Package tour!

Departing San Franscisco was very sad... but we really had to. We took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles. The Greyhound bus was late for almost 3 hours, and all of us were super worried that we couldn't make it for our package tour departing from LA. However, we were very blessed. After numerous calls to the company (which kept connecting us to voice mail), we finally communicated with a person and told him our problem...it was very very very relieved to know that we could board the bus from another destination at a time which we could make it. PHEW!!!!

The 7 day package tour is super affordable. The itenarary includes places like Las Vegas, Arches National Parks, Yellowstone National Parks, Salt Lake City, Mt Rushmore etc etc! 9 states in 7 days, would you believe it?! 6 nights in hotels all included, only for around USD400!!

Lemme try to recall what the 9 states are:
1) California
2) Arizona
3) Utah
4) Colorado
5) Wyoming
6) South Dakota
7) Montana
8) Nevada
9) Idaho

Woohoo!!!!! (I cheated abit for the last 2....referred to google map. haha.)

Photos are not in order of visit....

Arches National Park!! Look at the ENORMOUS landscape arch. You see teeny weeny people standing below? LOL.

Loads of photos taken at Yellowstone National Park. It's the world's first national park and largest animal reserve in America. Damn exciting place where one could see many many natural wonders all in the park itself! It's 1/4 the size of Taiwan... and believe it or not, the whole park is situated at the top of a volcano crater.

The body of water is not the sea! It's a very biggggggggggggggggg lake formed by rainwater collected on top of the crater over the centuries!










Nice shirt! From Van Heusen. Anyway, check out the lush landscape and the mountains in the background! We're at Grand Teton and does the highest mountain look familiar? Think Paramount Pictures, got a mountain with stars on top right? Yes! That's THAT mountain!

We even saw a bear which was trying to attack us! Just kidding, this is just a picture from a postcard. HAHAHAHA.

Different layers and colours of rock formed by the effect of sulphuric water flow.



Wha lao super nice scenery!!! Very difficult to describe to you leh, it's just super nice!!



They're trying to mimick the 'devil's face' on the rock wall....


The "Old Faithful" Geyser, world's most famous geyser. It might not be the one which sprouts out the tallest, but it is the one which is the most predictable - it erupts every 90 mins.











The nice shirt again! Check out all the different colours of the ground!!! So pretty! The body of blue is called "Prysmatic Spring", it is super pretty, there are rainbow colours on it!



















Another very beautiful sight...






















Mud pool which keeps bubbling because of gases escaping from the mud bed. It's very smelly here because of all the sulphur. It smells like tons of rottten eggs thrown on ur face.

Real Buffalos walking on the roads! Buffalos are only found in USA, they are VERY humongous. We had Buffalo Steak one night... it was FANTABULOUS. It's leaner than beef but more tender....absolutely heavenly. One big piece, USD20.


Finally at South Dakota, the legendary Mt Rushmore!! I'm sure you guys have seen it before...the 4 great USA presidents. From left: George Washington, Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln. Our tour guide was very well-read, he told us the whole story about the construction of this monument... Roosevelt wasn't meant to be inside in the first place! LOL!
Crazy Horse monument. It's the largest sculpture in the world, and it's still in progress. The White figurine is how it's supposed to look like when completed. See the mountain on the right background? That's the Crazy Horse still in progress...it's super far away, that's why it looks so small... but you can make out the face and the raised arm? The extended hair of the Crazy Horse alone is the size of Mt Rushmore...It already took decades just to reach this stage, Crazy one larh, how to complete the whole thing?!?!


While at Deadwood City in South Dakota, one of the oldest living cowboy cities!!

They've got people dressed up in cowboy suits... one of them gamely posed for a photo with us!!


One of the nicer jumping pictures at Grand Teton...

At Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Those grey things that form the arch are actually real antlers from elks! (elks are a moose-like deer animal)

This is even more fantastic. This framed up picture was 'drawn' with bullet holes! A very famous sharp shooter standing about 20m away, took only 30 secs with his automatic machine gun to create the head of a native Indian. Impressive.


















Trying to imitate the moose.....doesn't it look like the blue colour moose from Happy Tree Friends?





















Extremely big tyre from one of the ultra humongous trucks used to transport sand... remember the ultra big truck in one of Jackie Chan's movies?

Kennecott Copper Mine, the other man-made object besides Great Wall of China that is visible from outer space. It is IMMENSELY huge.


Posing with real antlers!





















To end off the entry...



Brokeback Mountain, literally.