Young Man's Chronicles: August 2010

My Reading

Jodi Picoult "House Rules"
Michelle Richmond "No one you know"
Dean Koontz "Mr. Murder"
John Hart "The Last Child"
Kazuo Ishiguro "When we were Orphans"
Stacey D'Erasmo "A Seahorse Year"
John Weir "What I did wrong"
Tana French "In the Woods"
Julie Powell "Julie and Julia"
Jodi Picoult "Nineteen minutes"
Nelson DeMille "The Charm School"
Jodi Picoult "My Sister's Keeper"
John Grisham "Appeal"
Stephenie Meyer "Twilight"
Jennifer Cody Epstein "The Painter from Shanghai"
Elliott Perlman "Seven Types of Ambiguity"
Michelle Richmond "The year of fog"
Amanda Eyre Ward "How to be lost"
Ted Dekker "Skin"
Ted Dekker "Th3ee"

Waking up in Vegas

>> Tuesday, August 31, 2010

We spent 2 nights in Las Vegas in the Imperial Palace Hotel right on the Strip. In the night the city looks very bright and live, however, in the daytime it turns into this dull one-street town in the middle of nowhere (desert to be exact). Below are the pics of the view that we had from the hotel room - looks boring, right?
One thing that I expected, but it still surprised me, was that when we checked-in around 3am there were plenty of people gambling in casino downstairs, and then the next morning when I woke up at 9 am and went downstairs again, the same people were still gambling in there. I guess with gambling you really lose track of time.
The funny thing was that the local news was all about a recent arrest of Paris Hilton in Las Vegas. After cops asked her for ID, she accidentally pulled out a plastic box with cocaine instead. But then, let's give some credit to Paris, that kind of is her ID, isn't it?

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite Park is absolutely worth driving through it! If we had more time, we could probably stay for a day of hiking there. The temperatures get as low as 31F however (which is -1C) at times.
We also found out that driving from Yosemite to Las Vegas at night time might be not the best idea, especially if you are not familiar with the route. The whole way we were going on some abandoned empty highways, where you see a car once in an hour, get gas stations once every 200 miles, and on top of that some roads may be closed. We also got pulled over by the police twice, and one of those times we miraculously made our way out of smth. that could potentially be a 700$ ticket.
Should I mention 3 rabbits that at different times decided to cross the highway right in front of our car - 2 of them survived, and you know what happened to the third one.
But man, do I love adventures!

Road-trip to Las Vegas

We had an amazing adventure getting to Las Vegas through California and Nevada on the car through Yosemite National park and a number of deserted highways with the temperatures drifting between 31F and 80F, and landscapes changing from platos and lakes to amazing mountains and windy roads. While on Hwy 120 (upon entering Yosemite National from the West) I experienced a view that was probably the most breathtaking in my life - a long windy road that went all the way up to the mountains (with elevation around 9,000 feet) and provided an amazing view of everything else below.