Home Sweet Home

Home is the place we love to be most.
Bears' are no different to humans in their love of the place they live.

After a Road trip of 3 weeks starting in bitterly cold, New York, frozen ponds in Central Park, and the coldest boat ride ever to Liberty Island.

 Then driving Route 66 from a snow covered, freezing Chicago

 Across Illionios. meeting Gary Turner at the Gay Parita filling station. That was a meeting none of us will ever forget. A true gentleman.

Across Missouri to the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Rhamona was another lovely person and a pleasure to meet.

Melba ' The Mouth' in Galena, Kansas was passionate about keeping '66 alive (happy that Pixar Studios arrived there oneday).

To Oklahoma, Beautiful.  Onto Texas, just how I hoped it would be. New Mexico,  really high up, hot and dusty. A great place to buy Indian Jewelry. Into Arizona, next and a detour to Sin City, Nevada and all of its' temptations

Ending in Sun drenched California, with a huge sense of achievement and feeling that our preconceptions of a nation had been changed for the better.

Thanks America and Route 66, Fred has had fun.
But its great to be home.

If you get the chance to, do it!
Its fun.

See you on the road.

Fred.

Thats Route 66 done. LAX now, home soon.

Well we finally finished our route 66 trip with a visit to Santa Monica Pier. It was great to finally arrive and see the 66 to Cali booth on the pier.

Its been a fantastic journey, we've met some great people along the way,

 Thankyou America.

But this really is the end of the trail for Fred.

Fred is California Dreamin'

Well it's been an eventful 24 hours as we near the end of our road trip across the USA on Route 66. We left Las Vegas behind us on Friday morning slightly less cash rich than before. My foolproof system to break the casinos along the strip failed.

Fred putting on his pokerface.

The drive across the Mojave desert is fairly unremarkable except for a quick stop off at Elmers' bottle ranch. His collection of stuff collected from the desert is a sight to behold.

Fred at the bottle ranch.

And so on to Los Angeles and the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA. The Biltmore is a very grand place, it was the home of the Oscars' ceremonys during the 1930's.  The lobby area has many pictures from those glamourous times. Walt Disney, Shirley Temple and many other Hollywood stars have received their gold statues in this building. The Biltmore Bowl is a huge ballroom within the hotel complex that held these prestigious events.

The Biltmore today however is a hotel that for us did not live up to these high standards, car parking costs $48 per day, wifi $10 per day (hence no bear blog yesterday) our 8th floor room was extremely noisey, at 3am we went down to reception to complain and arrange to check out in the morning. 

We decided to drive down to Santa Monica and find some new lodgings for the remainder of our time in LA. We are now checked in at the Days Inn on Santa Monica Boulevard (old Route 66), a lovely room, a great balony with beautiful view and hopefully some peaceful nights ahead. 

Fred is living the dream in California.

Fred's out on the strip. Las Vegas or bust

So I'm feeling at home amongst the luxury that is the Bellagio Hotel and Casino Resort. If only I had the funds to continue this lifestyle long term.

Fred playing the system....badly

The fountains out front of the Bellagio are Freakin' Awesome

So we've visited Ceasars Palace, Treasure Island, Circus Circus, NY NY, Luxor, Cosmopolitan, Excalibur and MGM. We have contributed to the profits in all of these establishments. But the Bellagio was by far the best, a better class of gambler here.

Fred out on the Strip

We spent some time chillin' round the pool today, It was nice to feel the warmth of the sun on my bear back after the cold winds of New York and Chicago. The humans have been out and bought some summer clothes ready for the Californian sunshine. We say goodbye to Sin City tomorrow morning and head back to '66 for the final part of our epic road trip, just 367 miles to Santa Monica Beach, the forecast in L.A for the next few days is hot,hot,hot. Bears love sunshine.

Just call me Freddy Ocean, we are gonna break this casino.

After checking in to our little hotel for the next couple of nights we set off through the lobby, casino, bar, conservatory, casino, bar, casino and casino we finally found our way to the elevators. Up to Floor 27, one below the high rollers floor, gives us a great view across the city.
When we'd freshened up we headed straight for the gaming floor and within 30 minutes were 300 dollars up! And several free drinks to the good. We decided to give the House a chance to recover from these heavy losses and headed up to bed. A beautifully peaceful nights' sleep felt fantastic and after the best eggs benny breakfast of the trip so far we headed back to the poker machines and took another $60 off the house. Feeling like high rollers ourselves we wandered down the strip thinking we would hit each casino along the way. By lunchtime however we had reinvested our initial gains back where they had come from.

Fred outside our little lodging house.

Getting ready for another night on the gaming floors now, hoping for a slightly better strategy than we have employed so far.

Fred posing on the strip at night pics to follow soon.

Viva Las Vegas. Day 9 on the Mother Road

Goodbye Arizona. So much for a quiet night in Williams, AZ. The Santa Fe line train drivers are a sadistic bunch, every train that trundled through Williams last night gave a long, loud, whistle to announce to the whole town that they were passing through. The 3.30am train seemed particularly loud. Hey ho though, We got through it, setting off towards Seligman and hopefully meeting Route 66 legend Angel in his Barber Shop. Angel is single-handedly responsible for bringing route 66 back from the brink and making it the fantastic journey it is today. We arrived at his place just after a coach load of tourists from Northern Britain, his shop was packed. We did manage to shake Angels' hand before he jumped on his pushbike and disappeared up the road. For a man in his 80's he seemed full of beans and enjoying life to the full.

Fred ouside Angels' place, Seligman, AZ

We left town shortly after Angel and left the hoards of Norhern tourists to buy their souvenirs and jump back on the coach. The next stretch of '66 is probably the most impressive of the whole journey. The mountain pass up through Oatman is amazing, fantastic views, massive drop-offs from the road edge, switch-backs and hairpins a-plenty. A truly brilliant ride.

Fred on the Oatman pass

And again

And one more.

Through Oatman and down onto the Colorado River valley in Needles, we left 66 behind us and headed north towards Vegas. A quick detour out to the Hoover Dam was pretty cool, impressive engineering always turns a bears' head.

Dam thats impressive!

And so to Vegas, The Bellagio. Wow

Amazing room

Superb view.

I'm Bear blogging while the humans get ready to hit the town.

No need for Fred to prepare, I have a fool proof plan......

All on Black.

Day 8 Route 66, Bearizona and The Grand Canyon

Day 8 meant an early start from our wigwam home in Holbrook, a night of listening to the soulful whistles of the trains on the Santa Fe line competing with the tweets and whistles of the dawn chorus from the local birds made for an interesting alarm call.

Fred in his wigwam bed.

Up and on the Mother road by 7am to make a 9.30 train departure in Williams, AZ 120 odd miles away with a quick stop off in Winslow, AZ for a photo pose.

Fred takin' it easy, standin' on a corner in Winslow Arizona..... thanks to The Eagles Winslow has a claim to fame, a statue and a reason for us tourists to stop by.

Onward we drove on 66 for our morning departure on The Grand Canyon Railway. Leaving Sara at the ticket booth to buy our tickets meant we had upper class, luxury seats in the observation dome. Fantastic views for the two and a half hour journey to the South Rim.

One word describes this place.

Awesome.

A trek down the canyon on the blue angel trail was a great way to get some kind of perspective on the sheer size of this place. My view from the backpack was pretty cool too. After a 90 minute trek down and then up again we were ready for some lunch before our train ride back to Williams.

Even our luxury observation coach had a cool name.

Happy Travelers.

Fred, Champagne and our waitress for the day, Mimi.

After a brilliant day visiting the Canyon just a 5 minute drive to our bed for the night, another traditional motel on 66. Comfortable, clean and hopefully a little quieter.

Look out Vegas, Fred is coming.