At the end of June 2010, finally our long awaited extended holiday began. First stop was Chicago to visit my daughter. Also our first time in Chicago, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time in this beautiful city - a well balanced mixture of new and reasonably old! The obligatory guided open top bus tour gave us a good idea of the layout, and we soon got the hang of the excellent 'L' elevated rail system. One of the first places we visited, within walking distance of our hotel, was the magnificent Headquarters of the 'Elk' fraternity. A beautiful building both inside and out. This is just one of many superb rooms. Some of the older architecture was quite ornate, particularly the top of the Tribune building next to the majestic Wrigley building (the one with the clock!), and the old Water Tower was one of few buildings to survive the great fire of 1871, only two years after it was built. Commercial interests also abound, but we didn't visit this café!
The Willis Tower (formerly named, and still commonly referred to as the Sears Tower) is a 108-story, 1451-foot (442 m) skyscraper. At the time of its completion in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years. It is the tallest building in the United States. But there is excellent architecture inside as well as outside. The entrance hall to the Centre of Culture is beautifully decorated, and just across the road is lovely parkland leading down to the lake shore. There is a superb permanent open air concert facility in the park, and we attended one during our visit. The Hancock tower offers high panoramic views over the city - here are a couple.
From Chicago we moved on to San Francisco. Although we were there on July 4th - Independence Day - unfortunately due to a wrong button press when transferring photos to my netbook computer I lost all photos taken that day!! Consequently I have very few photos of the city. The Golden Gate bridge was shrouded in mist all the time we were there, but the Bay Bridge was very near our hotel, and I did manage a photo of that, also the waterfront looking back from the end of a nearby jetty.
A most interesting day was spent on a trip to the Yosemite Valley with its beautiful waterfalls and mountains. That's el Capitan behind my head (!), Bridal Veil Falls, Half Dome and Yosemite Falls. The same trip included a visit to the Tuolumne Grove of magnificent Giant Sequoias. These enormous trees are very difficult to photograph within the confines of the forest so perspective causes problems. But the iconic road through a dead stump and the root of a fallen tree give some idea of the size! Another day we visited a number of vineyards in the Sonoma Valley - the larger ones had beautiful gardens overlooking the vineyards for the visitors to enjoy.
Our final stopover in the USA was Las Vegas. Many people love the place, but we found it rather overdone - the Hotel Camelot for example was a case in point! But to be fair the interiors were magnificent - this is the hall of the Venetian hotel where we enjoyed a superb production of 'The Phantom of the Opera' in the excellent purpose built theatre.
But Las Vegas is well situated for visiting two wonderful places - The Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon. The Grand Canyon was our first day out - not too far from Vegas, and passing over the Hoover Dam en route. We booked a helicopter ride down into the canyon including a trip on the Colorado River itself. Pure tourism, but a wonderful experience nevertheless! Then visited two viewpoints on the South rim - Eagle Point which also features the Skywalk platform which we didn't visit - plenty verticality from the edge, and Guano Point.
The following day an early start took us to Bryce Canyon, Utah. The long (over 250 miles!) journey passed through the Zion Valley - a beautiful and magnificent national park, then on to Bryce Canyon itself. This amazing area consists of eroded sandstone pillars called 'Hoodoos', and is a must to visit. The area is 8000 feet above sea level, and regular star parties are held there under the dark clear skies. There was one happening the weekend we visited, but even if we'd been able to stay, we wouldn't have seen anything - unseasonable rain was forecast!
Next Stop - Tahiti