Carspotting (57): Earthroamer XV-LT

I was having lunch on the Peninsula today and came upon this behemoth.  Just look at it next to that puny RAV-4.  It's one of those travel-around-the-world trucks.  Personally, my dream would be to use a modified Unimog.  But realistically, these are just too big and wide and they scream: Banditos, please rob us gringos!

Here is the price list.  The Ford F550 costs $56,000.  The conversion costs $172,000.  And that doesn't include the Warn wench or the PIAA lights!

Here is the manufacturer's description of the vehicle.

Las Vegas Atomic Testing Museum review

The museum is a very short cab ride away from the Strip and is a good way to spend an hour or two after losing your car and first born at the craps table.  It was put together really well and contains a lot of authentic artifacts.  My only complaint was that there was too much information (text) that went along with each display.

Adult tickets are $12.  No photography allowed.

This is some of the cool stuff I learned and saw:

1. The atomic cannon (1953).  This was the first and only atomic cannon.  The shell delivered 15 kiloton's worth of nuclear goodness.

2. Testing near Vegas Strip.  I had no idea how close the testing was.  You could actually see the mushroom cloud from Fremont Street.

3. Kosmos 954 (1978).  A nuclear powered Soviet satellite crashed into the Canadian wilderness.  Full story here.

4. Bikini Atoll test (1946): The water-borne test left me speechless.

Here is a great overview of the museum:

Museum website.

Arc de Triomphe Paris-Vegas comparo

While waiting for my ride in front of the Paris casino hotel in Vegas, I wondered how accurate the 2/3 scale Arc de Triomphe in front of me was.  So I looked up a photo I took of the "interior" many moons ago of the real thing and snapped a picture of the fake thing from approximately the same location and angle.

Here is the real Arc:

Here is the fake Arc:

Carspotting (56): BMW 3.0 CS at Atomic Testing Museum

Woah!  Atomic cannon.  280mm shell with a yield of 15 kilotons, Nevada 1953.

I went to the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.  I spotted this in the parking lot.

Lance Burton makes a Corvette disappear!

My friend insisted that we see magician Lance Burton at the Monte Carlo casino in Vegas.  Burton, 50, is about to retire.  The show was surprisingly entertaining, in a cheesy, campy, and perhaps ironic way.  He even made a C4 Corvette with the square-ish taillights (shows you how old that trick is) float and disappear.  I don't know how he does it but I could tell it's just a Corvette body with maybe a golf cart engine.

My favorite bars

You regulars may have noticed that in the column to the right, I list 1) the last five books I've read, 2) the last five restaurants where I had great meals, and 3) the last five great movies/TV shows I watched.

Well, I've added a new category: the last five cool bars I've visited.  My criteria are simple.  I look for cool, down-to-earth clientele and staff; a varied and in-depth beer and/or liquor selection; and value.  Most will definitely fall in the "dive bar" category.

Space Needle Lego

While looking through overpriced souvenirs at the base of Seattle's Space Needle, this caught my attention.

Apparently, Lego has a growing Architecture series, which includes the Empire State Building and Fallingwater.

Singles movie apartment address

As promised, I visited the co-star of the movie Singles.  I saw the apartment building where the characters lived.  It is at 1820 East Thomas Street in Seattle.  It's a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be.  It's in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, not far from touristy downtown.  It is definitely worth a glimpse for the true Singles fan.

The infamous up-and-down garage doors from the end of the movie.

Front of building around the corner.

Coryell Court (alternate name for a Korean strip mall?)

Cliff's apartment.

Debbie Hunt's apartment.

Fellow Singles fans in the car to the right.  I thought I was the only weirdo.  No wonder the shutters on all the units' apartments are sealed like Fort Knox.

Best travel books

I am thoroughly enjoying The Roads to Sata, a book suggested by Alan.  It's about an Englishman who walked the entire length of Japan in the mid-1980s.  So far, he has lost the first of three toenails.

I am looking through my book collection and here are the travel books I enjoyed enough to keep (instead of trading at the local used book shop or donating to the library):

Siberian Dawn: 1993 overland journey (sometimes by hitchhiking) across the length of the former U.S.S.R.
Road Fever: Record setting drive from the tip of South America to the Alaskan Arctic Ocean.
My Mercedes Is Not For Sale: Man buys used Mercedes in Amsterdam, drives it to the heart of Africa to sell it.
In Search of the Holden Piazza: Two guys drive throughout Australia in a Piazza/Isuzu Impulse and find every remaining Piazza/Impulse left in the country.
The Happy Isles of Oceania: Theroux visits Pacific islands.  My favorite of his non-fiction travel works.
Red Odyssey: Uzbek writer visits non-Russian republics in 1990.  Drives 10,000 miles.
The Other Side of Russia: A look at Siberia and Russian Far East.

Happy reading.

Hoh Rain Forest pictures photos

Here are some pictures I snapped along the Hall of Mosses trail in the Hoh Rain Forest.  It is one of the few temperate rain forests in America.  It is located on the western end of Olympic National Park in Washington state.

Citroen XM, the Berlin Wall, and Red Square

In 1990, two Dutchmen (who else?) drove a Citroen XM from Paris to Moscow and back.  There are incredible images of old French and Soviet-era cars, the crumbling Berlin Wall, and Warsaw Pact roads before they became clogged with third-hand Audis.  And is it just me, or were the XM's tires under inflated?

Eugene Kleiner's Mercedes W126 380SEC

A while back, I wrote about my chance to almost drive a 380SEC from California to Nova Scotia.

I was doing some house cleaning today and found an old note, documenting my preparation for the trip.  It reads:

"Robert Fenton- mechanic
DL#
AAA towing
take belongings
super unleaded- does take it
gas- difference- fine
near Halifax- Waverly
meet in May?
customs issue at border
blocked off 7/5-7/21
insurance- Canada- will put me on AAA as insured
agreement- draft?
$1/liter
C$3.78/gallon"

Ah, what could have been.

The opera, a Chilean ghost town, and a South American land speed record by bus

I spent four plus hours in the nosebleed section of the San Francisco Opera yesterday watching Faust's Sell Your Soul to the Devil.  Inevitably, after waking up halfway through Act I, I began daydreaming.

With the Gold Rush, San Francisco became a rich and vibrant city.  Eventually, a grand opera house was constructed with donations from the local railroad, mining, and shipping barons.

In California, gold was king.  In Chile, it's copper and nitrates.  There is a former nitrate boom town called Humberstone.  It's a ghost town now and I want to visit it.  I especially want to see its abandoned theater, which may very well have hosted many long, convoluted operas.

Humberstone theater

Later this year, I am going to set a record.  Notice I did not say "break" a record, as I don't think anyone has ever tried setting such a record.  The thing about setting a record is that you can take as long as you want, as you'll be the first to set it.

The record will be to travel from Arica, Chile along the border with Peru down to Ushuaia, Argentina by bus.  The legs should take this long:
Arica to Santiago: 30 hours
Santiago to Puerto Montt: 12 hours
Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas: 30 hours
Punta Arena to Ushuaia: 12 hours
Total time on bus: 84

I hope to do this in less than a week.  I will be making a few quick side trips, one being to Humberstone near Iquique.

Vernadsky Research Station in Antarctica: Southernmost bar in the world

I'm renewing my quest to travel down to the tip of South America.  I assumed the southernmost bar would be in Ushuaia in Argentina or Puerto Williams in Chile.  I was wrong.  Apparently, it's at a Ukrainian research station in Antarctica, at about 65 degrees south.

The Vernadsky station used to belong to the UK and was called Faraday.  As the UK consolidated its stations, it sold the station to the Ukraine for one pound, on condition that the Ukraine continued research there.  The hole in the ozone layer was discovered there, you know.

The Foxes took these photos and shared their experience.

Bay outside station.

Arrive via Zodiac.

Typical office.

Bow made out of skis.

Vodka made of glacier water.  Pineapple on plate.

Free drink in exchange for bra.

One way car rental in Australia

I picked up a used copy of Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country from Spectator Books last weekend.  Now, I want to go to Australia.  One thing I've always wanted to do is drive across the country from Sydney to Perth, preferably in an Australian V8 sedan.  But look at these one-way rates.  Crikey!

What the heck is Karakul Lake anyway?

Mother on left, her calf in the little gully in the middle, lake in the background.

You may have wondered why the url of this blog says "karakullake".  Well, when I started this thing years ago, I decided to name it after my favorite spot on Earth.  It's a pristine lake on the western tip of China near Kashgar.  It's a stone's throw away from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.  The above picture was taken during my 2004 trip with a state-of-the-art 3 megapixel camera.  Fortunately, someone else with better picture taking skills (and a better camera) posted this.  Enjoy.

First time driving the Nurburgring

Andrew at Urbane Musings just posted a summary of his first laps in the Green Hell in his BMW 123d.  Lucky bastard.

For those of you keeping count, I have been on the Ring Taxi wait list for 385 days now.

Country Driving by Peter Hessler (book about driving across China)

Although I'm only on page 9, I already know this is going to be a great book.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

"When I began planning my trip, a Beijing driver recommended The Chinese Automobile Driver's Book of Maps.  A company called Sinomaps published this book, which divided the nation into 158 separate diagrams.  There was even a road map of Taiwan, which has to be included in any mainland atlas for political reasons, despite the fact that nobody using Sinomaps will be driving to Taipei.  It's even less likely that a Chinese motorist will find himself on the Spratly Islands, in the middle of the South China Sea, territory currently disputed by five different nations.  The Spratlys have no civilian inhabitants but the Chinese swear by their claim, so the Automobile Driver's Book of Maps included a page for the island chain.  That was the only map without any roads."

Here is a driver's license exam question:

"352. If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should

a) not tell him.

b) reply patiently and accurately.

c) tell him the wrong way."