Day 1 | Brisbane to LAX and Las Vegas
It was nice being driven to the airport by McKay. A definite bonus once your offspring get their licence. O'Regan was happy to keep us all company.
Once on board we found that our cunning plan to pre-book seats with extra room had been foiled as Qantas had changed the configuration and adopted the "Kangaroo Configuration". Lucky for us though, we had no one in our third seat. It was a busy flight so the extra space was very welcome. We also made some new friends who had also been caught out. It was great to chat to Heather and Harry during the flight, it certainly made time fly. We had also pre-ordered our food, but Qantas again failed - they ran out, second choice was okay, so all good.
We both only watched a couple of movies as the new seats had much smaller screens so almost impossible to watch.
LAX, like Brisbane, have now also adopted the automated chip reader, meaning equipped passports can now process through a kiosk. Anyway, that failed for us too and so got so had to go through the friendly immigration staff. It was super speedy as we landed at 6.00am and were through in less than 40 minutes.
Phase one | Los Angeles to Las Vegas | 4 hours approx | 266 miles/428km
We waved goodbye to Heather and Harry who were off to New York, and headed out to catch the bus to the rental car pick up.
No hiccups for the rental pick up from National (yay) and after sitting in the four different cars we were offered we choose shiney black Ford Explorer.
First stop Glendale Galleria to get reconnected through T-Mobile. We could have gone closer but it turns out that they don’t open until 10 am so it gave us some time to find coffee and a couple of essentials from Target. This is one of the multi-story Targets with the trolley escalator; it goes by itself while you ride next to it. Once open, Katie at T-Mobile, had us sorted and back on line.
Now we were on our way to Vegas! It is about a four-hour drive with a quick stop for lunch at Peggy Sue’s 50s Diner complete with dinosaur garden. Its located in the middle of nowhere about half way to Vegas. Food and service was great. Both the chicken-fried steak and the cheeseburger were delicious, as were their accompanying salads and curly fries.
Traffic on arriving in Vegas was very heavy. We later found out that Trump and Hilary were hanging out in Vegas so the roads were a bit clogged. We checked into the Casino Royale and got ready for Elton John!
WOW what an absolutely fantastically candid concert just proving what a talent he is with a repertoire of songs everyone knows, and his voice was right on key.
Then Maccas snack before bed. We’ve been going 36 hours without much sleep, so that’s it for today.
Daily highlights
Rosie | Definitely Elton - totally blown away.
Angus | Elton and his band (original) very slick
Our entire journey - over 12,000 kms