Nowhere screams USA more than Las Vegas and a Rodeo.  So naturally that is where we went first.

]]> https://www.thebluevan.us/the-united-states-of-america/feed/ 1 https://www.thebluevan.us/the-new-york-roller-coaster-annabelle/ https://www.thebluevan.us/the-new-york-roller-coaster-annabelle/#respond Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:57:41 +0000 http://www.thebluevan.us/?p=2352 Continue reading The New York Roller Coaster — Annabelle]]> While we were in Las Vegas, I really, really wanted to ride on the New York, New York Roller Coaster.  I wanted to ride it because it looked really awesome and fun.  The roller coaster went up 203 feet and then dropped you down 144 feet.  They said it took 15 minutes to ride it but mom told me that must include buckling in.  It had lots of turns and twists and loop de loops and downhills and it looks super cool because it is red and goes through all of the city of New York, it goes by the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.  Last time we went to Las Vegas, I wanted to ride this roller coaster but I was 6 inches too short.  When I looked the roller coaster up, it said you needed to be 54 inches to ride and I was sure I would be able to ride because my dad said I was 54 inches almost 55.  He measured me with a tape measure.  So the night came when I was going to ride the roller coaster and I was really excited!  We parked at Excalibur and walked over following the signs.  We got to the roller coaster line and the guy said kids had to take their shoes off tho get measured.  I took my shoes off and there were people in line yelling she’s tall enough! but the guy said NO you are not tall enough.  So I went over to dad and I was very sad.  I was only less than half an inch short.

As you may remember, at one point we were traveling between the river and a jungle lake on the back of a motorcycle with all 8 DeCorsos + our guide + pfds and gear.  Here is the photo (taken by Ryan) of that setup.

And then we drove down this road!  It had a lot of up and downhills but it was hard to take photos due to the fact that it was pretty bumpy.

We borrowed a dugout canoe and floated around the jungle lake.  They were actually dugout of one log.

On the river, the kids had to wear the pfds.  It doesn’t look scary here but it was absolutely scary in many places.  No where to swim ashore, just marshy banks filled with poisonous snakes, fierce fish and caimans.

Unloading a container onto a river cargo ship one evening.

A typical jungle house – actually this is quite a nice one.  Much larger than most and with a lot of pigs!  Houses have no doors or window glass or screens.  This was hard for us to imagine, given the amount and size of bugs in the Amazon.  This one also had electricity with a generator, just one single bulb.  Most houses have no electricity and just candles after sundown.

Everywhere there were piles of cocoa beans drying in the sun.  Ryan picked one up and bit it and inside were cocoa nibs and they were delicious.

We ate Domino’s pizza for dinner, which was absolutely delicious after five months of rice and pasta. The first couple of days we lounged around our American hotel room (we could drink the tap water! People spoke English!) and just relaxed. Soon, though, we had to figure out a way to get to Wal-Mart, since we needed food and such frivolous things like that.

It was all very complicated to get to said Wal-Mart, since we were surrounded by complex freeways that had no sidewalks and expensive taxis (such a shock, coming from Lima, Peru, where taxis were the cheapest way of transport). It would take several buses and a mile of walking there and back.

In the end, we were able to get a ride from with our hotel peeps for ten dollars there and ten dollars back.

The first thing we did upon arriving was wander, awe struck, around Wal-Mart and gaze at everything.

Once we got over all the American things, we walked to Taco Bell, which had been missed dearly whilst in South America.

We went shopping, I got SweeTarts, and it was a good day.

We decided that we would fly from Dallas to Las Vegas, stay at the hotel/casino Circus Circus for a couple of days while we waited for Ryan and Dad got the van through customs, bought a trailer, and drove to where we were.

Vegas was a sweltering one hundred degrees and higher every day. I preferred to stay in the cool, dim interior of the casino but mother dearest insisted on exploring Vegas. I saw no point in this, since we had been there before, but oh well.

Jack and I explored Circus Circus to an extent, being social and making many friends.

Father and Ryan reached Vegas at midnight and we had to trek from our hotel room to the lobby to meet them.

We were all joyously reunited and Dad and Ryan went to Sam’s Town (the RV park we had stayed out on Big Trip l) and we slept at our hotel.

The next day everyone else took the bags to the new trailer whilst Jack and I stayed behind at the hotel and were social.

After they came back we walked to the Venetian. There were giant creepy masked dudes walking around and these really freaky tree ladies that scared me.

We took the car to the RV park, where it still hot, so we went to the pool. Of course, people there flocked to me and more friendships were made.

The next day we went to the buffet at the casino/hotel there. I ate a lot of donuts and stuff. It was good.

Annabelle really, really wanted to ride the New York, New York so we headed there after the buffet. Unfortunately, she wasn’t tall enough and was very sad.

We walked to the Aria and the Cosmopolitan, which were both very fancy in different ways. The Aria was swanky, with marble benches and air conditioners on the floor so your feet wouldn’t get hot. The Cosmopolitan had giant crystal chandeliers that stretched twenty feet and down three floors. Very pretty.

It was midnight when we got back, and since we were going to get up early and leave, we all went to sleep.

The next morning we left Vegas and a while down the highway turned around and went a different route.

Once we were going the right way, all was well.

We camped in Carson City, in a Wal-Mart parking lot (ah, memories) and disconnected so we could drive around. Carson City was quaint and charming. It was a nice town.

The next night we camped next to a salt lake that turned out to be caustic.  Slightly disturbing, because the campground said we could swim in it. Hmm…

We arrived in Reno and Jack, Ryan and I toured the university. It was very nice, and if I didn’t want to go to Seattle I would consider going there.

Outside Nevada City, California, our friend Marian lived so we visited her. She lived in a little camp thing and we were able to stay at the top of a ridge there where the sunset was quite pretty.

The next morning Aunt Marian took us to a thrift store where I got some books and clothes and whatnot. Then we ate lunch, which was macaroni and cheese. There was a little pond with pink lotuses growing on it. Sylvia ventured into the water and picked one. Brave child.

We left around mid day and stayed somewhere of insignificant importance.

The next thing was Sisters, Oregon where we were seeing a rodeo.

It started at seven and it was nice. It felt kind of like a giant party.

I enjoyed the rodeo, though some of was sort of barbaric. There was bull riding and whatnot.

We stayed overnight at the rodeo and left early the next morning, making it into Washington.

We camped at a Wal-Mart parking lot and fully planned to leave today, but the car is having transmission problems so we’re staying another night.

-Jennah

Grandma, Grandpa, Jack and I went to a concert, Brahm’s Double Concerto. We saw Symphony No. 5, by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was very nice, and lasted about two hours. It was quite complex, with a symphony of sounds that danced through the air.

Father and Ryan get back today from dropping the van and trailer off the be freighted to Columbia.  Our flight leaves on the 12th of December  so we’re here for about two weeks. It;s supposed to be sunny the whole time.
-Jennah

1.  Flies
2.  Facsimilies
3.  Tornadoes
4.  Horrible radio stations
5.  The Westboro Baptist Church
6.  AT&T censoring the internet so you can’t visit the Westboro Church website
7.  Creationism taught in public schools
8.  Bad coffee
9.  Uniformly bad smell – what we have taken to calling cow fog or just cfog where the moisture of so many cows turns into fog and blows around.

We thought we might be near the infamous Westboro Church.  Turns out it is in Topeka.  We had never been to the website before and AT&T would not let us visit the site.  Luckily we travel with a fully qualified IT team that quickly found a way around the censorship and we viewed their awful, hate-filled site.  It was like a joke, like the Onion of churches.  Even the url was horrible.  Poor Kansas.

First, there were flies everywhere.  Swarms of flies.  We stopped at a rest stop and they swarmed inside.

Then we were headed to the Laura Ingalls Wilder cabin near Independence (where Mr. Edwards ran into Santa!) but the cabin was a “fascimile” not meant to have “any connection” to the story.

Here is what the website says:
The small Little House on the Prairie cabin at this location is a recreation based on the description found in the book. The foundation of a small house believed to have been the home of the Ingalls’ family, was found at this location in 1977. 

Two original buildings from the same time period have moved next to the reconstructed Little House on the Prairie. The interiors of all three buildings can be toured. There is no direct connection between any of these buildings and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Many visitors will need only a few minutes to tour the site and may be satisfied with the view from the road during the winter when Little House on the Prairie is closed.

http://www.kansastravel.org/littlehouseontheprairie.htm

We passed by and headed to Dodge.

Dodge City
Dodge City was terrible.  The original city was bulldozed in the 70’s and they built a facsimile city (which we Alaskans call “fake’), put a fence around it and charge $8 to see it.  Except you can also see it through the fence.  Boot Hill was moved (?) and a school was built on it.  A small fraction of it remains and for the $8 fee, you can gaze upon it.  We went to the Visitor Center where we impressed the staff just by being from ALASKA!  We got the walking tour map and set off.  To see nothing, nothing at all.  All the historical buildings are gone, it has 70’s architecture except for the “facsimile” places which look like Frontier Land but dirtier, empty and closed.  Not one western-themed gift shop – instead, in the Frontier Land buildings, there were closed Chinese restaurants and closed Quinceañera supply stores.  We did see a closed store selling baby Jesus’s for nativity scenes.  They had real eyelashes and pageboy hair cuts.  We got the hell out of Dodge!

Mullinville

Next stop was accidental.  Sylvia needed the bathroom so we stopped in front of this building which was the Mullinville Library.  Libraries sometimes sell books (and we always need more) so while Sylvia went to the camper bathroom, we went into the library where we went inside and met the very nice librarian.  We asked if they had books for sale and she showed us boxes and boxes and a room of books.  We could hardly leave.  Ryan, Jack and Jennah emerged with a stack of obscure books, including Jack’s Best Loved Poems.

You may remember Mullenville from the 2007 Supercell Tornado.  Wikipedia says 123 confirmed tornadoes destroyed 95% of the cities of Mullenville and Greensburg.  The librarian said the books were donated after the tornado from all over the US and many were duplicates – or so obscure, only a DeCorso would like them.

Greensburg

Greensburg was our next stop.  95% destroyed in 2007, Greensburg is 100% new – except half the people moved away.  Not only is it new, but Wikipedia says:

After the tornado, the city council passed a resolution stating that all city buildings would be built to LEED – platinum standards, making it the first city in the nation to do so. Greensburg is rebuilding as a “green” town, with the help of Greensburg GreenTown, a non-profit organization created to help the residents learn about and implement the green living initiative.^[17]

The city’s power is supplied by ten 1.25 MW wind-turbines. Carbon offsets generated from the turbines are being managed by NativeEnergy, and have been purchased by charter supporters including Ben & Jerry’s, Clif Bar, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and Stonyfield Farm.

We camped in Greensburg by a lovely lake.  We had a fire and roasted marshmallows and listened to the election night results.  Due to Kansas having only 2 kinds of radio stations (religious and country), we picked up two AM stations (out of Dallas and Provo).  We ate vegan sesame noodles tossed with fresh vegetables, all was good.  Jack read us poems from his new book Best Loved Poems.

Until some car came and drove around and around and around the loop of the lake over and over and over and eventually it creeped us all out and we moved to a truck stop and spent the night.

Woke up this morning out of coffee!  Bought two cups of Prairie Fire Coffee Roasters coffee which managed to be bland and acidic at the same time.   Leaving for Wichita before breakfast.

I also got the chance to process a few photos, I’ll admit that I haven’t been taking many so far. Mostly because I don’t want to be overwhelmed with the sheer number of photos that I have to deal with… Also because until two days ago I thought I only had a gigabyte of space left on my computer. I was running a virus scanner when I saw it hit c:\windows.old and realized that I still had the entire backup of my laptop from when I reinstalled Windows in July…

As for traveling, we’re in La Junta this morning. We’re heading into Kansas today, and nothing terribly interesting has happened since I last posted.