mach v | London-based DJ, VJ and know it all

Ok, so festival No.3 – Big Chill Festival at Eastnor Castle – is now out of the way, and I’m half way through the festival line up for the year. Playing at the Big Chill has always been a highlight and without their support I doubt I would’ve continued DJing for so long, or had the career that I’ve had. The majority of my friends have all come about because of The Big Chill, so the emotional ties are stronger with The Big Chill than any other organisation. No other organisation has had such a profound effect on me, and that effect will last for many years to come.

Earlier this year Chillfest, the company behind The Big Chill, went into liquidation and it was looking decidedly dodgy for their future. In stepped Festival Republic (the organisation behind, Leeds, V, Reading, Latitude, The Electric Picnic and Glastonbury to name but a few) and they bought the brand, keeping on creative director Katrina Larkin. With such a corporate company stepping in to save it from dying two things were obvious:

1) The Big Chill wouldn’t die, it would be around for a long while yet
2) It would be radically different from previous incarnations.

So it was with a curious and skeptical eye and ear that I attended this year. Sadly, my role as a Compere had vanished so I’d ingratiated myself into the Big Chill Radio crew, but I was also booked as a DJ in one of the cocktail bars – The Monkey Shoulder Treehouse (see pic. thanks to Debbie Keen). The following text is what I posted on the Big Chill Forum as part of the feedback about peoples experiences ( http://forum.bigchill.net/index.php?/topic/698769-big-chill-2010/page__view__findpost__p__2290334 ) :

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On the whole: Not bad. I had a good time.

It’s certainly gone through a radical transformation in both the front and back stage areas and often it felt that some one had pretended to put on a big chill, building the site up from photographs from previous years.

Goodings

The site seemed to work quite well, in moving people about from one end to the other and it looked lovely, with many little touches like the ziggurat and the globe lights. The Enchanted Garden certainly had a lovely vibe about it and I’d wished I had more time and energy to explore it in greater detail than I did. I loved the lampshades on the festoon lighting

The loos (and this only applies to in arena public ones) were on the whole, fine. Mostly well stocked, and with wash basins out side and lots of that instant handwash. They were well lit and I rarely had to queue.

The Bars seemed busy but service was quick and the staff seemed happier too.

Crumpets. NOM!

Explosions in the sky, Thom Yorke, Massive Attack on Friday was just fantastic line up. I was so happy.

Toddler T at the Starburst stage. AWE + SOME.

Tracklisting TSO’s ambient set. Double Plus Great.

I had one of the best DJ experiences in my life up at the Monkey Shoulder Bar on Saturday night. It was the first time playing out with Torq and it went really well (in so much there were a couple of technical issues, but I fixed them and it worked fine from there on in). The view from the bar was beautiful, overlooking the whole site and there were plenty of smiling, gurning, gyrating punters at the bar, dancing in the sunset and occasional showers. Nice drinks too.

Camping in Production was such a great escape from the festival and it meant I could get decent spates of sleep as and when required between my radio shifts.

Working on the Radio was awesome. Made new friends, worked hard, listened to awesome music and have a million and one stories to tell. For instance, I tracklisted Sir Norm’s set on Sunday so managed to watch him in action, move from a quietly unhappy and hurt man, to a smiling, ebullient and chilled musical genius. A genuine rare and unique opportunity and I was proud to be part of the crew that turned his experience of the weekend around. And it was a top set too.

A lack of gas & balloons.

It was great to catch up with so many good friends, many of them I only get to see in a field these days.

Lots of very nice people saying how much they missed me talking between acts on the main stage (you made me cry)

It was great to see so many young people on site. You’re the future of festivals and it’s great to see you coming along.

Disco Shed – one big throbbing love for you guys.

Katrina resplendent in Blue (clothed).

My van.

Baddings

It seemed that the programming was done by people with no idea of who the actual artists where are where they would work best, and more about how much each artist had been paid.

There seemed to be an incredible lack of respect for artists – Norman Jay being soundchecked over, the late night DJs on the main stage playing a half an hour after the last live band, and then the stage crews working with work lights striking the stage down for the night while they played – Joe Goddard played to an empty, rubbish filled field; Bonobo (a 12 piece band) playing on the smallest stage you have ever seen. Chillfest always made you feel special and welcome at any of their events, it appears that Festival Republic couldn’t give a sh1t about them.

The Clash Stage was so small it was beyond a joke. It looked like some teen with a rich daddy and no class had knocked it up. Burn it. Seriously.

A lack of love/joy/care from the top of the chain that just filtered down to all the staff. I didn’t meet many working people (both paid and voluntary) would wanted to be there, nor who felt that they were wanted.

No flexibility from event staff.

Being forced into buying a live in vehicle ticket that I didn’t actually need. :/

‘There is no “Last Year”‘.

Watching a head honcho ball out menial staff in full view of everyone over trivial, minor matters. Get a grip.

“Alan” but yea, ok I was young once too and damn I was a precocious brat at that age.

My showing of First Light (360 degree edit) was (on a personal level) incredibly disappointing.

Sailor Jerry’s “brand new” shanty town bar, with security. This was the new Rizla stage and I didn’t want to be part of it.

Sky TV adverts.

No screens or cameras on the main stage. The sound system on that stage had been ramped up too, and I have no idea why.

A distinct lack of visuals.

But on the whole I did have a good time at the Festival, I just didn’t really think it was a “Big Chill” festival. Faux Chill, more like.
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Anyway, that’s enough Big Chill navel gazing. Next week is Green Man and then the weekend after that is Festinho and Solfest, so expect a little radio silence until September. Until then, here’s this weeks

Tracklisting:

The Orb – Live ‘93 – A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Loving U)
Echaskech – The Calm
Wagon Christ – Receiver
Magnetic Man – I Need Air
Dark Sky – Something to Lose
MJ Cole – Sincere (Nero remix)
Joy Orbison – The Shrew that could’ve cushioned the blow
Todd Edwards – I might be (MJ Cole remix)
The Books – Chain of Missing Links
School of Seven Bells – I L U
Vital Substance – Roswell
Lusine – Everything under the Sun
Zero 7 – Sleepr
The Books – A Wonderful phrase by Gandhi
BTM20100812 by machv

Festival Season kicked off last weekend with a journey into the country to visit Blissfields, who were celebrating their 10th year of festivalling – a worthy birthday to celebrate, especially in this “current climate” which has seen so many well loved festivals die a horrible death. Blissfields have kept going by staying small and true to it’s roots and more power to it. Sadly Echaskech were booked to play during the daylight hours so not much for me to do this time, but I did make up for it by djing on The Bubblebus again, which was a lot of huge fun – thanks to Caro, Jasper and Tom for their hospitality and generosity. Anyway… Here’s this weeks

Tracklisting

Lusine – Ask You
LCD Soundsystem – Dance yourself clean
Gorillaz – Empire Ants
Little Dragon – Never Never
Murcof – Memoria
Bonobo – Eyes Down
Pantha du Prince – Lay in a shimmer
The Village Orchestra – Lo Pencil
Beaufort Scale – Dreaming in Perivale (echaskech remix)
School of Seven Bells – Windstorm
Beak – Limozeen
Drexon Field – Limoncello Liquor is wonderful
Stornoway – The End of the Movie
Apparat – Over and Over
Echaskech – Every Touch
Digitonal – Emberkreiss
The Orb – Star 6 & 7 8 9

BTM20100707 by machv

This set is my first “laptop dj” set as I’m now a proud owner of Torq (http://www.torq-dj.com/). Proud but still a little bit confused… For those who are interested, I’m running it on a Mac Book Pro G5 Power Book and (at present) i’m using one control Vinyl and one control CD. I was hoping to be running two control cds but I’m finding the control vinyl to be far more responsive and easier to get on with, but due to the way my decks are set up, using two control vinyls is going to take some DIY to build something for the laptop to sit on as, right now, my laptop can only sit on one of the turntables. On the Mac, I’m running spaces, with Torq running in one, with Second Life, Nicecast, Textedit and Console in another, and in a third, I’m running Beatunes (http://www.beatunes.com/). One thing I’m guilty of, in doing these weekly shows, is concentrating on the newer music of my library so, to help me “dig deeper” I’m using Beatunes matchlists to suggest tracks that it thinks are like a track I’m playing. Beatunes analyses your itunes library in a unique way: it works out bpm values, the tonal key of the track and also “colour codes” it it listens to the track and gives it a colour to represent what it thinks the track sounds like, the colours creating a unique palate or view of your itunes library. Then you can build “match lists” based on a single track (or more) and specify how much you’d like the resulting tracks to be like the ones you chose. It’s like Genius playlisting, but a lot more configurable; you can specify how similar or unsimilar you’d like the matched tracks to be, all this and keeps a tight but exceedingly helpful reign on all your mp3 tags and iTunes catagories whilst it analyses your tracks. This, it’s worth pointing out, can take a reaaaaallly looooooong time, especially the first time you do it; if you have a library like mine (over 3000 tracks) expect your mac to be running for most of a weekend.

So it’s a bit of a shift in focus for me – new software and a new way of chosing the tracks I play – and I reckon it’s going to take me a while to get used to the new way. But anyway – listen to me going on! Here’s this weeks

Tracklisting

Peter Broderick – Games & Games Again
Tunng – October
Fleet Foxes – Sun it Rises
The Durutti Column – Neil
Glen Hansard & Marketa Iglova – Drown Out
Dub Tractor – Higher Hopes
Wisp – Turquois Tinged Pennies
Luke Vibert – Radio Savalas
Grand National – Peanut Dreams
Lusine – Baffle
Working for a Nuclear Free City – Troubled Son
Gorillaz (ft Little Dragon) – Empire Ants
Ty – Sophisticated & Coarse
Hint (ft Laura Vane) – One woman army
Psapp – Parker
Massive Attack – Splitting the Atom
Bibio – Great are the piths
Lusine – Operation Costs
Dan Arborise – Another Side of the Sky

BTM20100407 by machv

I’ve now converted my side blog of Miko and my road trip to the south west of the USA into a more permanent and readable webpage (you can see it, up there, next to “Mix Archive”) . This has all been made a lot easier thanks to Tim Hodson’s  “Blog in Blog” Wordpress plug in which converts a wp catagory into a webpage. Hope you like it.

Well we’re home now and still struggling with the change in time zones, but I did promise you one last blog post to try and sum up the whole trip, but first let me try and sum up San Francisco.

I really liked it. It’s got Big Town infrastructure and Small Town attitude. It’s quirky and odd but also feels like some forgotten area of Manhattan where everything went right. With such little time to take a city in I didn’t get to do all the touristy things I would’ve like to do: we didn’t get to see Golden Gate Bridge or see the sea lions on the fisherman’s wharf or visit the “painted ladies”, though we did ride a trolly (and it went “clang clang”) so it wasn’t a total loss. I did manage to buy new trainers, jeans and socks and I’m very glad about that. Miko and I spent our last full day mostly walking around the city; partly as a method of exploration and partly on trying to find a trainer store that we’d lost the map to earlier, and in doing that you end up walking to places and finding things that you shouldn’t (like the “heart of the city farmers’ market’ just off Market Street) and it also gives you a general “vibe” of a place that maybe you wouldn’t get from an open topped bus, travelling from designated stop to designated stop. We did manage to catch a tiny bit of DF Tram’s set at the Minna Street Gallery, but  we had to rush back to our hotel complete our online check in so unfortunately our time with Dylan was quite short. Dinner was once again at Max’s and, again, was very good indeed.

As our flight wasn’t until 6:50pm we had some time to kill the next day so we started off at The Honey Honey Cafe and Creperie on the corner of Taylor and Polk for a mighty fine breakfast. We’d intended to go to the famous Dotties (on Dylan’s recommendation) but after reading nightmare stories about long queues we decided to try the above instead as breakfast is not a meal you want to mess around with. I have to say I’m very glad we did – The Crepe House (as it seems to be in the process of rebranding)  serves a great selection of breakfast fares: Miko plumped for her final pancakes of the trip with home fries and scrambled eggs and I went adventurous and opted for a crab benedict (a new brekkie option on me)  and home fries. The food was lovely; slightly rustic in appearance and homely. I’m not too sure whether I’d chose the crab benedict again, but it wasn’t unpleasant, quite the opposite in fact, but it was a bit odd however I’m still glad I ordered it. The home fries were delicious: fluffy, crisp and tinged with sage. Both our stomachs were happy.

Afterwards we decided to take in some culture and wandered down to SFMoma to see the Richard Avedon exhibition. The SFMoma is a great gallery and worth the visit. The standing collection is well presented and the gallery itself is quite a joy to walk round. We managed to cover about 2 floors of the 5 that were available and the Richard Avedon exhibit (which in itself was worth a visit) and that took us about 2 and a half hours. I could’ve easily come back and spend more time here.

After that we walked back to the hotel and waited for our shared taxi to the airport. And that was it. Holiday over.

So what can I say in summary? It’s difficult to sum it up when you’re still quite close to the event. What I would say is that we both feel relaxed after it and that’s a remarkable feat. On the whole, everything went ok – we stuck to our rough schedule and (more or less) saw everything we wanted to see. We’ve both come back with tonnes of photos and video to sift through. Having two days at the end of the trip in San Fran (in a lovely hotel to boot) was a God send and allowed us to declimatise back into civilisation. If we were to do it again (not that we would) I don’t think we’d start in Dallas, as that put a huge amount of miles on our journey, just to get going. I doubt I’d return to Las Vegas, without $3000 and a box of cigars to burn (and I wouldn’t hestitate to stay at the fantastic Desert Rose Resort again, either). We would spend a lot more time just in Utah, which has a tremendous lot of incredibly awe inspiring nature to offer the senses. I could quite happily spend 3 weeks in Zion.  I could easily spend a large portion of my life in San Francisco, too.

It does look like the holiday was a lot more expensive than we budgeted for – especially with the increase in petrol/gas prices that the USA is undergoing (cheapest fuel we saw was in Oklahoma at $2.16 a gallon, most expensive was $4.04 p.g. on the road to Yosemite) and us miscalculating the mpg of the vehicle.  However, as a once in a lifetime journey, I can only recommend it. I’m really glad we’ve done it.

And we have plans for more…

So I find myself awake once again at 5:30am, tappity tapping into my beloved mac book pro on the penultimate day of our trip. Yesterday we got up, packed everything, gave the RV one final paranoid clean and drove it to the El Monte depot in Dublin, California. It was sad to see “Minnie” go, into the parking lot of large, white box like vehicles but part we must (as the late fees were astronomical). The staff at the Dublin depot were surprisingly teutonic, but after reading the blow-up newspaper article on their show room wall, you can understand why. Back in the late 80s and 90s, sales of RVs were dwindling in the States, but the market was kept buoyant by the rentals and specifically El Monte (whom, in this article, had been singled out for praise by Winnebago, the name synomynous with US Motorhomes) who had concentrated on securing deals with European Travel agents to promote their services on the older side of the pond. And it looks like that decision is still reaping rewards. Our fellow “returnees”  were all European: mostly German, one Dutch couple and us. The staff who checked our vehicles back in were also German, I also noted that the paperwork could be supplied in different languages if required by renters.

On the whole, our experience of renting an RV in the States has been a good one and I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending El Monte to anyone. Given the opportunity to bore you with caveats, I would point out that needlessly noting any damage at all at the point of pick-up is always worth while (not that this was an issue at the return, but it’s still good advice).

Anyway, the driving portion of our trip is over – a total mileage of 3,203 miles covered in just under three weeks – a quite impressive feat from someone who’s home country is only 837 miles; that’s just under driving from Lands End to John O’ Groats (do I need to state that I do get that these landmarks are neither the most northern nor the most southern points on the UK Mainland? No? Good) and back again twice. I’m not to sure why you’d want to do that, but still.

We were rapidly chauffeured into San Francisco by another European El Monte employee, this time from Bulgaria, into our final destination – San Francisco. We’re staying at the Hotel Adagio on Geary Street in Downtown SF. The room is pretty spacious, clean and beautifully decorated. The staff have been friendly and helpful and from our 12 floor vantage point we can pretty nice views of the city. A great choice of last port of call for us.

For lunch, we walked a couple of blocks to Max’s, which can be described as a posh diner, if you will. I ordered the cheeseburger and Miko had a chicken steak sandwich and both were delicious and ample in size. Service was on the slow side but very friendly and, to be honest, we weren’t in any rush. It was nice to see San Francisco’s Bomb Squad also having a late lunch in there – after all, if they’ve got time to eat then the city is not in any immediate danger. Key lime pie was ordered to go and we slowly walked back up the hill to have an afternoon nap on our huge king sized bed. Lunch with tip was $55.

For dinner we opted to try somewhere Chinatown but we were late (by US standards) – 9pm -  for dinner and by the time we’d taken the trolly, Chinatown was mostly closed, however, the restaurant we’d chosen – Chef Jia’s – was just still open (they were sweeping up, but beckoned us in). Chef Jia’s is a no frills restaurant: it’s overly lit, has utilitarian serving dishes and cheap plates, offers no decor or delight at all in it’s surroundings apart from a wall of reviews and accolades, praising its food. We ordered 5 spice duck (me), sesame chicken (miko), vegetable fried rice and broccoli in garlic sauce, accompanied with chinese tea. The food was tasty, fresh (ample, of course) and simple affair and initially the meat courses came across as slightly over seasoned, but as we chowed down we forgave and forgot this. The service was brisk and informative. The star of the choices was the broccoli, which was crisp and very flavoursome. I polished off the very fatty half duck that was coarsely cut up into bony chunks (and that’s probably why I’m awake now) but our tummies were happy with the cuisine. A great find. Dinner was $50 (tip incl).

Today should see us do a bit of shopping (we also popped into Macy’s for an extra bag for the flight home – now to fill it!) as I need new trainers, T shirts and socks and I hope we can catch DF Tram DJing at the Minna Street Gallery tonight. Then it’s a leisurely day tomorrow before catching the BA flight to Heathrow at 18:50.

Bring on Blighty.

Before we headed off to Sequoia we popped into Visalia to cash some travellers cheques. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the problems we’ve experienced paying for fuel over here with our Visa cards. America now is all about paying in advance for ones fuel and more often than not it’s asked for your PIN number and every time it has, it’s been declined. If I try to use a Credit Card it asked for my ZIP code and that’s not going to work either. Therefore, getting access to cash dollars has been pretty important to us. If you’re contemplating a similar trip, bear that in mind.

After we had got dollar’d up Miko spotted a small independent Mexican food place near the parking lot called “El Mejor” and as lunch was looming we popped over to grab some grub.

This was my lunch. One wet burrito filled with barbequed beef, some hot sauce and a lovely sharp lemon/lime soda. Miko had a chicken enchilada with strawberry soda, but once again we didn’t finish our meals and the remainder went on to make up a large part of our dinner that night. Now we were full of very tasty mexican food we set off for Sequoia.

The road from Visalia to Sequoia is possibly one of the windiest and rapidly climbing roads I’ve ever driven on and tackling it in a heavy 12ft high, 25ft long RV wasn’t the best way to experience it but onwards we went. A combination of mexican food, altitude and rapid turns didn’t go too well down with Miko who was soon reaching for the motion sickness pills. Once we reached the top and gathered our breathe we took a short stroll round “The Big Trees walk” which was only about half a mile in length, but as we’ve learnt: we travel very, very slowly.

As big trees are, by their nature, really big, I’ve included a couple of people in this picture to give them a sense of scale. All you have to do is find them.

We left Sequoia and drove back down the narrow, windy and steep road on to Midpines KOA (sadly this was the exception in our rule that all KOAs are staffed by helpful and friendly people! We won’t be rushing back here) where we’d booked for two nights, giving us ample time to check out our final big natural wonder – Yosemite national park.

After a nights rest the weather turned on us and temperatures dropped about 20 farenheit. We had planned on taking the shuttle bus from the campsite up to the park but as it only ran every couple of hours and took an hour and a half to get there we drove up ourselves. It was another ascent up windy mountainous roads, but nothing compared to yesterdays drive. After eating our lunch we took a short mile and a half long walk around the meadow in the centre of the park (that’s a three hour excursion for us), which should have offered us clear views of these towering majestic granite outcrops that this park is famous for, and it would’ve done, if it wasn’t for the cloud cover that erased them from our view.

That’s the famous Half Dome of Yosemite on the left. Yes, just behind all those lovely obscuring clouds. It didn’t stop us taking pictures as clouds help define scenes when photographing or filming them – an empty blue sky is the dullest sky of all. We also saw woodpeckers and dear in the glade that’s at the bottom of the picture (something you’ll see a lot more of when we’ve both edited our real pictures and video).

And after that, we left. Our last national park on “The Great South Western Road Trip”. We stayed over night at Midpines and today drove to Stockton Delta KOA, where I’m now writing this blog post. The end of the road – 3, 137 miles from our starting point at McKinney, Dallas, Texas. Tomorrow, we’ll return the RV and head into San Francisco for the last two nights of our trip. I’ll probably write a blog from there and one when we get back to the UK, in way of summary, but I would like to say thanks to everyone whos commented on the postings to let me know you’re reading them and to let me know how much you’ve enjoyed the updates.

It’s one thing to write, it’s a better thing to be read.

There’s not a lot I can say about Las Vegas that you don’t already know, except all I can add is it’s all true. We pootled around the strip during the day, visiting the various casinos, more for the architecture than anything else – for example: within one stretch you can climb to the top of The Eiffel Tower, see the Empire State building & take a goldalier trip round Venice. At dusk we ventured north to the old strip on Fremont Street (home to the original casinos like “The Golden Nugget” and “The Four Queens”) to witness The Fremont Street Experience which was pretty spectacular and goes to show what lengths the casino owners will go to just to get you in the area, let alone into a casino and actually gambling. I could go on, but to be honest the day was exhausting and left us both a little cold – we came to see Las Vegas and that’s what we did, but in doing that we became removed from the experience and that was our problem. Unless you are willing to throw yourself into what Vegas can offer you – which is (as you know) 24 hour party time with gambling, show girls, glitz, glamour, salaciousness, music, booze, big cigars (this is the first time for a while I’ve seen smoking indoors – that was a bit weird) and much,mcuch more, then you’re just going to end up wondering why the hell you are there. To it’s credit It’s one hell of a party town and long may it continue… just let it continue without me, please.

This morning we checked out of the Desert Rose Resort (which was lovely, by the way; despite being next to the world’s biggest Hooters and the Airport, our apartment was quiet, spacious, clean and very reasonably priced) and got on the road again. 400 miles later (via a very short stop over into the Mohave Desert National Park) sees us in Visalia, which is a small town near Fresno and only 60 miles outside our next stop: Sequoia National Park home to the giant “Redwood” trees.

After the two early mornings at Monument Valley and Grand Canyon, we took it nice and easy yesterday morning in the Cannonvile KOA site and did homely stuff like cleaning (our clothes and ourselves) and recharging batteries (our cameras and ourselves) and intended on catching the setting sun in the Kodachrome Basin which was 9 miles down the road from our campsite (a small note about KOA so far our experience of them is truly wonderful, they have all been clean, well maintained and staffed with really friendly, helpful people) however after picking up on a severe weather warning we changed our plans and decided to drive to Bryce Canyon instead.

(clicking on the piccie will take you through to the flickr page – sorry I didn’t do this earlier for you, dear reader)
Bryce is stunning. The “hoodoos” that proliferate the park make Bryce a unique visiting spot. Remeniscent of gothic spires, it’s easy to compare it’s skylines to a manic organic version of the universities of Oxford, except it fills the horizon and then some.

We ate at the local restaurant Clark’s in the small town of Tropic. The food was pretty good, service was friendly and, once again the portions were immense. Miko ordered (thinking that we were back in England) a 1/2 BBQ chicken, which the left overs have been steadily feeding us for the last couple of days – in fact there’s still some left. I had a “New York steak” which was the smallest steak on the menu weighing in at 10oz and it came as rare as I requested it; can’t complain about that. They also have a selection of home made pies for dessert, that we took to go – along with the mutant chicken left overs that must’ve weighed in at about 3lbs.

After the non arrival of the storm (it sure was windy though), the next morning we visited the Kodachrome basin State Park which got it’s name from the early visitors who were stuck by it’s beauty and colour that they called it Kodachrome. When it became a state park with that name Kodak initially baulked at the idea and it was renamed to Chimney Rock State Park but after someone in Kodak’s Marketing dept realised that this was free and positive advertising, they relented and granted permisson for the trade mark to be used. Sure is pretty and it’s worth every cent of the $6 entrance fee. However our next stop would make us re-evaluate all superlatives we’d used so far.

How can you sum up Zion State Park?

Does this image help?

Or this?

This?

How about this?

They’re all of Zion, but none of them can sum up the magnificent beauty of this place. It redefines the word “Awesome”. Miko described it as “The most beautiful place she’d ever seen”. We did four of the shorter suggested trails around the park (there are several trails in various levels of difficulty and length) and each one of them was completely rewarding – a simple 1 mile walk between two of the sites took us a good 2 hours to traverse, not because of the roughness of the terrain, but becausse we kept stopping to try and capture scene after vista after picture opportunity. I can only urge everyone to go to this incredibly stunning and awe inspiring place.

We’re now resting up in the rather plush Desert Rose Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada (the fifth state and third time zone) as a little piece of luxury and respite before we take on our final leg of California and the Forests of Sequoia and Yosemite before finishing our trip in San Francisco. Tomorrow will be a driving day (400 miles) but today will be trying to make sense of one of the weirdest cities in America.

Ok, it’s only been a few days since I last wrote but a lot has happened since then.

We left the charming Cottonwood Campground at about 10am and ascended up to the South Rim of Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “tSay”) and started our tour of the various overlooks that let you look down into this magnificent canyon. Sadly our timing could’ve been better as the sunlight was mostly overhead making both our camera and video footage a tad flat, but the experience of looking into some America prehistory was worth every second. This canyon features ruins from the Ancient Pueblo People who lived in this Canyon over 3000 years ago and who manufactured impressive cliff carved dwellings as villages, often housing communities of 100 – 200 people. The valley floor is still occupied and farmed today by the Navaho, who own this land and hold the ruins and many of the rocks as sacred; therefore access to the canyon floor is heavily restricted unless accompanied by a guide.

It took us a good 5 to 6 hours to tour the south rim, so we set off for our next port of call at about 4pm, heading north, into our fifth state, Utah and into to Monument Valley.

We’d booked into Gouldings RV Campground the night before but upon our arrival, our booking hadn’t made it through their system and there was no room for us when we turned up. All they could offer us was a dry site (no hookup), by the side of the road for a rather rich $27. However, after driving 170 miles and it being 7.30pm we weren’t in a position to argue so begrudingly we paid our fee. The Gouldings complex is a sightin itself. Originally a trading post it now has it’s own hotel, lodge, grocery store, gas station, medical centre, museum and campground as well as many other amenities. However, our lack of booking had put a dampeners on the whole Monument Valley experience and the general vibe of the place seemed all about wanting to get cash into Gouldings coffers at any cost so we decided to give the actual Monument Valley park a miss and drive on… but not until we’d got something out of the experience in return. So, at 5.55am (a small and odd note about time – Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, but the Navaho Nation Indian Reservation within Arizona does) we got up and drove down the road to capture the sunrise on one of Nature’s great achievements.

And it was well worth it. Have a look at the above images on my flickr page, and these are just the pictures from our little fuji camera.

After the sun had done it’s glorious wonderment we set off in search of breakfast in the nearby town of Kayenta but all we could find open at this time was a Burger King, however this was no ordinary BK. This BK was (quite oddly) home to the Navaho code talkers exhibit. Breakfast was weird.

After a bit of shopping and cashing of travellers cheques (and securing our next campsite over the phone, rather than the internet) we set off down Highway 160, through Tuba City (it lacked Tubas) then north on Highway 89, past the beautiful Echo Cliffs and across the gorgeous Marble Canyon, up the impressive and aptly named Vermillion Cliffs up to Jacobs Lake, ready for our next Canyon: The Grand Canyon.

After such an impressive morning of both filming and photography we again decided to get up early and catch the sun rise, so at 4.45 am we got up and drove the 45 miles to the North Rim.

Once again, getting up early paid dividends. I was in two minds about seeing the Grand Canyon – after all we’re seeing a number of canyons and, yes this is the biggest and most famous, but it’s also the most viewed. However we opted for the less popular north rim just to try and see something more unique and to have a more personal experience. To put this into context, the south rim (which offers far better, wider and more colourful views) gets 5million visitors a year – it has it’s own Imax cinema for chrissakes – while the north gets a more leisurely half a million. The drive to the north rim also is (once again) stunning – something we’d appreciate later – after a congratulatory and rewarding breakfast at The Grand Canyon Lodge.

We both ordered the same thing – buttermilk pancakes, two eggs (scrambled) and a side of hash browns and our jaws dropped when this arrived

That’s 3 19 cm in diameter buttermilk pancakes in a stack about 5 cm high, so that’s 1418 cubic cm of very delicious and fluffy pancake. Most of that jar of syrup disappeared into the stack, too. Please note the garnish of a wedge of strawberry and a slice of orange, making it a “healthy” breakfast and contributing to my 5 a day. Though (those who care for our well being will be reassured to read) it did defeat us and we left half of the pancake mountain on the plate. Breakfast came to a costly but worth it $34 (including tip).

We got back on the road and drove back through the Kaibab Plateau, now lit for us to see the glittering, golden leaves of the autumnal silver birch set against the deep greens of fir trees and then a real rare treat:

a small herd of Bison, grazing and wallowing beside the roadside. After a few tentative snaps we got back on the road, heading north up Highway 89, into Utah. We did stop off at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park but it was a bit dissappointing so I had a nap, then on up passed Dixie National Forest, Red Canyon, onto Highway 12 and we’re now in Cannonville for two days to check out the plethora of state parks here.