It's been a loooong few days, but Vegas, right?

Ok so I know its been a while since Ive done this, but Ive been a bit on the busy side and wifi/adequate cell reception has been pretty elusive up to this point.

Joshua Tree was absolutely awesome! There was a little bit of a bee problem when we arrived at the entrance, as they are so desperate for water that they infest anything that even remotely has some water, including us (you should have seen the bubbler there!). After we got past the bees, we headed into the park and shortly ventured off into the wilderness onto some really cool looking rocks that have been shaped by years and years of high winds. There was a huge rock arch there that Mike Galvez and I took turns sitting on; it was a little too high up for Mike Gilbert's liking, though.

When we got back on the road, thats when Joshua Tree really started to shine in all its glory. There were just tons and tons of Joshua Trees in all sorts of bizarre and contorted shapes. We also saw one that was absolutely huge dubbed "The Tree of Life".

Now, we had been kind of challenged by Bjorn to try our hand at a U2-esque Joshua Tree shot, so obviously I made the three of us make it happen. Here's the final product:



I think it came out fairly well, and yes, there are plenty more pictures as soon as we get around to posting them all.

Also, we were unable to get to Great Sequoia/Kings Canyon and Yosemite as the roads going into them were on the other side of the mountains and would have taken about at least 5 hours more of driving to get there. We did get to see the other side of it, though, and that was kind of cool.

From there we went into Death Valley. Its hot there. Really hot. And for about 30 miles, there are no paved roads, just some dirt paths. It really is quite an experience driving through. It's so open and surrounded by mountains. Oh and its still really hot. But we did see some awesome dunes and other formations.

After we emerged out of Death Valley, we decided to head into the Nevada desert, as all of the land along the highways there is public property (read: free camping). So we spent some time there and burned up a little under the desert sun.

Since then, we've made it to Las Vegas, and let me tell you, there's nothing quite like it.

Heres our progress update up to this point:



So now that Ive ranted about the past week (or at least thats what it seems like anyways), I'll leave you with this and hopefully you'll hear back from me soon.