tour2

I didn't sleep too well last night – couldn't get the fact I'd been robbed out of my head and I eventually felt like getting up at first and having checked the weather channel for updates found that the storms were to get worse today so I decided to stay put and ride it out. I called down to the Walmart to get some food etc and whilst on the way back the sky got dark – really dark over to the south. Just as I'd got into the room the Sirens went off, I'd left the TV on in the room and there were warnings of 'imminent Tornado possible – take cover' So being good, I stood at the door to see what was happening. The wind got up but not too bad and then about 15 minutes later the message was updated to say the threat had been cancelled for the area I was in – This was about the same time as the town of Yazoo, and a huge swath of Mississippi was flattened just over the state border. The tornado had missed here by about 80 miles not far when its travelling at over...

I took a drive over into Memphis today, I'd heard about a Spring Fair taking place in a town just south of the city so I went to try and find that first. I did find it but it had either closed up early (because of the storm) or just doesn't happen on a Sunday. I drove back into the downtown Memphis and took a walk down Beale Street which was teaming with people. The street was closed off and down the centre three lanes were marked out. It was Wine Race Day, this is when the various bar tenders get together to race up and down carrying trays of wine and glasses. They do it in a relay and each time a team member runs they add a bottle of wine and a glass, the bottle has to be opened and a glass poured. By the time the 4 person runs the 100 yards there are 4 full(ish!) glasses and 4 bottles of wine on the tray. The fact that some of them appeared to have had a little dutch courage before hand I'll think you get the idea of how many actually complete the course! A large dark cl...

Set off today with the intention of going to Memphis but I got as far as a place called Forrest City in Arkensas. The drive was tiring and I was pritty down because of having the stuff nicked. I found a cheap motel in one of the coupon books I have and checked in for the night. It had started to rain on the way in and the weather was getting a little rough. I was a little surprised when I checked in to be told 'If you hear the siren get in the bathroom and and cover up. - there's a tornado coming!' hmm. With this info I called round the corner at the local Walmart and got some tea and settled in to watch the Weather Channel along with a couple of beers.

Took a drive out to a local clothing store to get some new clothes, all I have left is what I'm wearing! Then out to Timber's Mum's house. I've spoke to here many times on the phone and it was great to meet her. Then we took a drive into the middle of Oklahoma to see the local art's festival which was taking place. We managed to get a parking place in Car Dealers that was making a mint out of being next door to the site. Timber needed to be close to the site as she is also pregnant and is due in about 3 weeks so didn't want to have to walk too far, we also had her 2 year old son Calvin in tow too so he comes with the whole buggy thing too. We met up with a couple of her friends there, one who has just had a baby and the other who was helping to run the festival. We had a wander around the stalls and then got some food from the tent food court there. I went for the local dish of beans, ground meat and salad on a pitta like bread but it was more doughy. I suppo...

Drove the couple of hours down the freeway to Tulsa. They actually have tolls here! First time I've come across them and the roads are not much better for it – mind you there only $4 a time and they only take cash – good job I stopped at Walmart for some cash last night. I got into Tulsa no problem and found Emily's house fairly easily. I met Emily about 7 years ago in Paris at a youth hostel along with Timber (who I'm going to see in a couple of days.) They were travelling around Europe. Emily is currently off work as she's expecting a baby and was on bed rest but we chatted till late and then her husband, Dave came home from work and I stayed up late till about 1ish chatting with him. We went out to the car to bring in my sleeping bag and day sack and had a quick smoke and locked up the car (I know this happened because the lights go out when the doors are locked)

Got up about 9am and chatted to Emily and Dave till about 10:30 then went out put my stuff in the car. GUTTED – found the car had been broken into – My rucksack with all my clothes, all my Scouting Badges and Uniforms, my travel plans, even the Girl Scout Cookies I got from Amy in Indianapolis have gone. They also took my Media Player I had bought in Hong Kong which I must have left in centre console. It's the Scouting stuff I'm really upset about – I had bought and swapped loads of badges around the world and bought a couple of uniforms, also my World Scout Jamboree Neckerchief and my own uniform has gone. It looks like they have popped the locks on the car with something down the side of the window, there is no damage to the car and the car still locks and unlocks normally. Dave and I had a drive around the area to see if they had just dumped the bags nearby but couldn't see anything, then we went down to the Police Station to file a report. This involves filling in a lo...

The Hostel was quiet but the bed was awful so I set off again towards Tulsa but I took my time on the way down there and stopped in a town called Springfield along the way. The freeway was fairly boring apart from the hundreds of billboards along the way. The most suspicious were for an area called Benson, they progressively got more and more intriguing with offers of gifts, coupons, adverts for the tourist info radio, whilst they all said how fantastic the place was no of them actually said what was there. A little further on I managed to make contact with another radio amateur on the radio and we passed the time chatting for my last 30 minutes into Springfield. He was waiting for his wife to finish work one junction down from where I came off. Just as I pulled into the car park he followed me in. We had a quick chat in the car park then he was off. Got accused of being Australian and German by the receptionist when I checked in! I drove down to the local Walmart and picked up some fo...

I set off to drive to St. Louis today and the journey was fairly uneventful. I crossed over the Mississippi River to see the huge Gateway Arch towering over the town. I drove on through the town to find the Hostel I had booked. It wasn't that far through town and I found it after doubling back a few times through roadworks and various one way roads. The hostel is in a fairly run down area and to be honest the hostel is fairly dingy too, I checked in and went down to the town centre to have a look around. As I drove in I noticed there was a baseball game being played so I found a parking space and walked back to the 'ballpark' The match/game? was drawn and was going into overtime but many of the people were leaving the ground. I wandered around outside the ground for a while and took a couple of pics through the railings then went for a walk down to the Gateway Arch, it really is huge, it stands in a park on the edge of the river and at over 600ft it actually make you dizz...

Today I went for a drive out to see downtown Indy and to see the Indiana State Museum. IT was really hot today – or felt it to me – and just walking across the town I was dripping by the time I got to the Museum, I had a drink from the concession then went into the history of people in Indiana. The exhibit showed the development of the state from the indigenous people to the people who emigrated to the lands and how they shaped them right up to the current day. There was certainly lots to see and interact with but it was fairly noisy not from people but from all the displays trying to compete with each other and this did make it hard listen to some of them. The noise of the museum was that loud that I didn't hear the announcements that the museum was closed for the evening and I'm not too sure who was more surprised, me or the security guard that came around a corner and asked me to leave! On the way back to the car I walked past the State Capital where there was a rally by th...

Took a walk out with Karen for Lunch at a local coffee shop and appreciated the warm weather – back to shorts and t-shirts! In the evening I went with Andrew and David to their Scout Meeting of Troop 120. Scout Troops here keep youth members to about 18 so their meetings are 'boy led' The leaders are really just there to supervise the meeting. One thing that was different was the way that the Scouts refer to adults, where we use first or nicknames the Scouts here always use Sir or Mr... I gave the Scouts here an overview of how we run Scouting in the UK and about my travels around the world then they went out to play some team building games. One of the leaders here gave me a load of local badges (or patches as they are known here) to add to my collection.

I took a drive out today to the local Scout Headquarters which had just been built on the edge of the town. I was very Impressed. A guy named Sox gave me a tour of the brand new building which houses the admin and training services for the region. There are also huge conference rooms and a large Scout Shop where I bought a load more badges. The centre also intends to provide a walk-in training centre where any leader can walk in any day of the week and get training and support for a massive range of subjects from paper work to fire-lighting to canoeing. This is certainly a major investment and has cost in the region of $6 million to set up. From her I drove just around the corner to Camp Belzer which is the local Scout Camp. I had a wander around the site which is very well provided with huge buildings and facilities including 3 swimming pools. From here I took a drive over to the Speedway Museum at the Indianapolis Speedway. The museum is located within the oval and has a number of ca...

Breakfast of pancakes and coffee before heading back to the small Airport at Regina where Allan dropped me off and I checked in for the flight to Minneapolis. There were only 17 of us on the flight so we could spread out and had a row each! The flight was fine and only took an hour or so and then I had to run the gauntlet of US immigration again. Once through I picked up my bag from one belt and dropped it onto another for the flight to Indianapolis. I had a couple of hours to kill here so I went for a wander around the airport and did some blog writing before the next flight. I picked up the hire car in Indianapolis airport which was huge, modern and empty, probably because it was now 10pm here. Time zone jumping is very confusing! I picked a Chevy Impala from the choice of vehicles and drove out onto the freeway and arrived at Andrew and Karen's house around 11pm.

A leisurely start to the day today and we drove out to Moose Jaw which is the next major town over we took a gravel road from theirs to meet the highway to Moose Jaw. Many of the local roads in this area are like this and they run for miles either East-West or North-South. And yes even out in the middle of no where where you can see for miles in all directions you sill have to come to a complete stop at a Stop sign. Every now and again the North – South roads do a big dogleg to account for the fact that they run off north every so often and have to be corrected. We arrived in Moose Jaw which was once a huge bootlegging town, Al Capone was allegedly in town and the town seems to thrive on this. We took the 'Tunnels' tours which is a theatrical tour around various buildings and passages. It was done very will with guides in period costume and animatronics a lots of 'secret passages' from room to room. The first tour told the story of Al Capone and the bootlegging industr...

Today Debbie had to work so Alan and I went to visit the RCMP museum in town. Whilst small it tells of the history and work of the police in Canada. The force was formed about 130 years ago as the North West Mounted Police to protect the areas of Canada which did not have a police presence. The force later transformed into a national police force and the national training centre was created in Regina. The museum was quite good and the intro film we were shown in the auditorium was well done abate a little kitsch with a sort of video based narrator on a plinth at the side of the the screen. The odd bit was of the 200 odd seats in the auditorium, Allan and I were the only ones in there! Back at Debbie's we had a great roast lamb dinner and chatted till late.

Got up a little later than I intended to this morning, quickly packed and dashed out to the Airport. Luckily I managed to check in on time at the airport and grabbed a coffee at before I boarded the flight to Regina. The plane was only small but full and we soon we landing in Regina. The pilot put on the seatbelt sign quite early as they were expecting a lot of wind, and even though it was a little bumpy on the way in, it was no worse than many other flights I've taken. A couple of the people on the plane though it was bad though and it was rather quiet for thee last couple of minutes as we landed. Once at the gate you could feel the plane been buffeted by the wind. Apparently we had landed in some of the worst winds in years and it was quite breezy out of the plane. Debbie and Her partner Alan were at the arrivals hall to meet me and we collected my bag and drove into town to have something to eat at a bar which was hidden away in an old warehouse. It looked nothing from the out...

Today was a beautiful clear day and I walked back down to the front where I had been yesterday. The view was completely different with the huge snow covered mountains in the distance. I snapped of a couple of pics and then walked the opposite direction to yesterday and came across the Olympic flame statue/monument/thing built the same as the one that had popped out of the floor in the stadium (this one with the four legs) It was surrounded by building fencing as they were digging up around it to put in some fountains in (why don't they do this when they build them) but I still got some pics of it from the viewing platform on the roof of the now empty Olympic media centre. It's strange but this town seems to have a bit of an Olympic 'hangover', all around there are small bits of evidence that something big has happened here, and the people seem a little shell shocked from it all, but in a good way. I watched a could of the float planes taking off from the water in front...

I got the car out of the car park after checking out of the hostel and headed towards the airport. I did a 'Top Gear' and refused to fill up as they told me to bring it back empty. The fuel range gauge said I had 10miles left in the tank as I started the car up which was good as it was only 7 to the airport. By the time I had actually driven ｽmile it said I was Empty, so I drove onto the motorway and hoped, as you do! It did deg me to the airport and I as definitely on fumes as I drove up the ramp to rental drop area. The car dropped I went to get a trolley to put my bags on; $5 a trolley!!! No thank you, I'll carry them, robbing buggers! Checked in OK and the flight was on time. The flight was only about 45 minutes to Vancouver and no sooner are you up you are coming back down again. Once the bag was collected and the usual immigration/customs etc. grilling I made my way out of the airport to find the Canada Line metro train which runs in to down town Vancouver and stops ...

I headed down into the centre of the town in the morning with not much plan of what to do or where to go. I eventually found my self down at a waterfront next to the Convention Centre which looks like a ship docked into the Wharf. I picked up a couple of maps from the info centre there and then walked across town to the Olympic Ice Hockey Venue which was closed. I pondered whether to walk over to The Village but it was a good distance form here so I decided to take the metro train out to the Scout Shop address I had found earlier in the Hotel. It was about 3 stops up the line (this time I validated my ticket!) and about 200 years from the station. I picked up a number of badges and had a browse of the uniforms but decided not to buy one as I already have a Scouts Canada shirt. After a lengthy chat with the manager about the state of Scout Camps in the area, I set off find the Brewery the bar man had told me about the night before. Granville Brewery is located on Granville Island which ...

Yes I managed to get up for 6am but I didn't sleep properly thinking I would oversleep. I went down to move the car (now the only one left parked on the street) I drove around the car-park and waited for it to open (40 minutes late) and parked up. Back at the hostel I had a coffee but was now so tired from not sleeping I went back to bed for a couple of hours and slept really well waking around 12:30. I had planned to go to the Space Needle a huge tower that literally towers over Seattle. The views on a good day are supposed to be fantastic however today was not a good day, rain squalls and low cloud persisted all day; I wasn't paying $25 to go and look at the inside of a cloud! I did walk up to the tower base as it's in a Exhibition Area Seattle walking first past the Convention Centre which was crowded with loads of teenagers dressed up in weird Manga outfits, hmm, I've seen some sights at Middlewood with the Live Role Players; but this took the biscuit. I followed th...

After a coffee in the hostel I wandered over to Pikes Place Market, this market has been operating here for years and features farmers and only independent traders and crafts people (Apart from one certain coffee shop) As today was Easter Sunday most of the fresh food stalls were closed but there was still a vibrant buzz about the place with lots of trinket and crafts people selling their wares. There was also a long section which was full of flower sellers, and tulips seemed to be the flower of the season. There are many little independent traders amongst the shop units that make-up one half of the market area and these include that small independent coffee shop – Starbucks. The market has very strict rules about who can and cannot run a shop or stall in the market (no chains or corporates), but as this is Starbucks first store (where it all began) they've managed to stay, and judging by the queue to get in, it helps to draw the crowds to the Market. I didn't bother with it as...

I set off for Seattle today, but called in at a Fry's Electrical Store on the way, they had some portable hard drives on offer and the one I had had been playing up so it was worth picking up one to ensure I didn't loose all my data. It took about 3 hours to drive up to Seattle and I made the outskirts just as the fuel tank flashed empty. I pulled off the free way to get a gallon of fuel – by my reckoning just enough the get me in to town and back out to the airport. I did get a funny look for just buying 1 gallon of fuel, nobody buy just a gallon here. Once in the city the roads were all one ways and I eventually found the hostel right in the centre but could I get to it, I must have gone round and round about 5 times before I eventually dropped on a metered space about 200 yards away. As it was Saturday evening I only had to pay 25cents for the last 20 minutes of the 'day'. I checked in and was told not to worry about the car as Sundays are free parking and that I wo...

Today the weather had changed – yesterday had been a lovely bright day; today it was low cloud and chucking it down. I drove down to the town centre over one of the many bridges that pass high over the river and parked on a meter in the town centre. The down-town area has long parks running through it so it is quite green and it clings to the side of a hill on one side and skirts the Willamette River on the other. I walked down through the shops and offices and found Powell's City of Books. This book store fills at least 2 separate blocks in the down-town area, its the largest book store I've ever been in and more resembles a library than a store. The books are arranged in coloured zones based on subject and each zone has it's own information desk to better help visitors/shoppers. I spent a good hour here browsing the hundreds of shelves and suddenly remembered I was parked on a meter about a mile away. I made my way back to the car with about 10 minutes left of the meter b...

Back on the road today up to Portland. The drive was mostly through mountains but the freeway was good and not too busy. I stopped a couple of times for coffee on the way and eventually rolled into Portland. I called a Safeway just before the Hostel I had booked and picked up some food for tea. The Hostel was a little way further up and very much into the 'green' thing. The roof was an eco-roof with shrubs and plants on it, the toilets were flushed with rain water collected in big tanks at the side of the hostel and virtually all waste was recycled. I fancied a beer so asked at the reception and the girl there recommended a bar about 500yds down the road which brewed their own. Not that I had to worry about getting a decent pint here. Portland is considered the micro-brewery capital of the US. I walked down the road and could only find a Pizza restaurant but on further investigation found it had a small bar area tucked down the side. They had a good selection of beers but their...

Strangely felt a little subdued today so I had a lazy day at the hostel, fortunately they didn't have a lock out during the day as many hostel do.