Antigua....  you coy little minx.  For two days we've walked your streets, looking hopefully at the flanks of your beautiful volcanoes, in vain, for you hid behind a veil of mist and rain.

Of course it is today, as we arise early for  long road trip, you cast aside your gauzy shroud and impress us with your beauty, challenging us to leave you by finally revealing your full splendor.  I would say that I hate you for it, but how can I hate such loveliness? 

You're a cruel lover, Antigua, and a rare gem.
I can't wait to return, but for now I must push on towards Mexico.

Labels: antigua, guatemala, photo, travel

We've made it to Antigua, Guatemala.  Loooooong travel day yesterday, from Choluteca, Honduras to some little truck stop/motel on km 120 of the highway in Guatemala.   The borders.... ah, the borders.  Another story later.

It is beautiful in Antigua, as always.  The weather isn't helping, yet, but lovely just the same.
Having a dog makes finding a hotel difficult, so we rented a house for about the same $ as we spent for a crappy hotel in Honduras.  Excellent!

Some teaser pictures.  Front door, 2nd floor patio, and "Steve's Room".
But now we have a city to walk, so more updates later.

Labels: antigua, guatemala, travel, vacation

No time for photos right now, but after two solid days of driving we are in Choluteca, Honduras.  This town has little to offer beyond safe parking and mediocre eating.  But it is about halfway between the border of El Guasale and El Amatillo and thus good enough.  We stayed at the Paradise Hotel.  It is neither a hotel nor paradise, but they do offer WiFi.

We'll be getting an early start today with eyes on arriving in Antigua, Guatemala by nightfall.  Which will take some luck, especially at the borders.

Borders, in fact, have been the slow-point of our trip.  Getting two gringos, a dog, and a Land Cruiser through all of the various windows and payments has not been difficult, but has been time-consuming.

Interestingly- the dog has been the expensive part.  For instance- yesterday to enter Honduras it cost $13 for the truck, $3/person, and 250 lempira for the dog, which is nearly $14.   And the car has only three sheets of paper related to being legal whereas the dog has four, plus a vaccination card.  

I certainly value the dog higher than the truck, but....  it seems odd that both Nicaragua and Honduras are being more strict in their canine than automotive controls.

Labels: dog, honduras, land cruiser, nicaragua, travel

I spent all day (and I mean, all day) behind the wheel yesterday for the first time in a long time.  It wasn't so bad, I'm pleased to report.   I'll get back to the nuances, but first a little venting and a link.

Blogger just sent me a note saying that they won't be supporting ftp-based blogs anymore.  WTH?  Now why in good gravy would they do that?   It appears that they would rather shoulder the cost of the bandwidth than have me pay for my own site, or they want me to get a custom url...  I haven't even read the whole note yet, but I'm frustrated by yet another example of the computer-based world's inability to just leave well-enough alone.  We've been using this system for....  I don't remember how long!  5 years?    But now we'll be doing something different.  So if you see major operating issues with Sandcruiser.com come about May 1, it is because Google has decided to mess with things and we're trying to find the least painful solution.   If anyone has any suggestions for alternative blogging software/systems, please feel free to let me know.

And speaking of blogs-  I just found Bio Truck Expedition which is a well-written travelogue about a man with wanderlust and a veggie-powered Mercedes van.  His exploits to date include some QT in an Indian jail (for having a satphone) as well as some mechanical mishaps, hang-gliding, and who-know-what.   Take a look, you'll probably enjoy reading about his travels.


As for yesterday:
Got up at 4, didn't get out of here until a little after 6:30 due to a coffee machine failure, low tire pressure, some pressing email, and a desire to play with the dog a little bit before leaving her alone all day long.   Took the new highway to San Jose from Caldera.  It is  a much nicer road than the old highway.  The tolls aren't too high, but might seem that way to many locals.  I didn't keep track but would estimate that it was about 2,000 colones, total, which is under $4.   It almost certainly saves at least $4 in fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle.  I'm sure that under normal conditions, it also saves much time.  I was unlucky in that there were two spots in which they were doing road repair due to rock slides.... so I waited for about 15 minutes at each and had more traffic, so it probably added 45 minutes to the drive, which erased much of the gains of taking the fast road.  So be it.  I arrived at the US Embassy around 10-something (Note: 4 1/2 hours to San Jose is a big step up from the old highway which takes 5-7 hours.  All this for a drive that is less than 150 miles).

The Embassy trip marks for me the very first time that I've felt preferential treatment for being a gringo in Costa Rica.  Upon arrival I skipped to the front of the 50-person line and was admitted straight into the 1st security checkpoint.  Should you go there, be aware that they will hold your iPod, phone, flashlight, headphones... pretty much anything electronic, while you are inside the embassy.  I am sure it is for "security" but I suspect that a fringe benefit is that people are less likely to miss the audio prompts for "8....3....4 to Window 4" which has the net effect of speeding things right along, but makes the wait more boring (glad I brought a book).

They have a photo booth at the entrance, for $2 you get the two passport photos that are requested on the forms and website, only one of which is needed, as I'll explain later.

I then got to skip ahead of the next line, which consisted of over 100 people.  Wow.  The little blue US passport was like a magic wand in that place: just wave it at the person tending the line and they pull the nylon tape out of the way and usher you to the next stop.  Good stuff!

At the window, things proceeded well with the exception of the person behind the glass insisting that I put at least two US phone numbers.  See... I don't call US phone numbers very often, and the only ones that I do call, I store them in my cellphone for reference.  My cellphone was handily locked in the security checkpoint....  so I finally took a page out of my Tico survival manual:  When you are required to furnish information that you don't know, and suspect is arbitrary, just make it up.   So, hey, if someone calls 408-701-0001 looking for Steve.... um.... tell them I'm out of town?   Sorry about that.

$75 and another brief wait got me a chance to chat with a very nice young lady who seemed to be a little slow on the uptake, but was so full of smiles that it was easy to patient with her.   She offered to give me one of those fat-daddy upgraded passports because "You seem to travel a lot".   Which is nice, because if past history is any indication of future performance (despite what your stock broker tells you, it usually is) I'll probably have a pretty large number of stamps in my new passport within the first month.   She then informed me that my new passport would be ready in about 14 days, at which point I would need to return, with my old passport, to get my new one.  In reading the website at the  US Embassy Passport Page I knew that her info was only mostly true.  But she didn't really seem to know that, which I found oddly disconcerting.    The following are just four of the odd bits of misinformation on the website:

The website says	My Experience
"You need two passport photos."	I got two, carried one around, then finally asked "What about this second photo" to which she replied "Give it to your wife!" Huh. Sure glad I bought two photos. No harm done, but... Why ask for two if you only need one?
"Since October 1, 2007, DHL can deliver your passport for you for a nominal fee"	This is true! For only $6 or so, DHL can get your passport closer to you*. But the girl behind the window disavowed knowledge of how it worked, even though I am certain that she does it every single day. Odd.
"Your passport will be ready in 10-12 days"	The window girl said 14-15 days, the DHL guys said 12 days. It isn't so critical to my life to know exactly when they say that it'll be ready as I assume it will be ready within 7-21 days and that's just that. But they might try to get their stories straight.
The most confusing: The website says that you can pay DHL to take your old passport back, where it will be canceled, then they will bring your new passport. (That's another couple dollars and would save someone like me many hours of driving or flying to get my passport)	I asked the window girl if I could just leave my passport... She was HORRIFIED. I may as well have asked her to eat a live snake. She went on and on about how the passport is a crucial identity document, should always be safe, never leave it anywhere, blah blah blah. "But...", I tried, "...wouldn't it be safer to leave it with the State Department than to send it to them via DHL in 10 days?" .... she was having none of that. NONE! of that. So I went to the DHL counter and he said: "Oh, just have her cancel the passport now, so you don't have to pay to send it back and wait an extra day." Eureka. It is all in the wording. "Cancel"is what I should have said, not "leave". So I go back to nice window girl: "Can you cancel this now so that I don't have to send it back?" to which she replies.... "Oh, you can just punch some holes in it, so that it can't be scanned." It remains to be seen if they are going to demand my old passport before sending my new one. I'm at about 50/50 on the odds. Time will tell.

Along the way I accidentally pulled a serious Tico line-cutting move. If you have spent any time in Costa Rica, at some point a Tico has jumped the queue and pushed their way ahead of you. This can happen in the bank, or at a bar, or onto a bus, or a grocery store, almost anywhere.   I 100% guarantee it has happened to you; unless you are sitting in the airport reading this. Even then, odds are pretty high that it happened getting off of the plane. As a visitor to this wonderful country, I usually just shrug it off and keep doing whatever I'm doing, but it does bug me. Well, yesterday I was the grand-cutter-of-long-lines. Maybe it was due to the unprecedented courtesy of the embassy security who kept letting me cut in other lines, or maybe it was subconscious expression of years of frustration, or maybe I was just tired and didn't notice. One thing is for sure: when I walked out of the thick glass "inner sanctum" door of the passport processing facility, and walked right up to the DHL desk and started talking to the DHL guy, I did so right in the face of about 45 people who were waiting in line, and would probably continue to wait in line for at least 1/2 hour before getting anything done. I did it without malice, but once I realized that I had cut off all of those people, I must confess that I did snicker a little bit (internally) at how, for the first time, I as on the winning end of such a bold move.

After my Embassy coup (getting in and out in less than 90 minutes really did seem a coup to me), I had to navigate across town to pick some stuff up for a friend. It sucked, but my momentary getting-lost-in-Heredia experience probably saved the friend many hours or many $$ in work, so I'm glad to have helped. Maybe I atoned for my line-cutting.

From there I worked my way back across town to do some shopping and to find some roofing sealant stuff. I won't go into all the details, but this roofing stuff shouldn't be my job in the first place. The rat-bastard son of a motherless goat designer who built Oro del Sol did a poor job of designing the walls. There are leaks. He is legally required to fix them, but hasn't done so, despite many many appeals from us. At one point the guy actually had the gall to tell me that it would cost me more to sue him than to just fix the leak. He was right, so I'm fixing the leak but spewing venom at every opportunity.  He did give us $55 worth of material to fix it ourselves, which covered about 1/2 the problm, but kept giving me "mañana" on getting me the rest of the material. Anyway, he is a bad person based on my business dealings with him and I'll take a moment to assure everyone that the odds of me selling/buying another Patrick Rey home are very nearly zero. Unless the current owner has been there long enough to have fixed the problems that he left behind. Rant over.

I've been searching high and low for this Alucapa stuff from Venezuela. Apparently there is one place that sells it in Costa Rica. ONE. I finally found them and the guy was super-nice. Nice enough to help guide me through the industrial area in which they are located, by cellphone, to get me to the store just before closing. Upon arriving I was dismayed to find out that they are all out of Alucapa. Won't get more till around June. Arrrrgh!! Frustration! But I hung around, mostly because I was so frustrated I didn't want to drive and kill someone, and we chatted. After a spell, I discovered that they did have some end-cuts in a pile. Pretty big end-cuts. Big enough, in fact, that when we put a bunch together it was actually more than a full roll. Whoo-hoo! I asked if I could buy the cuts, the friendly guy disappeared into the office for a minute, then returned and said, "Just take it". Now, I know I only "scored" $55 worth of free material. But compared to getting nothing, or re-inventing the wheel, or waiting until June (well into the rainy season), I was elated.

As if that wasn't enough, I asked for directions to get to where I was going next, in order to miss the rapidly accumulating huge traffic jam, and the nice fellow offered to lead me all the way across town, through rush hour traffic, as he was sorta going in the same direction anyway. He probably added 1/2 hour to his evening commute, but saved me at least an hour. What a nice guy!  If you need roofing products in San Jose, check out Cindu, in La Uruca, in front of Loza. 

I did my last errand, a quick trip to the Costa Rica ARB distributor, to pick up 2 orings that defy Costa Rican postal transit (two tries, no success to date). The proprietor there is a great guy and I wish I had more time to chew the fat with him, but it was getting dark and I wanted to get home.

So at 6pm, after a very long day, I set out on a long drive back to Tamarindo. I did stop along the road and ate a GREAT dinner (whole fried corvina, yucca, salad, lemonade, hot coffee... all for about $7) which took nearly an hour. I also had to stop a few more times to stretch and walk around a bit as I was feeling drowsy. I got in the door at 11:09pm, exhausted.

Whew.


*Note on DHL: "'closer to you", in this case, means that DHL can only deliver your passport to the "nearest DHL office", which actually means "nearest DHL distribution center", which, for me, means Liberia. That's about an hour from my house, but much better than driving back to San Jose for it. Still.... if they can take it to their office, why can't they take it to my office?  Isn't that what DHL does?  Deliver stuff?

Labels: Costa Rica, land cruiser, passport, photo, repair, travel

Ulysses and Penolope


More like a land-train, really, than an off road vehicle.  But it is an interesting concept, at least.  I would rather travel in something a bit smaller, but I suppose that if you want to travel AND have your condo too, this is the way to go!

Labels: 4wd, expedition, travel

Nicolas Rapp is driving around the world but along the way he has had some minor mechanical setbacks.   You can read more about it on his blog, but the short story is that a steering sector shaft broke, which led to a collision that led to to front axle mayhem.

When Nicolas finally rolled into Costa Rica after a delay in Honduras and another in Nicaragua, it couldn't have come as much of a surprise that he was bound for yet another delay.   When I offered him a place to spend a night or two, I thought that we might fix some minor detail on the truck, enjoy a few beers, and wave goodbye after, um, a night or two.  But the Cruiser gods had something else in mind.

The last post I wrote has some more pics and info about finding a broken side gear in the differential.  For those of you not mechanically inclined, a broken gear in the front differential can safely be considered a major repair.  Not quite catastrophic, but very bad.   So it was incredible good luck that he ended up here, and that I noticed the problem, and that we could tear into it.

Even more incredibly lucky, on the order of "I really can't believe it" lucky, is that Toyota Costa Rica had a new differential gear set in stock.   It was even about 25% less expensive than the same part in the USA, which was a nice touch to the "Holy Moly we have been lucky on this job!" situation.  So we ordered the part and some other minor spares, and they came a mere 24 hours later.   In the mean time, I determined that setting up the differential was a little beyond my expertise level for a vehicle that will soon find itself in the wilds of Africa.  Our great luck continued when we found a qualified mechanic who could put the diff back together for us in "1 day".  Not too surprisingly for Costa Rica, "1 day" took a little longer than 36 hours.   Still well within the realm of giddiness-inducing great luck.

While we were waiting on various parts to arrive and mechanics to perform, we also took a look at what Nicolas thought was a potential overheating problem.  As it turned out, it is merely a fairly normal phenomenon for this model-year gas-powered Cruiser.  The front DS fender gets hot when you drive them in hot weather.  Who knew?   But just to be on the safe side, we did change out his thermostat/gasket and get a new radiator cap.  We also bought and installed a temperature gauge so that he has something more than just the stock gauge for helping determine if he is running hotter than he should be.  In the short period that he was here after the gauge install, it seems that he maintains temps between 195 and 210, which is perfectly normal operating temperature for his motor.  More good news!

We sent Nicolas and Nadia off with a quick trip to a beautiful local beach and vague directions towards Arenal.  The beach gave us a good location to test out his newly repaired differential lockers (they work!) and also a nice primer on how to drive in sand.

All said, their visit was closer to eight days than two or three, but they were wonderful guests and we certainly can't blame them that the Cruiser needed a little more mechanical work than anyone had anticipated.  I would be happy to host them again any time, though I must admit that we are looking forward to getting our daily schedule back towards a more normal state of affairs.   I should point out-- Nicolas did an amazing job of supplying us with Nicaraguan beer and Rum.  I'm sure we put a serious dent into what must have been his libations stash.  Nadia was 100% smiles and a dish-washing-dervish, which is always welcome in our perpetually just-shy-of-clean kitchen.

As an extra bonus, now when I follow Nicolas' website around the world, I'll get the added happy feeling of knowing the author and knowing that I was able to give back a little of the generosity that I have been fortunate to receive in the past.  I only wish that we could have spent a little more time driving around this beautiful area instead of wrenching on his truck.  Oh,well...  next time.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, Costa Rica, expedition, land cruiser, photo, repair, travel

...not my diff, thank goodness.

Short version:  Young man starts out on round the world journey in Land Cruiser.  Steering part snaps.  Cruiser hits mountain in Honduras.  Damage ensues.  Young man fixes most damage in Honduras and Nicaragua.   Arrives Costa Rica where I help him find more damage.  We are fixing it now and he hopes to be back on the road, soon.  You can read about his journey on Transworld Expedition Blog

The part on the right of the picture is half of a side gear for the front differential.  It should be connected to the other half of itself but has sheared (shorn?) off.   In a nutshell, the diff is pooched and we are sourcing another.  The part number at Toyota for a gear set that includes 2 side gears and 4 pinion gears is 41039-34060.   Toyota charges nearly $400 for the set.   The carnage wasn't very spectacular, but you can see (below) that the section that broke is a pretty thick bit of steel.  Must have been some impact.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, Costa Rica, land cruiser, repair, travel

Roads in Costa Rica are... not so great.
Generally speaking, our best roads are about as good as the parts of California roads where they have big flashing signs that say things like "Caution, Debris in Road" or "Uneven Surface", or "Give Up Now- You'll Never Make It".

But little by little it does seem that the MOPT (road folks) are making some headway. Last night I had to drive home at midnight from Liberia (only about an hour now). Two years ago I never would have done it- simply too much bad road and too late (and it would have taken 2 hours or more). But last night I found myself zooming along, listening to the pleasant thrum of the diesel (and the not so pleasant knock of the worn Ujoint) and thinking: "Wow, this road is in great shape!" It even has lines painted and reflectors glued down.

Which made me happy. Even though I strongly prefer to drive on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, if I'm going to be on a highway, I'd like it to act like a highway.

Labels: Costa Rica, travel

For some time now I've been aware that one can include GPS data into the EXIF on pictures, this is commonly called Geo-tagging and can be useful for remembering where you were when you snapped a photo, or for building maps/presentations about somewhere, and I'm sure other stuff as well.

The way I figured out how to do it is cumbersome, but works.

1) you must make sure that the camera clock is set the same as the gps clock, or at least within a few seconds

2) keep the gps and camera nearby each other

3) run the gps and snap some photos

4) connect the gps to your computer, and also the camera or memory card

5) using Mapsource (by Garmin) I downloaded the GPS data to my laptop. By default Mapsource saves files as .gdb (Garmin format), I need .gpx(open format)
For some reason my Mapsource software crashes when I try to save .gpx data. Frustrating.

5a) one approach would be to use some other type of software to grab the data from the GPS unit, but my eMap doesn't really play well with other software.

5b) I did manage to find a site online that converts .gdb to .gpx It is fast and easy. GPS Visualizer. This creates a .gpx file for me.

6) Then I fire up GPicSync which is available online, but I had to google around to get a working download. It *should* be at SourceForge but something wasn't working for me there.

7) In GPicSync you simply point to the .gpx file and to the folder with the pictures. I had to put a UTC adjustment of -6 into the GPicSync software to get the pics and the GPS to the same time.

8) The GPicSync software crunches through the files, addng EXIF information to the .jpg files

Done! It seems to have worked just fine for me. Also you can output directly to Google Earth from within GPicSync, which will create a nifty little breadcrumb trail for you, with photos super-imposed onto it. Could be a fun way to share travel information with people. I plan to use it for organizing my photos as I frequently forget where I was when I snapped something.

I think I can figure out a way, later, to make it easy for future users of this blog to get the info off of a given picture and see where it is on Google Earth or something like that... still working on figuring it out.

Labels: photo, travel

In addition to the handy little "What We Are Reading" Link to the left of this page, we've also started an ongoing list of books we recommend.

Like so many things in our lives, this one isn't quite done to perfection yet. But it is a start. So if you are sitting around wondering what to read this week(end), why not head on over to the newest addition to the Sandcruiser.com website and pick a book or two.

If we were in the States, we would probably just zip over to the public library to find many of these books. It's fast, it's free! Two of our favorite attributes in a shopping experience! But if you are too busy/too lazy/too intent upon stimulating the economy in these trying times; then follow our links to Amazon where they will get stinkin' rich and throw us a crumb for our efforts, too.

Reality Check: if we could, we would probably just order the darn things, anyway. We think that the UPS guy is second only to Santa Claus in the pantheon of fun, toy-bearing deities.

Labels: book, travel

Holy Late posting, Batman! If I don't get this wrapped up in the next few days, I'm about to get lapped by a whole year of procrastination! Yikes!
In case you haven't been sitting on the edge of your seat awaiting this installment in the saga you go back to the all the Moab trip posts or each installment: Day 1-3, Day 4, Day 5.

We started the day in Bryce Canyon, UT at a huge hotel where we zonked out the night before after a very long afternoon of trying to nurse along an automatic transmission that didn't want to go. You can also go see this story with fewer pictures per page.

woke up to see a teepee (tipi? teapea? TP?) across the pond	Ducks, too. You just never know what to expect in exotic Bryce Canyon.	Always sad to see a Cruiser on a towtruck. But better than seeing it drive 12mph for 4 hours. The truck and our travel buddies rolled off towards an auto transmission shop that came highly recommended by a friend in California. Soop and I pointed in that general direction, but figured we had many hours to kill exploring.	First step: drive through hole in rock.
I could post dozen of pretty shots with interesting rocks in them. I probably will. These are "hoodoos" and the stuff for which Bryce Canyon is famous.	The park itself is on my list of future places to visit, but they don't allow dogs, so it wasn't such a good idea for us on this trip.	This may look like your average, shot up road sign...	...but in fact, it is a shot-up road sign that limits access to a road that doesn't exist. Not the weirdest thing we would see today.
Old School Camper!	We climbed up into the mountains again, headed towards Cedar Breaks, which is purported to be lovely.	Turned off on a random fire road, trying to make the drive take longer, and see some sights. Great fire roads!	"the fence...protect from livestock..." Might work better if it were a little less.... broken.
Along the way, we stumbled onto this nifty spot. Big underground cave. Very big.	The entrance is basically a hole in the ground- lava formations- bats- good stuff.	Look! I'm in a cave! In Utah!	Colman was a little reluctant... so we left him at the surface, probably better for the cave denizens anyway.
Cave interior. I'll bet it is a lot of fun to go spelunking here, but that wasn't on our agenda for the day.	... and the batty areas are blocked off so that folks like us don't disturb their hibernation, which can be lethal as they could lose precious heat/energy that they need to make it till spring.	The mountains here are much different than those we were seeing just a few hours before. And the fire from 20 years ago had really left its mark on them.	Another entrance (exit?) for the same cave, some distance away from the first one.

But wait! There's more!

Antelope. They were pretty frequent along the road. Driving at night around here must be a little dodgy.	Crazy lava flow in the middle of nothing. We never did find out what the story is behind these... they seem to just be a big seam of lava rock that stretches a few miles from one non-descript point to another non-descript point.	Adding a Steve for scale	More lava flow (floe?)
Up up up goes the random road we chose.	Another change in trees.	Hmmm.... Ya think the road isn't open just yet? Bummer. No Cedar Breaks for us. :( We debated pushing through, it wasn't far to where we wanted to go, but we didn't have a winch, no snow clothes, didn't expect anyone else to come by, and didn't want to spend several hours shoveling ourselves out of being stuck. Discretion won the day.	So instead we stopped on the highway and had lunch. I'll bet that when the road is open, this isn't nearly as peaceful a place to eat.
Since we were killing time anyway, we made delicious fried sausage sandwinches and soaked up the view.	What a view!		Summit, Brian's Head in the background (which is probably more interesting when you are traveling with someone named Brian) Starkly beautiful.
Nice looking little town of Parowan, UT	Not hard to find churches in Utah, some are impressive.	We finally arrived at the Transmission Wizard- I've since forgotten his name, but the guy was great. He got Seth and Annette's truck running better than ever (a few tweaks) in just a few hours. Apparently we had the good luck to get a guy who had spent years perfecting the art or repairing this particular transmission.	Not every car gets in and out of there in just a few hours, apparently.
Considering the drug problem in this part of the world, we think they might consider changing the name of the place.	The old train station (mission?) in Caliente. I think Nevada, by now. Cool old building.	Gratuitous self potrait	Not much else to photograph out on highway 375

...and a few more...

Uhm, "How much fuel de we have?" "I'm sure that there is a gas station... somewhere"	You've seen these mountains before, in movies about barren places.	"So this is it? The actual *middle* of nowhere?"	Nowhere to the left
More nowhere that way too.	But there must be water, somewhere. Read the sign. I'm guessing this isn't such a fresh-smelling place on a hot day.	Impressive.	Yet another type of rocky rock
And then we found Rachel, Nevada. Probably the weirdest place I've ever been. But they had some gas, and they had cold beer, and the people were really friendly.	Yup. Rachel.	As it was getting late, and the "whole town" was sold out of rooms due to a bike ride, we pushed onward.	The bar. Rachel, NV. Not an outpost of liberal thinking.
Rachel's bar	What alien town bar would be complete without a mind-scan protector?	Happy travelers: Soop, Steve, Annette, Seth	They filmed part of ID4 here, apparently.
Rachel. I'll never forget you.	The Lisa Loeb look-alike bartender told us about some hot springs nearby where we could camp, but to be careful, because the owner was a real jerk and got mad at people for camping there... we checked it out...	...but decided to move along as it gave us a distinct "beginning of a bad story" vibe. After driving too far, we ended up in Tonopah, NV: the stargazing capital. Also a big stinky casino. But it was a warm place to rest and it had been a very long day.	The "view" from our room at the Ramada in Tonopah.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, day trip, expedition, food, fuel, land cruiser, moab, nevada, travel, utah