Houston a fine American city and along with oil it is famous for one quotation, “Houston this is tranquility base, the eagle has landed” as man made their first moon landing and therefore Louise and I could do only one thing here today and that was spend the day visiting the NASA Space Museum.

Sadly this wasn’t as epic a day out as I’d hoped it would be but I was happy I visited it all the same. My recommendation is that if yiure in Texas and travelling get to Houston and do it but I really wouldn’t go out of my way to visit.

Ian.

Today we started early and headed to downtown San Antonio to see the Alamo and the nearby San Antonio Fire Museum.

The Alamo was fascinating because of the story behind it but was a little disappointing because there really wasn’t anything to see and you were not allowed to photograph what was inside. That said it was free and is worth a visit and a donation.

Immediately behind the Alamo is the San Antonio Fire Museum which was also free but full of exhibits and the volunteer guides are ex-SAFD firefighters. Our guide, Joe, was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the exhibits and telling fascinating stories abiut many of them. We left large donation because this personal service is way too good to go unpaid. If you’re in San Antonio give this place a look.

We ended the day with a short drive to Houston and stopped off halfway for dinner at the Oakridge Steakhouse in Schulenberg, TX. This was a real steak experience and not only cheaper than yesterday’s chain experience but much much nicer food.

Ian.

Today was a rather boring day spent driving from El Paso to San Antonio with no stops along the way other than fuel. Western Texas is a rather will place to travel through.

When we arrived in San Antonio we decided that we deserved a steak dinner. The satnav had a steakhouse listed on the way to our motel when we arrived we discovered this was actually a country ckub thst had a steakhouse bar and grill. So we decided that we needed to go elsewhere and ended up at an Australian themed steakhouse chain that while it wasn’t bad it wasn’t what we hoped it would be.

Ian.

Today we headed down south to Do Paso, Texas from Phoenix. Just past Tucson was the PIMA Air and Space Museum and we stopped off there for a few hours and enjoyed a your around the museum.

Ian.

Today was a day of two halves. The first was meeting up with a fellow podcaster @HydRAWR who treated Louise and myself to dinner at Las Brisas in Laguna Beach after a failed photo opportunity with the orc statue outside the Blizzard offices in Irvine, CA. So after flying 3000 miles from Manchester to New York and the driving another 3000 miles from New York to Irvine the last 300 yards were the barrier and all because I failed to book an appointment. I did still manage a photo outside the gates though.

Laguna Beach was great but the highkight of the day was definitely meeting up with @HydRAWR and her family because they made it super special.

Ian.

Los Angeles day 2 and we battled the trip from Santa Ana to downtown L.A. for a second time and discovered out experience was not a one off a 40 mile run in took 2 hours. How do these folks put up with that?

Thankfully once there both museums we planned on visiting were within walking distance meaning we got away with only 1 parking fee 😆.

The LA Brea Tar Pits were the first call for more bones to inspect for Louise.

After a good trick lunch, which seems to be a Californian ‘thing’ we walked to the Petersen Motor Museum and on the way passed some odd art in some concrete slabs that I jokingly claimed must be part of the Berlin Wall, only to discover a few minutes later that they were just that!

That cars in the Petersen were an odd mix of rare and unusal vehicles, iconic cars, cars from movies and TV and some odd ‘art’ cars.

Ian.

Today was the day we made out first coast to coast run across the US as we left Vegas and arrived in Low Angeles.

Vegas was a blazing 111C when we left at 9am and our first stop in California was Baker, on the outer edge of Death Valley where we stopped for breakfast at the Mad Greek Cafe.

We continued towards L.A. and as we got closer the traffic density rice but thankfully the temperature dropped to ‘only’ 98C. The plan once in L.A. was to visit the Natural History Museum of LA and looked at more dinosaur bones.

After we left the Natural History Museum of LA we set off for our evenings entertainment at Medieval Times courtesy of one of my Aircraft buddies Erik. The traffic was horrendous and our 20 mile journey took about 2 hours 😠.

However after we arrived everything went well and Erik had planned a number of surprises for us. First was an announcement of our 25th wedding anniversary but the biggest was that he had arranged that he would be the winning champion knight and was therefore able to choose a queen for the night which was Louise. I felt very humbled by this because Erik was simply someone I met through playing Warcraft and my podcast about Warcraft. It just prooves that friendships don’t need to rely on face to face contact to be real and that people across the world can share acts of kindness to one another and with all the bad news we see in the press there is another untold side that truly gives me hope for the future of mankind.

Ian.

Our day visiting the sights outside Vegas didn’t quite go as planned.

Firstly we set the SatNav to the official address of the Grand Canyon Skywalk and when we arrived at the destination of Peach Springs Arizona couldn’t find the Grand Canyon a quick GPS check revealed we were 40 miles south of the location and the road distance was 92 miles of diet track away. We therefore had to head back 100 miles along the route we had taken and then take a tarmac road 50 miles long. Along this road we had a narrow escape with a cow which thankfully Louise avoided and the only casualty was the coolbox.

We eventually got there some 4 hours later than we hoped andas the visit contained a more than we anticipated meant we lhadeft the Skywalk site much later than planned and resulted in a mad dash to the Hoover Dam.

Ian.

Today we’re battling record temperatures of 115F as we sightsee our way through Las Vegas right now the temperature is only 101C and it is not even 8am.

Ian.

We started day 8 with another museum trip out guide was a spritely lady we worked out was in her now 80s. We saw a telephone swutchbiard that my wife claims she used in the early 1990s so mum should also recognise that. There is also a collection of woodworking imlements tgat Dad shoul recignise too.

As we pulled away from the museum we also saw a proper coke lorry delivering coke to the store next door. On our trip to Vegas we believe we saw a bushfire start. Finally I noticed a funny sign at a fuel stop in Beaver.

The day ended in Vegas and Louise and I both agreed that we are not Vegas people and both wished we stopped closer to the Grand Canyon in a little motel. Still if we had never tried Vegas we would have always regretted not trying it.

Ian.

The eagle eyed among you will have noticed that a lot of my trip has been focused around fossils and dinosaurs and thought “but Ian never mentioned this secrett fascination” well I’ll he honest it’s not something I am interested in but my wife is and this trip is as much here as mine.

Today we left Roosevelt, Utah and spent another day feeding Louise’s hobby as we visited the Utah side of the National Dinosaur Monument in Jensen, Utah (there is also another side based on, and I kid you not, Dinosaur, Colorado) as this is the side that has the museum with fossils on display.

After a morning there we head south towards our next major stop of Las Vegas and an over night stop at Delta City, Utah.

Ian.

Assorted Points of Interest stops an route to Vernal. Lots of scenery…

Ian.