Our arrival into the USA was smooth, facilitated by the now "friendly face" of Immigration and Customs. We found our way to the rental car place which was very relaxed - but he was watching the soccer but we still don't who won. It was 1 all at the time.

We initially thought we would look for some shopping in Culver City which is close to the airport. However after missing a turning we decided to head out of LA. We drove through some interesting down-town housing before joining a freeway and then made our way to San Bernadino.

We were by this time (2.30pm) hungry. We found a spanish speaking super market which had nice cheap food to eat and also where we purchased many of the items we needed to camp with, including food.

We then found the more regular mall but it was more the shopping experience rather than where one could buy useful items - though Murray got some sun glasses.

We drove on up into the San Bernadino mountains - realising as we went up that we had no matches or petrol. At this point we also discovered some chocoloate had melted on the suitcases - a waste and a mess to clean up.



We went on wondering what we would find in a mountain area - well, not lack of shopping. We went into a see a lake called Lake Gregory - houses all modelled on Switzerland. We were able to make all our other purchases except petrol - the nozzle wouldn't fit into the fuel bottle. However our luck was looking up in other ways. A bottle of wine fell through the shopping bag but didn't break and at the next regular petrol station we got petrol and round the corner was a camping ground - Dogwood forest.



We found a site in among the trees ( we learnt this morning that the reason there are many tree stumps is because of a bark beetle that killed probably 50% of the trees) . On the way to what we hoped would be a warm shower but turned out to be a cold shower we helped some young guys whose truck had broken something so that there was no steering to the left front wheel. We helped get them off the road.

After our shower we made tea now by moonlight and our head lights. Very pleasant.

Today Monday we drove on through the San Bernadino Forest Service Park through to Bear Lake City. After making some purchases we drove down into the Mojave Desert. Lucerne City is not a place to visit (Christine it would rank after Amardillo) although it was interesting to see the amount of "prime" land for sale. The whole desert area was amazing - we were initially off the inter-state but then rejoined it for the major part of the trip to Las Vegas. Although we have not see the strip we did see Prim just over the border which seems to be a casino outpost and so we knew we were in Nevada. Heard from Ruth about this point - so cell phone technology is amazing -able to discuss GISMAPED business while on a shoulder in the desert!

As we drove on we passed through the Mojave Preservation area - the Joshua trees were really interesting.

As we knew Lisa and Colin were at work we went on a side trip to see the Hoover Dam. We should have bought some rain over as generally by the water level they need it more than we do. We found our way through Las Vegas on the feeways we only needed one slight stop to re-read the instructions to Lisa and Colin's. So we have driven through Las Vegas East to West but all on freeway.

Nice to have two childhood places the Mojave desert and the Hoover Dam turn out to be as interesting in realy life as I imagined as a child.