Secondment – The one where we road tripped through Death Valley (chronicle 3.0)

Hello peeps!

How are we doing today? Hope you're surviving Monday blues.

So back to continuing with the secondment chronicles, haha saying chronicles makes it sound fancy doesn’t it? I shall thank my friend for suggesting that. You know who you are.

Anyway, continuing on from the last post I did a brief recap of my time in San Fran (Link). Now I shall write about my travels around the big U S of A. One of the best things about doing secondment is the extra time off you get after to travel. I think I had about 5 or 6 weeks off after, I don’t actually remember, but it was a decent amount of weeks. Doing an international secondment is a reward in itself, but getting that little extra time off before returning to your normal routine, well that's just a plus in my books!

So, after spending about 5 months on my own, my friends, at various points in time, joined me on a trip around America. I mean not technically around America, but we visited various states so we travelled through America and also went from like East to West. I think you get the point. Anyway, i'll stop waffling on.

The Road Trip

For this portion of the leg, two very good friends of mine had just finished their Disney World holiday(I think it was Disney World, I could be wrong and might have been in Texas) and were now joining me for our planned road trip up and down and around the big land. We did do quite a lot of driving. Ok not we, my friend’s husband did...I did help though! I mean I can drive on the right side. It just feels bit unnatural... I did literally curse for like an eternity the first time I drove on the other side of the road... by myself... after landing... but maybe i'll save that story for another time.

Anyway – this trip was 13 days in total and we started in San Fran and ended in LA!! 

So let’s start this journey!

Day 1 – Travelling to this place called Tahoe

For the first part of this trip, we drove to Tahoe to see the lake, just cause we could. I mean, I know people go to Tahoe for skiing, but it was summer, there's no more snow. So we figured why not just see the Lake. At least we got to say "Woo! Been to Tahoe." Check out that spectuar view while driving up.

And here we are admiring the lake. Well here's my friend admiring the lake. Yup...LAKE! Oh and there's a duck....

Day 2 – Making our way to the city that never sleeps

So basically if you Google the map of California, we drove up north and now we need to head back south to get to Vegas. During this portion of the trip, my friend suggested driving through Death Valley. Well, why not? We don’t know how often we’ll get to do this or when we'll come back. So why not drive through the lowest, driest and hottest point in America. I mean the chances of breaking down aren't that high right... >.> So off we drove down the mountain.

The beauty of driving in America is that you never know what you might stumble across. Take this for example, on our way down we stopped by Lake Mead. After chatting to some locals, we found out that it is the largest reservoir in the US. That was pretty neat. Probably not the best photo, but it was the only one I took. Didn’t know I’d want to blog about it years later. Oops!

The views are astonishing!

While pumping Fall Out Boy’s Death Valley my friend yells “Manzanar?!” and her husband responds “Manzanar?” and u-turns! We didn’t know that going down this particular route would bring us to such an important WWII historical landmark. If you decide to make a stop here, there's a museum which is very informative. You can drive around and have a look at what is remaining of the bunks, the Japanese Garden and pay your respects at the monument.

The Monument at Manzanar cemetary sits in front the Sierra Nevada. The silence. The peace. The reflection.

After stopping by Manzanar, we made it to Death Valley. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!! Check it! The sign showing that we made it.

Yeah we basically just drove through a desert. Plenty of sand and rocks. When we got closer to Vegas, we saw some pretty awesome sand dunes! Unfortunately I can't find a photo to show you guys. Also, we think we drove pass Area 51... we think... I mean... there was a chance right? RIGHT?!

Day 3-4 – Playing tourist in Vegas

After surviving Death Valley, we made it to VEGAS BABY! Woo!! Here we spent 2 days playing tourist. We went shopping at the outlets. Hey i'm an Aussie, everything is pretty much cheaper in America. We also visited the Coke store and M&M store and checked out some casinos.

We also paid a visit to Hoover Dam (you know the place where Megatron was, yup that place). We did a tour of the Dam, which included an informative video. I was amazed by this engineering feat. The sheer size of this, made me feel like a tiny ant! I was in so much awe. When our tour ended my friend asked the guide if he knew where Megatron was, I don't remember if the guide replied. Hehe. 

You can walk along the a bridge and make your way from Nevada to Arizona. Pretty neat! If you've ever wanted to stand in two places at once, this is definitely one place which it can be done.

One thing that i've always wanted to do in Vegas was catch a show and we did just that! On the recommendation of a nice ticket sales guy at the South Vegas shopping outlet, he suggested that we watch Le Reve, The Dream at Wynn. It was a cheaper version of the O and he said he thoroughly enjoyed it. This show was amazing. The stage is small and the seating quite close to the stage. Just look at all those colours.

So that was the first half of my trip. I hope you enjoyed that. The next post will continue with the other places we visited.

Until next time!!