my vegas and phoenix trip

[dieselboy]

thought i would share what a wicked time me and my friend had in vegas a short while ago!! we flew out and had 20 days in the usa in total. 6 in las vegas, 10 in phoenix and then the rest back in las vegas.

we met so many great people, and now i love usa even more!

in phoenix, we stayed in a place called scottsdale, it was way too hot, even at night!

las vegas was great! we stayed in the tropicana hotel for 2 nights to get the feel of it (dead cheap, only $45 per room per night and there was two of us!)

then we moved to the hard rock hotel. what a place that was! massive pool party every sunday and monday morning all DAY, and then a massive night club sunday night, smallish casino, but it had resturants and everything to make up for it
the club is called body english, and apparently there is always famous people that go there. it was my birthday that night / next morning, and i dunno if that made a difference but we got in for free and on the guest list!!

my friend got me completely drunk though i never do shots, and the american shots are two full mouthfulls... its a shame as i dont remember much that night :/

so next morning we had to check out by 11 (great, a hangover) and we had to collect our car we had arranged for hire at 11:15. so up we get at 10:30 and rush about.
we go to sort out the rental car... after filling in a few forms, and having haggled the price to £15 per day previous, we are told that sorry, they have run out of cars... ... ... ... do you like hummers!
i couldnt help but laugh! so far everything has gone A+ and there is not one thing gone wrong, couldnt believe my luck! and also i pulled the night previous, and i dont ever do that
to be honest i just wanted to sit down because standing up was making me feel dizzy! (still drunk i think)

so i put our cases in the truck, and give it to valet while we have a slap up meal.

the drive to phoenix was good! brand spanking car, and straight roads and views over the desert. it took us an extra 3 hours because i missed the turn and i didnt want to do a U turn on the motorway! even the lorrys do 100mph!!!
we ended up going to flagstaff first (thats a nice town)

when we get to phoenix we are staying with my mates cousins friends, and they are all FEMALE!

they showed us around, and we went to bars n stuff and it was so cheap! i bought a round for about 6 or 7 of us with cocktails, beers and some other stuff and it came to less than £20... cheap or what!

if any of you go over there, make sure you go to the drive thru called jack in the box. they have oreo cookie shakes and theyre so nice

when we were in vegas i was showed how to play blackjack properly and i won enough to keep me happy.
the thing i didnt like was we kept bumping into these call girls and they wouldnt leave us alone.. plus they were really really nice looking.... kept asking us if we wanted a good time..
i kept telling us were going to have a good time dont worry!

you know it takes you a 20 minute walk to get from your hotel room, to outside? those casinos are massive!!!

ive attached some pics!
enjoy!
- i cant wait to go back. all in i spent approx £2000, including flights, hotels, car rental, shopping, food shopping, bars etc..

[Scorpion]

Always fancied Las Vegas but then I started watching CSI: Las Vegas!

Too many murders for my liking!

[dieselboy]

hehe im sure if you watch CSI: England it will be the same if not worse!

tell you what though, all you have to do out there is speak to an american girl and she's urs

[Apache]

Ahhhh... takes me back that does!

Never got to LV in the times I've been out there, but I do like Arizona a lot. As we're posting pics...

Cactus near Sedona (Just north of Flagstaff)


Grand Canyon


Grand Canyon


Destin Harbour - Florida


Destin again


Canaveral - Vehicle Assembly Building


Weightless (!) Apache


Loony Module


X-File


Errrr...


White Sands - New Mexico


The Very Large Array


Jodie!


I quite miss America.

[dieselboy]

nice pictures!! i want to go and see nasa.

one of the things that appeals to me about usa is if you want to live somewhere that it snows most of the year, you can! and if you want to live somewhere where it never even rains, then you can live there too!

and you can also live anywhere in between.

you should get to vegas for a week. those 20 days were the best holiday ive ever had. the 10 or 11 hours on the plane seemed more like 2 hours. plus on the way over we flew over greenland, what a view!

im hoping to go back n visit the people we met over there because we still keep in touch.

im hoping to pass my ccnp and try to get a US visa to work over there. hope it works out that i can.

do you have any more pics apache? ill try and find some from phoenix..

oh one night, i went for a wander into the desert at about 3am. there were no clouds and it had been a full moon recently. i found a hill to lay on and i watched the stars for a bit until it got light out again.
i didnt get bit much, but my mates cousin said they have coyotes and all that!

[Apache]

I've got millions of pics! Have spent about a year in total out there, broken down into lots of trips between 3 days to a month or so.

I think pretty much all flights to the states follow the great circle route (over or close to greenland) as its the shortest route, though once or twice I've been on flights which have taken a geometric 'straight line' across the atlantic on the way back.

When I was working on White Sands Missile Range, the various wildlife consisted of rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas...

I had a standoff with a tarantula one morning on the carpark outside the bunker. Quite funny really. A 3" spider raising its front legs to look threatening to a 5'10" 15st bloke. I looked at it and thought I could simply step on the daft bu99er with my size 9 walking boots, but stepped around him instead. His turf, after all

Our escort (being 'dirty foreign nationals' on a DoD range, we had to have a US Forces escort whenever we were on range) had this obsession with winding up rattlesnakes and found one when we visited Trinity Site (google it). I have memories of him prodding this 3ft long rattler with a stick from about 4ft away trying to get it to strike.

One guy in one of the american teams peed on one one morning just as it was getting light. It was sleeping under a trailer tyre, and he woke it by peeing on it. He came running out from behind this trailer screaming with him jeans round his ankles when he looked down and saw it when it rattled, p1ssed off cos he peed on it no doubt. One of the range staff shot it and gave him the rattle. He screamed like a girl