Death valley and Yosemite, LA5/6

If you ever dream of going to a fairy tale land or want to feel how is it like to be in a fairytale, Yosemite is the place.

Yosemite. pronoused locally as 'yo-se-mee-Tee', not 'yos-mide'.

we are so close to the nature.

sometimes we were too close...were nature came to us. the first night we were freezing in the tent, i heard footsteps of an animal, i made some 'shoo shoo' sound and it frightned that animal to turn it's head and gallop away. the moment i shoo shoo, i heard something hard knocking onto Hope Too's aluminium pannier, following that Hope Too's alarm wakes everybody in the campsite, then followed by the galloping for that animal.

on the second night, that was the halloween night, while we were cooking in the dark, the people in the whole campsite started to activate the car horn, knocking loudly on their untensiles, shouting 'stay away, get out of here!'. then we realised that they had spotted a bear coming to them.

it happen 3 times that night. we were both in a dark corner, lighting our area only with our head torch light. sam kept looking for my back and i keep looking at sam's back, fearing that the bear would smell our curry chicken and approach from our rear.

after cooking we took out all the can food, spices, cooking pots, toothpaste, shampoos and all the things that might have smell from our pannier and stored it into a bear proof metal case provided by the campground. it wouldnt be nice if a kid would wear a bear costume for this halloween here as i saw a man rush out of his truck with a rifle when the whole campground spotted the bear for the 3rd time.

yosemite:the half dome stone.

yosemite.

death valley.

Death valley, the lowest spot in north america.

we reached Yosemite on the Halloween eve. we did not have any resevation on the campground. when we reached the campground, the office had a signboard (FULL). We went inside and still see a few unoccupied site. so we rest a while, cook our dinner, slowly set up the tent, the sky got dark, we wash up and still, no one came to this site. we slept till the next morning....

someone came in the night and they had booked this site a week before. Thats Tara and Bruce. I was really afraid that they would react like some other campers we met when I tell them if I can share this site with them but they were really generous to let us 'hitch hike' on their site without paying any $.

Bruce runs a bicycle tour company, touring one of the best cycling route in Califonia.

http://www.cyclesportvelotours.com/

The greens here suddenly turned into charcoal, due to the forest fire.

oh, this was part of the death valley, supposed to be in the previous post.

Then we met a Korean girl by the name of Monique Seung. She was a full time student in photography. when she saw us, she talked to Sam about what their trip was about and wanted us to be her photography 'model' for a few minutes. we followed her car and stopped by a scenic place for her shotting.

errr, it had been a month that we last met her and we are still waiting for her promise: to sent us the photo.

Leaving Death Valley to Yosemite.

wonderful memories in Yosemite.

Las Vegas, The Sin city. LA6of6

SEX anyone? read furthur...

can anyone advise me on this air ticket? 1017P means ten seventeen PM or ten seventeen Pacific Time? 750A means seven fifty AM or seven fifty Australia time?

One of the very few occasions that we were being invited into a RV in any campground. Don and Judie gave us a very nice breakfast and some informations. They were kind to us as they were also bikers. He had an ATV and a Goldwing 1800 inside this motorhome.

We could see many cities in Las Vegas. There's New York, Venice, Paris......

These machines were very easy to use. if anyone has a dollar bill, he can just slot it into the machine and start playing. the minimum amount to play a game is just 1 cent! The machine will not dispense any money but a ticket with barcode. with this ticket, plays can walk to any ticket machines to redeem back the amount of winning money.

Live betting on the sports game like american football. It should be a good income for the up-coming Intergrated Resort in Singapore.

The players had a choice to keep their eyes on the cards.

When motorcycling and gardening is together. The plants grew all over it.

I had always wanted to watch a live adult show but maybe....next time when we are not on budget.

Another type of 'freedom of speech', self claimed 'World largest'.

Coyote Ugly bar.

This guy was arrested for... i don't know. He caused a traffic congestion for the main road of Las Vegas. Passing vehicles would slow down to look.

This time, i could win the fight with Rocky.

For my personality, im too nervous to play such card game. Sam was cool enough to play. The rule sounded simple and to our advantage.

The dealer needs to have 17 points or above. player can have any points. sounds good? well, not easy for us to break even our 'cost' and get away from the table.

when anyone sits down to play a game, the waiteress would come over and take drinks order. it's free. it's another marketing tactic or strategy. after ordering the drink, the player will need to continue on the table for the game till the waiteress comes back for the drink, it's kind of courtesy.

we saw many people walking around with branded shopping bags. we walked the street with our take away food bag.

Las Vegas is just amazing, it's not a biker place but a sudden transition of our lifestyle.

what amused me most in Las Vegas were these people on the street, giving out cards like catalog for social escort.
They were very enthusiastic in their work by creating excitement when handling the brochures in their hand to the passer bys. They wore ‘call girls’ t-shirt and always in high energy, not upset by those who rejected them or threw their brochure after passer by had taken from them.

I would say that they are very professional in their job.

There are free live shows at Treasure Island. These live show attracts people like us, go to this casino and wait for the show to start. while waiting, we walked around the machines and donated a few dollars.

Underaged are not allowed to play.

a good budget place to stay in Las Vegas is Wild Wild West Casino. if booked through the hostelbookers.com website, a weekday per person rate would be US$8.88. But total for 3 nights of stay for 2 of us cost about US$75.00.

N36 06.079 W115 11.085

Note that this isn't any free WIFI service in this place. Public internet access in Las Vegas is very expensive. it could go up to US$20 per hour. I guess it is because the owner do not want the guest to use internet all the time and that caused the guest to get out of the room and slot some money into their jackpot machines.