right turn, hounded from every angle by aggressive drivers sounding a concerto of horns. On the approach to Highway 15, the passengers collectively indicate to its driver the need to turn left. N immediately turns the car left. An explosion of panic reels him back in before the possibility of meeting another vehicle head-on becomes a reality. We continue to provide instructions for the rest of the journey, making sure not to give him too much forward notice in case he ends up driving us over the edge of a fly-over or into a brick wall.

We reach the airport without further incident – now about an hour and a half later than agreed – only to find that the aviation authorities have devised some sort of navigational test. Signs directing us to our terminus, when slavishly adhered to, lead us out of the airport and back toward the freeway. We turn around and try again. The same thing happens, only this time C succeeds in identifying where we’re going wrong. On our third pass we find the correct turning and thus the point of depository. Then finally some luck: the keys are returned without further ado, and no money is asked for. The severely depleted fuel tank isn’t even checked. Except now we’ve got to wait half an hour for a bus to get us back to the motel. We'll grab a cab.

Mojave Desert

We enter the MGM Grand looking for food and drink, find a bar and order a round of beers. No sooner have we sat down and the stage above the bar erupts into a vulgar explosion of music and dance. The lead singer starts warbling and prancing all around us, and if you're quick you can catch our dumbfounded faces, relayed as they are onto the big screen above the stage, as the cameraman follows this jester’s every move. Actual lions are trussed up in a faux-jungle landscape just across the concourse. We drink our beers quickly, find a food hall of sorts, eat pizza, and then get the hell out of there.

The more time you spend wandering around Las Vegas the more apparent its seediness becomes. It’s not the kitsch aspects that strike you – they’re blatantly apparent from the moment you arrive – but its grimy underbelly. Flyers for strip joints lay scattered all about you. Groups of drunken kids make a racket. Many of the smaller casinos that open up onto the street offer bottled beer for a dollar, or free vodka slush puppies – anything to get you through the door.

We each buy a large can of beer from a supermarket and wander down the main drag, drinking them openly. You couldn’t get away with that in San Francisco. We pass the most audacious fountain display you will ever see (Lake Bellagio). We stand there and watch this aquatic revue go through its routine at least three times. This is Vegas all over. There is nothing inherently impressive about what you are seeing aside from its scale, but it is enough, and we stand there transfixed. After walking for another mile or so, we give in and dive into a random casino. M gets stuck into a game of roulette while I pick up the free drinks. When M decides to attend to the calling of nature I deputise for him and, without knowing what I’m doing, win him 20 dollars.

Next up is Gilley’s, which promises naked mud wrestling. By the time we’ve entered, this dubious spectacle is over, but we stay anyway because the beer is cheap. We’re exhausted so don’t take full advantage of this, but as with the night before we make some effort to keep things going back at our motel.

TRAVEL: USA PART 5 - YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK AND MONTEREY

14/03/04: Despite leaving Vesuvio at a relatively early hour, we spent some time socialising with the traveller types back at the Green Tortoise, and it left us feeling a little dazed and confused. In the morning, C and I took refuge in the common room – with coffee, Gatorade and crisps – while M and N went to pick up the car. It was a Sunday and N and I would be returning on the following Friday via an as yet undetermined means of transportation. For M and C there would be no coming back. Los Angeles would be their next destination, before they crossed from west to east for a final fling in New York City.

M and N pull up outside of the Green Tortoise in a silver Chrysler Sebring convertible. What sorcery is this? The car that we were supposed to be hiring hadn’t really done it for N and M, but they were resigned to it anyway. M then observed the Chrysler moping about in the corner and asked how much extra it would cost to charter this formidable beast. $100, apparently, which must be some sort of mistake – or a deal done on the side perhaps? Who cares, we’ve got just the thing in which to drive to Las Vegas.

Our Chrysler Sebring – here on in referred to as ‘The Beast’ – has an external ambient temperature gauge, and it tells us it’s touching 30°C. Not that we notice: we’ve got the roof down, and the backdraft is keeping us cool. Within less than a mile of crossing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, we’ve taken a wrong turn into Oakland. The surrounding buildings are low-rise in aspect, which suggests we might be in some kind of down-town situation; the sound of gospel music emanating from various churches gives the same impression. To the less religiously inclined denizens of Oakland, I fear we might look out of place – white skinned, driving a silver convertible with the sounds of the sixties blaring out. We think we know in which general direction we need to be travelling, but we’re not presently driving in it. To rectify this we elect to take a U-turn in the nearest parking lot – the one occupied by a division of Afro-American youths in typical ‘street’ attire. Traffic lights then dictate we pause at its exit. One of these youths saunters over. Is he armed? What’s his gun of choice: a revolver, a shotgun, or something semi-automatic? I don’t mean to stereotype but my teenage years spent listening exclusively to hip hop have primed me for this. Sensing that we might be lost, the gentleman asks us if we need guidance. We tell him that we want to get back on Highway 580 and he duly obliges with directions. His council is both accurate and  courteous, and the occupants of the shiny Sebring feel a mixture of relief and guilt; relief that we haven’t been mugged – or worse – and guilt for ever thinking that it should have been the case.

Oakland comfortably behind us and the topography starts to level out (around Tracy, possibly). To ensure an early start we skipped breakfast and are now in need of sustenance. We pull into a roadside Kentucky Fried Chicken and reaffirm with its employees that we’re heading in the right direction – the direction of Yosemite National Park. We are, and any residual uncertainty is obliterated by the military-like precision the proprietor of Kentucky brings to bear in sketching out the best route on our roadmap of California.

Contrary to global opinion, Americans are not as overbearingly arrogant as we sometimes perceive them to be. They are a friendly people who like nothing more than to engage with those who have made the effort to come and wonder at their fair and pleasant land, are proud of their country and appreciate its natural charm. When an American says to you that Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places on earth, it’s not out of hubris, it’s because they genuinely believe this to be the case (even if they have never set a foot outside their own country).

When lunch is finished we visit the garage next door and stock up on beer. This turns out to be a bizarre experience. The petrol station is run by a family who emigrated here from the UK. That in itself is not overly surprising (although, given the remoteness of our location, it is slightly). What really strikes us as weird is the fact that they’re from Hounslow. N hails from Feltham, just down the road, and he, M and I have all spent varying amounts of time renting accommodation in Hounslow itself. N and I currently live in Isleworth, in fact, not 15 minutes’ walk from Hounslow Town Centre.

You’d have thought somebody had died. Our shared connections with Hounslow established, these economic migrants, who moved here for the sake of their children, so they tell us, are plunged into a well of wistful nostalgia for the old country. They want to know everything current that’s going on in Hounslow and would probably be very willing to take us in for the night to hear all about it. They make us promise to stop by on our return from Yosemite, and we don’t have the heart to tell them that we don’t yet know whether or not we’ll be coming back this way, and that the chances are we won’t. It’s a scene of almost hysterical bathos.

As is the way with such things, when we finally start gaining some altitude the temperature begins to fall, so much so that we’re inclined to pull over to the side of the road and put the roof up on our air-conditioned beast. Meanwhile, N has asked us to keep an eye on the petrol gauge. We’ve been warned that refuelling facilities in Yosemite are scarce, and the journey is taking longer than we'd anticipated. A sign is passed that states ominously ‘Last Chance for Gas’, but peering over at the gauge it looks like we’ve still got half a tank of petrol. We can also sense that dusk is almost upon us and would like to reach our destination before nightfall.

But N is concerned and wonders why none of us are similarly anxious. It finally dawns on him that M, C and I have erroneously been taking our fuel readings from the temperature gauge; 'F' stands for Fahrenheit, not fuel. We don’t quite run out of gas but it is dark when we arrive, and we’re lucky to find accommodation too. We will all have to share a room, and within that room will have to share double beds. There is a bus that makes the short journey to Yosemite Lodge – the only facility currently open where we can settle down for a meal. It’s like a Wetherspoon pub on a Tuesday afternoon, but with a narrower demographic. There’s no time to make a night of it and we’d rather be outside anyhow. We decide to walk back to Curry Village, where our lodgings are, to take in the serene delight of unadulterated night sky.

 Depending on who you ask, bears are either not a threat at all or are very much a present danger and should be guarded against at all times. Such conflicting advice makes for just the right level of trepidation when walking back through Yosemite at 11:00 at night. We pause for a while in the woods to gain a fuller appreciation of our physical isolation. When we’ve had enough of that, C and N prepare for bed, while M and I decide to drink a beer out on our veranda and wonder at a silence only occasionally disrupted by a distant, thunder-like sound. We ponder this mysterious sonance for a while and theorise that it can only be the reverberations of huge slabs of winter ice crashing down scree ridden slopes. It is spring and the snow is melting.

15/03/04: I have slept well and maybe even made inroads into the sleep deficit that has been building up over the past week. If it wasn’t for N I might have gotten well on top of it. He’s been very active this morning, doing nothing much in particular, exiting then entering the room again and fiddling with the curtains in a concerted effort to get us all out of bed. Resistance is futile, so I commandeer the shower before the thought occurs to either M or C.

            I can see the thinking behind N’s provocation. It was dark when we arrived, but now the sun is out and who knows what awaits us. Moreover, we're all pretty hungry. Breakfast will be the ‘Three Brothers’ baguette, which is the culinary highlight of my trip thus far. We all indulge but each employ subtle variations on the theme, such is the nature of the Three Brothers experience. The numerical value of this delight refers to the three meats involved: ham, salami and pepperoni. You can then choose your style of bread, the salad contents, the sort of cheese you’d like, and your condiments. This, coupled with a cup of coffee, is the perfect way to start a day playing in the great outdoors.

We estimate that we have about three hours to spare to survey our environment. It has been decided that our next destination shall be Monterey, a distance of over 250 miles and something like 5 hours away. In terms of getting closer to Las Vegas this journey will not make massive inroads. However, it should make for a more pleasant driving experience, taking us through Big Sur and along the Pacific coast thereafter, before we are then required to head inland in the direction of Vegas itself.

It’s the perfect time of year to visit Yosemite. Our difficulty in procuring lodgings the previous night had nothing to do with an influx of visitors: there simply weren’t the rooms ready and waiting. Fresh snow lies piled up against the side of the roads, proof that Curry Village is still in the process of preparing itself for the tourists that are sure to arrive before the month’s out. We are freed from the commercial permutations that would ordinarily tarnish this most tranquil of settings and only occasionally pass visitors on our hike through the valley. It would be nice to stay another night. In hindsight, we should have left San Francisco a day earlier – maybe even two. As it stands, we need to have the car back in Vegas for Wednesday, and it is now Monday. There is little margin for spontaneity.

Before we leave there is the small matter of ‘gas’ to deal with. It can be procured locally but is slightly frowned upon: it is meant for the vehicles that tend to the upkeep of the area. We are made very aware of this by the local garage attendant who goes on to explain that the price of petrol is significantly higher than it would ordinarily be – hence the warning signs on the drive in – to deter people from buying it here. But we’re on holiday and couldn’t really care less about this extra expense. We’re just relieved we can buy enough fuel to get us on our way, and compared to the cost of petrol back in our own country this elevated tariff still seems rather reasonable, as demonstrated by the insolent manner in which M deals out the dollar bills. (We’re only permitted enough petrol to get us on the road and as far as the next gas station, where we will stop and fill our tank to its brim.)

So we’re on the road again. It is a long drive through pleasant countryside, pretty uneventful save for an innocent encounter with a policeman curious to know what we’re doing pulled over by the roadside about two hours south-west of Yosemite. In fact, we’ve stopped for a cigarette break and to reorganise the contents of our boot, which is mostly filled with crates of beer and things. It’s hard to tell if he minds, or whether our English accents nullify any latent suspicion, but he takes us at our word and is quickly on his way.

It’s an epic journey along Highway 140 and we pass through a number of faceless towns – Merced, Los Banos – stopping just the once to purchase victuals to tide us over. It is dark when we finally run into Monterey. After eating at a roadside diner, we find a motel and then walk down to the quayside in search of somewhere to drink. There doesn’t seem to be much going on. The only bar displaying even a modicum of life is some English themed ‘pub’ down on the quay, which actually turns out to be quite animated. Copies of the satirical publication The Onion are pasted to the walls of the toilet, there is a wide selection of beers, and the locals are very communicative. We end up in conversation with a US Marine who thinks that, 'Tony Blair’s got balls, man!' Despite his misplaced admiration for our then Prime Minister, this military man is polite, articulate and good company.

Perhaps because we’ve spent much of the day sitting down, we find the time and the energy to get almost as drunk as we were in Delirium, and stumble back through the empty streets of Monterey in high spirits.