USA 2006

This album contains photos from my trip to the USA in the summer of 2006. I was there for pretty most of July and the first few days of August - essentially a month. I spent the first half of the trip in Florida at the Disney resort, the second half in Arizona and a day between the two is Las Vegas.

These photos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

At The Airport

Airports aren't the most interesting places, but Gatwick has to win the award for "airport containing the shop with the most innuendos"...

I didn't try any of their "Lovejuice"...

The Resort

I stayed with my friend Gary from uni and his parents at the Old Key West resort, where they have a timeshare. It is a really relaxed and pretty place with multiple swimming pools, some places to eat and drink and a nice comfy bed to sleep in, sited in a nicely air-conditioned studio.

The harbour	Along the river	The golf course is partly besides the river
Coming into the harbour - I was driving at this point!	The harbour at sunset

The Magic Kingdom

The Magic Kingdom is home to all the fairy tale stuff of Disney. From Cinderella's Castle to Mickey Mouse's House, it's all there. But so are some more serious rides. The Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster is probably my second favourite ride at Disney World and my favourite at the Magic Kingdom - it's not too violent. Splash Mountain, on the other hand, is a massive log flume with a big drop, which is somewhat scarier! And finally, Space Mountain is between the two for me - it's a more violent ride, but without a single big drop - just a load of flashy lights and twists and turns in the darkness. The evening shows were also amazing - the fireworks set to music were beautiful and Spectromagic, a show of light floats, was amazingly pretty.

Me by the Walt Disney statue	On the "It's a small world" ride	Another from the ride
And another	Me and Gary with Goofy	Karen and Ashley with Goofy
The Liberty Bell	Turns out I can't remove the sword from the stone. :-(	Cinderella's Castle
The Cinderellabration show...	...was cancelled half way through thanks to rain.	Horse and cart
Main Street	The Train Station	An old bus
Me with the old bus	Horse pulls cart	Gary by the old bus
Prince Ali and Jasmin (from Aladdin) arrive	The Cinderellabration guests	The corronation
The tunder mountain railway...	...and again.	Splash Mountain - a scary log flume!
Thunder Mountain was my favourite rollercoaster	The Castle By Night	The start of Spectromagic
Goofy	No idea who, but it's pretty	Drummers
Grand Piano	Peacock	A nice garden
Fish	The Little Mermaid	Not sure what this is
One of the final floats	Castle float

Epcot

Epcot, or Experimental Community (or Every Person Comes Out Tired - an accurate description) was probably my favourite of the three parks. Misson Space exposes you to 4.5Gs, the same force an astronaut experiences when taking off in a Shuttle to space, apart from you only get 20 seconds of it rather than four and a half minutes. They do it with a centrifuge, meaning if you don't look straight ahead all the time you'll get dizzy and probably throw up. I didn't become aware I was being spun at high speed until the last couple seconds, so I survived with lunch intact. It's a heck of a ride, but there are a ton of health and safety warnings on it and it's the only ride I found with sick bags! Epcot also had my favourite ride of all - Soarin' - a virtual paraglide over Calafornia. It's the leading edge of Virtual Reality and it's damm impressive - I found myself lifting up my feet instinctively because I didn't want to scrape 'em on the virtual trees! Epcot also has areas for lots of different countries and food for many of them. I especially enjoyed the Mexico and German areas, the second of these having Oktoberfest every night (mmm...nice German beer).

Karen, myself and Gary at Epcot	The big metal ball thing holds a ride called "Spaceship Earth"	Gary's family
Square trees!	A fountain...that wet you now and then if you were close enough	A mini recreation of the Niagra falls
More of the Canada recreation	Canada's gardens	Looking accross the lake...
...and again a bit further round.	The England area...it's got a pub, that's the essential thing.	More of "England"
After a ride called Test Track	Outside Mission Space - the space shuttle simulator that gives you 4.5Gs	It's a pretty place.
Seeing an Aerosmith tribute band...	...they rocked!	A Mexican tour ride
More of Mexico	Big beers all around at Oktoberfest in the German area	At Norway...
...we became Vikings...	...ahhhh!	The big Epcot dome by night
The firely Illuminations show	Bang! Fireworks set to music	Weeeeeeeeesh!
Kaboom!	Whoosh!	The grand finale

The Animal Kingdom

The name is pretty descriptive - this place has animals. It also has the only roller coaster I decided not to ride - Everest - though the folks I was with who dared to ride it said it wasn't as bad as it looked. Anyway, they had lots of great animals with loads of space for them to roam around in. The monkey were of course awesome, and the elephants were pretty cool as well. Finally, the Lion King show is one of, if not the best that I saw.

Various birds	Croc	Bambi
Elephants	Flamingos	Upside down tree, like the one at Fuengirola zoo
Cattle of some kind, I believe	Cattle with Safari truck in the background	Zebra in the foreground, giraffe behind
Elephants again	Giraffe again	Big bird thingy (name, anyone?)
	Fish
A stream
		Gorillaz
Monkey acrobatics in "The Lion King" show	Fire juggler...	...hot stuff!
Another scene from the Lion King parade	And another	River through the kingdom
Monkeys!!!	The Everest roller coaster	Monkeys again
	Bat	Tiger
Buildings in the Asia area...	...quite pretty.	Some kind of deer, I think

MGM Studios

Special effects galore - but here you see how they do 'em. The car stunt show is pretty impressive, and a mixture of both skill and mad cheating (which also takes skill to pull off). The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster is probably the most impressive ride, doing 0-60mph in under 3 seconds (which is kinda scary when you're not expecting it) and then looping you upside down twice (it remains the only upside-down roller coaster I've been on). I declined the Tower of Terror, one of those vertical drop things, 'cus vertical drops and my stomach don't get along. It's a weird place to be because you keep wandering what buildings contain, then later seeing it's not a real building, just a front. The evening show, Fantasmic, is highly impressive too - see the photos!

Gary got roped into a film shoot	The handsome prince becomes a beast	The villagers
Dancing	"Be our guest"	Also from "Be our guest"
And again	Beauty and the beast	Awww...
The prince is unbeastified	The Tower of Terror - the one ride that I gave a miss at MGM	An immitation of a Hollywood theatre
Another one	Many of these buildings are not really buildings	Not all of this street is really there
Nor this one	At the car stunt show	No, they didn't crash
The speedboat scene was pretty cool	Fire!	Man on fire...even better!
The grand finale	Place where water scenes were shot...I got wet here!	Curious machine from some film or other
Catastrophe Canyon	Big fuel tanker + catastrophe? Can't be good...	...boom!
At the evening Fantasmic show	Featuring lots of lit up fountains...	...and lights...
...and barges...	...and fire!	Fire on the water
More beautifully lit fountains	The fountains are lit up	A boat full of Disney characters
The boat disappears as fire erupts	Fountains of water and fire	A big explosion to finish it all off

Character Breakfast

Gary and I went for breakfast with various Disney characters. Very childish, but hey, I'm a big kid at heart. The breakfast itself was quite a spread too - pretty much anything you can imagine wanting for breakfast, and some you probably couldn't imagine too (jelly and ice cream?), was there. It was buffet style - you ate as much as you could. Let's just say, I didn't eat again until dinner time in the evening.

Me with Mary Poppins...	...and Tigger...	...and Mad Hatter...
...and Winnie the Pooh!	Gary with Alice in Wonderlad	Me with her. Awww...
Gary with Pooh

Celebration

Possibly the tidyest town in the US, Celebration was created by Disney as the "perfect place to live". You are required by the bylaws of the town to keep your grass trimmed to the right length and so on and so forth. It looks a bit like a real world toy town...

The lake at Celebration	Fountain that activated when you got near it. Fun!	The Bank of America building
A shopping street - spot the shiny fire truck	A nice park

Downtown Disney

Downtown Disney is full of shops, many of them full of very cool things (like colored glass indoor fountains). It also has a whole array of night clubs playing a wide range of different music or providing various types of entertainment. One place we went, we were debating what kinda cocktail to drink. The bar girl asked us what our favourite colors were, then proceeded to make us a cocktail of that color. A very tasty cocktail. :-)

The Planet Hollywod restaurant	Me with some dudes on stilts	An Irish pub that served some nice beer
Pleasure Island by night

Other Resorts

The Old Key West resort may have been the one we stayed at, but that didn't stop us visiting a few others.

At the Pop Century resort	Guess this is the 60s bit	Love the name of the bridge...
Sunset at Pop Century	That's one big laptop...	The Contemparary resort
Inside the Contemparary	The Contemparary from afar	The Grand Floridian, where we had Character Breakfast
The Grand Floridian is the top resort, money wise	The monorail connects several resorts to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot	Boats on the lake connect some others
On the lake	Wilderness Lodge	At the Beach Club, they serve "The Kitchen Sink"
If you can eat in all yourself in one hour, you get it free. I declined. :-)	But the four of us did it between us!	Boardwalk resort, taken from the Beach Club resort

Airboat Ride

Take a boat. Take a huge fan. Attach a V8 engine to said fan and mount it on the back of the boat. Result: something that does about 50 mph in the water and on the marshes, giving a pretty smooth and yet breathtaking ride. Pop it in a system of lakes and rivers full of alligators. You've now got something of an idea of just how cool an airboat ride can be. And yes, it's loud. Very loud. You have to wear ear muffs.

The smooth, glassy water	Moo	Some areas were vast expanses of water...
...while others were more marshy.	Alligator in the grass	The darker bit of the trees is where the water rose to during flooding within the last year
Grassland and river	Another alligator, just poking his head up	Yet another!
The area near to where we stopped	Another airboat, leaving the land...	...and picking up some speed, leaving a large wake
Our airboat, with Captain John	The view from our stopping point	Me on the airboat
Another view from the stopping point	Random hut in the middle of nowhere	Cattle bathing in the river
Cattle up close

Kennedy Space Center

After being at so many re-creations of real places at Disney, it was odd to actually be at the place that they *really do* launch, land and maintain the Space Shuttle, and have in the past launched countless missions including the ones to the moon. The amount of engineering effort and work it takes to do what the guys at NASA manage to pull off is quite amazing - there's a load of behind the scenes tasks that lead up to a launch that you just aren't aware of. Ah, and Saturn V rockets are *huge*.

Approaching KSC	Shuttle, fuel tank and rocket engine visible from outside	The Vehicle Assembly Building
The shuttle transporter outside the VAB	Fuel tanker
	Mission control	Front of the VAB
The shuttle launch pad	Launch pad with other buildins	Accross the lake are other launch pads
Closer view of the launch pad	Me with the launch pad	Same again
VAB from afar		Inside mission control for the Apollo missions
A Saturn V rocket	Stage 3 of the Saturn V	The moon lander
Moon buggy (used for testing on earth)	Nose cone	Lunar module
Front of lunar module	Myself and Gary as astronaunts	Front of a shuttle
The cargo bay	Back of a shuttle	In the Rocket Garden
More rockets, including the earliest US one to carry a man into space

Las Vegas

The flight from Florida to Vegas got in too late to fly out to Arizona, so rather than spending the night in an airport I stayed over with Gary and family at the MGM Grand, had the following day in Vegas and then got an evening flight down to Tucson. It was as crazy a place as I remember it, and I got to see a place I hadn't the last time - the Stratosphere.

The lazy river at the MGM Grand	Above the MGM poker room	New Yorm, New York by day
Now that's one big Cola bottle...	A view from the Stratosphere - 108 stories up	Me and the strip
Looking left of the strip	The same without me in the way	Looking away from Vegas
Another view of the distant mountains	And another	Some people dared go on this ride. I didn't.
Looking down the strip; the big green area is a golf course	The Wynn	Yet another big hotel
The tower belongs to the Venetian	Casino Royale	The "Eifel Tower" at the Paris hotel
The Aladdin Hotel	New York, New York by night

Picacho Peak

Along the road from Tucson to Phoenix is a place known as Picacho Peak. Near it are some quirky little shops selling all kinds of weird stuff, from postcards to cactus seeds to garden waterfalls to candle holders.

Not the peak itself, but a smaller one

Looking the other way

The peak to the right

Desert Museum

The Desert Museum is a place to see (and, in some cases, smell) the animals the live in the deserts of Arizona up close. It's amazing how many of them (like the coyote) really blend into the desert landscape.

Inside a cave	The lake inside the cave	Lots of crazy rock formations
Stalactites	The cave entrance	A Saguaro pokes into the air
Mountain Lion	Black bear	Mexican Wolf
White Tailed Deer	Prairie Dog	Prairie Dog
Lots of Saguaro	Desert terrain	Yucca
Desert and sky	In the cactus garden	Coyote
View to the distant hills	Javelinas	Javelinas
Lakes in the distance	A distant peak	A parrot
A couple of parrots	Big Horn Sheep

Gates Pass

The Gates Pass road winds through beautiful rolling mountain landscapes. The many viewing points, some of them requiring a little (but steep) hike to reach, allow you to see some great sights. I managed to capture some of the beauty.

Along the road through the pass	Darkness falls on the hills as the sun hides away	Mountains
A sweeping valley	By the first viewing point	View on the way up to a viewing point
The view that rewards the climb	Another view from the viewing point I climbed to	And another
And yet another

Tucson

Tucson is the place that I stayed in Arizona (thanks to Erik). It's a growing city with plenty to do, and a good spot to see some beautiful Arizona sunsets.

The sun sets over the street where I was staying	Sombero Peak	Again, a bit closer up
A hat-trick of photos ;-)	The moon rises	A mural at the Tucson Museum of Art
Tucson railway station	This area is virtually never wet, but a lot of rain changed that	Sand turns to mud after a rain storm
Train in the distance

Phoenix

Phoenix is the state capital of Arizona. It's a city complete with tall buildings and tons of shops, but is also set in some nice scenery. They were starting work on putting in a urban mass-transit system when I visited, so it seemed like the whole city was under construction!

The hole in the rock	A view on the way up	The view through the hole
The hole itself	Me sat in the hole	A close up
Looking away from the hole	The hole and the path up to it	A view from the walk down
Another shot of the rock and the start of the trail	Camel back mountains - looks like a camel laid down

Reid Park Zoo

This is Tucson's local zoo. We managed to get to it on a cool day, so lots of animals were outside rather than in hiding from the usual hot sun. The reason it was cool was because of a rain storm sweeping accross the city, and it was starting to rain more heavily just as we'd finished seeing everything - great timing.

Spectacled Bear	Macaw	Macaw, looking at the camera this time
A llama. It smelt. Bad.	Capybara	Mugshot of the llama. It still smelt bad.
Tapir	Jaguar	Gibbon rule!
A pair of Gibbon doing gymnastics	Lions hiding in the grass	A giraffe
Awww....	The two giraffe	Cockatoo
Mandrill	A mandrill up close	One aldrabra tortoise gives another a pat on the back
Polar bear swimming...	...and taking some air.	White rhino
Annoyed zebra running towards me...it hated the rain	An escaped peacock	An escaping peacock
Tiger

Mountain Park

These are some shots from a dense chunk of dessert that I went rambling in. It was a very hot day so I didn't spend all and that long in it. Needless to say there are no marked paths, so you have to go carefully if you want to have any hope of getting back where you came from. One cactus looks much like another and your only real landmarks are the shapes of distant peaks.

Kitt Peak

The national observatory and Kitt Peak has a number of telescopes open for public viewing along with a 360 viewing gallery high up in one of them. They have the world's largest solar telescope along with some other enormous telescopes. Real research takes place there - it's a genuine working site used by many researchers from a long list of universitys (they actually have a list!)

Looking towards the Kitt Peak	A hill visible from the same area	Another view from our stopping point...
...and another.	Two of the telescopes	One of the large telescopes
The world's largest solar telescope	A view from near the solar telescope towards Mexico	Another view from the solar telescope...
...and another.	Inside the solar telescope, looking up...	...and down.
Another nice view	Cloud casts a huge shadow	Dark hills and clouds
A distant peak	Telescope on a hill	An awful lot of ladybirds
This view stretched a long, long way	A huge telescope with viewing gallery from a distance...	...and closer up.
From the viewing gallery...	...and another....	...and another....
...and another....	...and another.	The road up to Kitt Peak
Road of telescopes	Another amazing view down the mountain	Telescope innards
Me with the telescopes	A close up

Thanks!

Thanks very much to Gary and his parents, Ashley and Karen, for organising the flights and everything about the Florida and Vegas parts of the trip. Disney beat my expectations by a long way and I was in great company for the trip. Also a big thanks to Erik for inviting me to come and stay with him in Arizona again when I said I was coming to the US. It was nice to go back to Arizona and to have time to relax as well as go to some great places. Also, thanks to the nice family seated near to me on the flight back to the UK - they made a long journey pass much more quickly (and amusingly!)