We went to the outdoor pool at our hotel and had breakfast in the bar. Nice bartenders there. We had a chat while we ate and drank our mojito and long island slurpee.

The ground was so freaking hot! And of course we didnt have flip flops or anything so we ran to the chairs and jumped into them. I guess it was really funny for those watching us. We jumped in the pool and played some volleyball before trying to sunbathe.

After an hour of water and sun we skipped back to the bar for another drink. The little 35mm camera is like a time machine. We skipped right back to the -70s’ for a while before we hit the shower.

We pretty much hanged around in the hotel because of the heat. Played some slot machines, had more drinks, ate some.

We decided to really see the strip this night. Started at the Stratosphere, walked all the way to Cesars Palace before we had another drink. You know, in Las Vegas in the summer, when walking outside you need to do pit stops. Some air condition and some water and a drink. We pretty much went in to every hotel to have a look.

Its amazing that money is not a problem there. Extravagant lobbies with fish tanks for walls, indoor rain forest, statues and fountains and lights.

At the entrance at New York, New York there was a huge replica of the Statue of Liberty - made with jelly beans. Yes, jelly beans…

There is a rollercoaster around the New York hotel and when we finally arrived the queue they stopped four people before us. “Sorry we’re closed. Last ride is full.”

And we were like: “really?”

And they were like: “damn! we’re leaving!”

And the ticket lady were like: “are you guys only two?”

And we were like “yes..?”

And she was like “come on, but hurry so the others dont see you”

And we were like “yeeeeyyy!!!”

It was scary but fun :)

We saw the dancing water fountain at the Bellagio, we saw the Excalibur (wich looks like the Disney castle).

From Excalibur to Luxor there is a monorail but it was closed for some reason. Maybe it was late or out of order, I dont know… Anyway, at the Luxor I had a mojito but it wasnt good. I dont like mojitos with tonic water in yuck! We didnt have the greatest impression of Luxor. The slot machines took our money too hmpf!

It was late and our feet hurted so we caught a cab outside Luxor to go back to our hotel. I told the cab driver that we had to stop by the Wallgreens by New York New York because I had to pick up a film I developed there. “Yes yes, ok!” He drove out from the hotel entrance and turned the opposite direction. I told him it was the wrong direction and that he said he was stopping by that Wallgreens. He took an illegal left turn, pointed at a sign that said no turn and sweared to me and was angry. If he just took a left turn out from the hotel he didnt have to do that.

Anyway, some drama always occur. We went straight up to our room and fell asleep.

The morning after we checked out and left for Los Angeles. Had breakfast at a hotel on the way out of the city. A huuuuge buffet with food from all over the world. Chefs behind every kitchen preparing whatever you wanted.

They had a special offer here:

And it was HOT!! Goodbye heat.

OK! We are finishing the blog. Its been a “you do it. no you do it. no you” conversation about blogging ever sense we got back :p

We were in Las Vegas, so lets see…

Sunday morning we left for Stratosphere hotel. We arrived 4 hours before check in time, but the wonderful bellboy took our baggage and stowed it for us. We walked around the hotel for a while to see what was there; a humongous casino, a McDonalds, Ben & Jerry’s, a few clothing stores and a tons of gift shops. Everything was overpriced (even the prices at McDonalds were upped a bit), but it was all there. They really make sure you don’t feel the need to leave!

View from our hotel room:

You could skydive from the top of our hotel, for 100 bucks.

We got bored though and left. Stupid us walked out thinking we would walk down the strip, in 110 Fahrenheit. Biggest.Mistake.Ever. I had a nervous breakdown before we even got to the Sahara Hotel (two blocks away). Eirik cheered me on and we walked to the Riviera. Smart hotel. They had an opening into the casino from the sidewalk, like huge garage doors that pumped out air-conditioned cold air!! Oh I walked straight in with no hesitation. I have never sweat as much as the time we have spent in Vegas. (NOTE TO SELF: DON’T TRAVEL TO LAS VEGAS IN THE SUMMER).

We stumbled around the Riviera for a while, played a few slot machines, ate some lunch and pretty much got a cold from the AC. We are not used to these extreme temperature changes, so we had to bring sweaters with us at all times. I froze while inside and cooked while out. Black and white, no grey zone here.

Anywho, finally we went back to Stratosphere (barely made it) and drowned in sweat, we checked in and went up to our room to figure out what the heck we were gonna do. We got showered and dressed then went down to the hotel casino to get something to drink. Had a few mojito and daiquiris before leaving to go out when the sun finally had gone down. It was still as hot outside and the hair dryer wind was just as hot, but it was, I guess, easier to walk outside without the sun burning in your face.

We went by the Sahara for $ 1 shots and beers, but it was pretty boring, so we decided to leave and walked out. The strip is just breath taking at night. Really it is.

We just walked around and had a drink here and there and water bottles here and there before ending up inline for a frozen something outside of Treasure Island. Right next to me was a bouncer that asked if we wouldn’t like to go on the patio to sit and have a drink. Hell yes. So we did, and got two for one tickets. What we didn’t know, but to our awesome surprise, Treasure Island had a kick ass cool pirate show! (Really not suitable for kids. And kids in Vegas, wtf? That’s a completely different story).

We had a perfect view from the patio and how lucky wasn’t that? People where crowed all over the side walk outside of TI to see the show and we had the best places of all :D

After the show we left to see the water show at the Bellagio, but must have missed it by a few min.

so we walked over the road to get some dinner. At 12 am. Haha. We ended up at CaboWabo. Another genius place to lure people in. They had cold-water damp that came out of the parasols. Really.Best.Invention.Ever. What we didn’t know was that they had karaoke night. Oh wow, now that was interesting. I know laughing at people is mean, but if you get up on stage thinking you are a rock star, and pretty much suck, what else can I do?

After eating we decided to catch a cab and go home. A long hot day makes me tired.

You will have to excuse our lack of day time pictures of VEGAS. ;)

be back soon :)

We left the cute little motel we stayed at in Winslow, AZ on Saturday. The road was going to take us to Grand Canyon and eventually Hoover Dam. While Grand Canyon is beautiful and pretty mind blowing (and I’ve seen a few world wonders, this beats them all), I just can’t get over my stupid fear of heights. So being there was just nerve wrecking. But Eirik got a few good shots and (as always), convinced me that if I don’t actually get a picture of me on the rim of Grand Canyon, I would regret it for the rest of my life. So here it is. And I am glad I did.

We have been so extremely lucky with the weather while driving. Every day we have had a long drive, there have been storms surrounding us, and we have never hit one single storm. Well, we did hit one, but only for a few minuets. It rained so hard; we could not see the road, the other cars or anything. We went from 75mph to 20mph on the Interstate. It was pretty scary, but Eirik is such a great driver, he calmly got us through it. I am so glad I wasn’t driving. !

Driving into Nevada was just funny as heck. One long straight road. Went all the way to the horizon for ages. There were a few cheers and woohoo’s when we finally got to a curve. Didn’t last long though :p

The sun went down and Eirik told me to open the window. Now this is something I can try to explain, but I don’t think anyone who hasn’t experienced it up close and personal, will understand how insane it is. I open the window and put my hand out. It was like putting my hand into a just turned off oven. I am not even exaggerating! The sun was almost down, and it was 105 Fahrenheit outside. Not to speak of the hair-dryer-in-face-wind! And the funny part is that it only kept getting hotter and hotter as we got closer to Hoover Dam. We stopped at Hoover Dam to get some pictures, and it was literally like walking into a sauna. We were so baffled we were at a loss of words. Eirik took a few pictures before the heat got to us so bad that we just had to leave. At this point, it was pitch dark and around 11pm.

We decided not to book a hotel before getting to Vegas, and that was both smart and stupid. Driving in towards Las Vegas we didn’t know what we were going to do, but knew that we had to drive the 50 min from Hoover Dam to Vegas, and oh my god am I glad we decided to drive into Vegas at night. We drove in the dark for very long (there are absolutely no street lights), then suddenly the sky was brighter and the stars were nowhere to be seen. And there it was. Vegas, in all its sin and glory at the same time, lit up the sky like it was daylight. I caught myself jaw dropping at how insanely pretty it was. We decided that we couldn’t find a motel without driving through “The Strip”. So we drove to the South side “entrance” and there was soooo much traffic! It was just insane. People were walking in lines on the streets. And all the bright lights woke us up at once. In retrospective I’m very happy there was so much traffic, cause then we got a hell of a lot of time to look and point and say, “ohohoh I’ve seen that in (insert movie name here) “. And yet again, I caught my self with my jaw dropped. To see all these awesomely pretty and extravagant buildings for real was just about one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced. I rolled down the window to soak up some Las Vegas spirit from everything going on this Saturday night. Didn’t last long though, it was still 110 Fahrenheit out there and hot hot hot hoooot winds.

We got off the strip and after a heck of a lot of searching and GPS’ing and stealing wifi from McDonalds parkings lots, we found a Motel 6 in a kinda sketchy part of Vegas and stayed there for the night. We booked us in for two nights at the Stratosphere Hotel at the way North side of the Strip and left the next morning.

To be continued..

New Mexico: Out of order, broken toilets, desert, thunderstorms aaand thats pretty much it…

We actually left Denver 8 days ago but here is some pictures from our visit :)

A typical view of an interstate in USA. E.N.D.L.E.S.S.

Walking from our motel to downtown Denver:

Sunbathing by the pool and a double exposure.

Denver. iPhone edit. View from our motel.

And by the way, Denver was HOT! (100F = 38C)

Our visit was pretty much walking up and down 16th street mall, eating awesome Mexican food at Chilli’s, eating horrible Italian food at Abruschi’s, drinking some winecoolers, walking through Cherry Creek mall, bathing in the motel pool, eating at Qdoba’s.

Btw, Chilli’s rocked!

We left Denver, Colorado at 7am and it was a long drive southbound. After numerous pee-brakes (oh the girls cant hold it in :p) we crossed over to New Mexico. Almost 100 degrees F outside and we stopped at Denni´s for lunch. Western style burger and a chicken salad.

Awesome.

We continued on the I-70 through Albuquerque and then we hit I-40 westbound. We passed a huge thunderstorm just a couple miles to our right. We could see the massive lightnings strike to the ground and all we got was a little shower. Lucky. There was a lot of bad weather in the distance but we had sun and cotton clouds all day.

In NM we saw a little mini-tornado swirling some dust in the desert. Probably not a big thing but you never know when they grow to humongous destruction machines…

You know those times you stop and think “only in America”, right? Yea…

Just over the Arizona border the clouds started to pack together. No rain, just cloudy. We drove to Petrified Forest National Park in hope that we could drive through it on our way but it was 30 minutes before closing time. The man said we could give it a try and go for it but the local police would probably pull us over and force us to go back. Idiots!

The good thing though was that we found out that Arizona is an hour behind New Mexico so we just won one hour in the time lottery! WOHOOOO!! :-D

We had an address punched in on our GPS that was taking us to a cheap motel in Winslow. We ended up at a small Indian arts and crafts souvenir store. Yeah, give me one of them tee-pees and a feather so i can camp outside… :p There was another motel on the other side of the road that we checked in to for the night :)

Hungry as hippos we needed some dinner. I saw signs on the road just before our exit showing many places to eat so I took us there. Only thing was that I took the wrong arm into the interstate so we had to drive 10 minutes before we could turn off and go the other way… my fault :p

Anyway, Taco Bell was the most inviting. She had a 7 layer burrito and I had a big box of various stuff and It. Was. Awesome. Yes, Taco Bell, the McDonalds of Mexican fast food was awesome!! Might be that we had not eaten for 8 hours and just finished a 13 hour drive but still…

Today the plan is to see Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam before rolling into Las Vegas tonight. The weather is not so good and it looks worse on the forecast. Yay!

When we cleaned out of Jessicas great grandfathers house we found many treasures. One of them a Yunon dx-3 camera. An old Chinese (made in Taiwan) consumer camera. Very fun to play with, especially since it takes normal 35mm film that I can get a hold of pretty much anywhere :)

It was never used and still wrapped in plastic. Its got a fixed focus, 45mm plastic lens (not changeable) and three aperture settings: cloudy, partially cloudy and sunny - approximately f/8, f/11 and f/16. Pretty cool!

Heres some frames from the first film shot in the suburbs of where her grandparents live :)

The next film is a B/W film and they couldnt develop it at Walgreens so I have to find another place to develop it. Probably in LA.

Does anyone have any film recommendations for this kind of camera? Hit me in the comments or drop me a mail eirikhalvorsen@gmail.com thanks! :)

Eirik

I had a corndog. We went to dinosaur mountain and I had a corndog. Well, it didnt quite meet my expectations but it was worth a try :)

On friday last week the guys (me, Anders, Kristian, Mike, Chris and Nick) went on a trip to see Rock Gardens, Boondocks, Lead and Deadwood. The day started out with Mikes famous breakfast on the grill.

I have pictures from all those places on my camera but I have to save them for a later post. Let this be a teaser :)

On Sunday me and Jessica went to see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We stopped by Reptile Gardens on the way.

And they had funny mirrors :)

Then we drove up to Mount Rushmore. Over the tops of the mountains we could see dark clouds gather and it started raining a bit. At the top there was tourists going back to their cars for shelter but we just wanted to take a glance, and I thought of a cool picture of the heads with lightning in the background. Well, thats harder than it looks because it was daylight and I couldnt get a long enough shutter time.

You can really see the dark sky. There was warnings of deadly lightning crawling to the ground, huge storms and hail. It was just a little rain and some lightning. I hoped for worse but it ended with just some rain.

We took off to see the big Crazy Horse monument. Crazy Horse was a chief Indian in the Black Hills and there is a huge ongoing mountain carving to his memory. Its all by goodwill and charity.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial if you are interested in the story.

It was raining quite much so we sat down in the welcome center and watched an informal movie of the project before we left. Heres a shot from the parking lot:

Yesterday we left her family in Rapid City and went on to Denver, Colorado. We drove through Lusk and had lunch on the way. We went to Subway and Jessica gave them a glutenfree bagel and they made a sub out of it. Awesome :)

It was a bit over 6 hour drive. When we arrived downtown Denver we found a parking lot so that we could find a cafe on 16th street mall with a wifi and find a place to stay for the night. We found a cheap motel with swimming pool and free breakfast so we decided to stay another night.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Grand Canyon national park in Arizona. Going to drive for 10-12 hours!

Blog you later :D

Eirik