Hello from Canada!! I haven't updated this in ages and since my mother has had many comments (or so she makes out) about my lack of updates i thought i would get on with what has happened in the past 4 weeks!! The last time I wrote on here I was in beautiful LA enjoying Universal and all that Santa Monica could offer us!! The next day we carried on our drive down to San Diego. Here we decided to go to Seaworld and see Shamu!! It was amazing!! We stayed out of the wet zone but later got drenched when going on the rapids as some evil man with a high powered water gun shot at us on the ride!! We went to dinner that night in the Old Town for Mexican food!! Not quite as good as it is in Central America but good all the same!! I had a very large margarita which helped the food go down!! We had gone shopping earlier that day around the gas lamp area, where we were staying so went out that night to show off my new clothes and met one of Nicks old friends, an art teacher!! The next day we went to Joshua Tree National Park. These trees are apparently quite rare although we found out a fascinating fact that they can grow in Switzerland!! You could buy the seeds from the gift centre so i am guessing thats how they got to Europe!! In this national park we went for a short hike and luckily did not stumble across any snakes as they are very common here, especially rattle snakes!! We went on the next day to the GRAND CANYON!!!!!! Very exciting, but I did not do the helicopter ride with the rest of my group as I had already done one before. Instead I went to the iMax theatre and watched the grand canyon film instead!! Was a lot cheaper than the helicopter ride!! We did go for a hike around the rim of the canyon which was very cool!! It is soooooo huge its hard to take it all in, no pictures can ever do it justice!! We saw lots of birds (one almost landed on my head whcih was scary as it was very very large!!) and quite a few lizards! I stopped screeching at them after a while as I got used to them not being snakes!! We went to a special view point in the evening to see sunset over the canyon and it was absolutely magical!! We had pizza for dinner and went to our cabin for the evening! The next day we left for Monument Valley to see the rock formations that are scattered across the reservation. We went for a special tour and dinner in the navajo where we had a typical dinner in one of their huts that look like a mud igloo!! We then heard stories around the fire and got to see and become involved in some of the dancing! Barbera got to lead the group dancing and I couldn't stop laughing for the entire experence!! It was great fun!! We drove through a town called Mexican Hat to get to our hotel that night and when nick was getting our keys we saw a huge snake!!! The first one of the trip and luckily I was safely inside the van!! The next day we left for MOAB, where we are staying in a slighlty posher hotel as it is very busy due to being Memorial Day weekend. I ended up sharing a room with Nick earning him the title of roomie!! On the way to the hotel we went to Canyonlands and Deadhorse Point State Park. There was some filming being done here for some film about Mars, so will have to look out for that. We were surrounded by chipmunks at lunchtime, as they ran around and chased each other which was great to see!! The next day I decided taht I wanted to go rafting on the Colorado river, but as I was the only one from the group who wanted to go, I was with a family from Salt Lake. They were very nice but I kept being questioned about Muse!!! When I got back after going over rapids and the like, we went for a drive to the viewpoints around Arches National Park!! This was Melissa's favourite area, so we let her take charge on what we went to see, although I was very tired so didn't do much hiking myself!! The next day we carried on teh drive to Bryce Canyon. We went via Capitol Reef National Park and then went to Bryce. We did a large hike down into the canyon whcih was very tiring, Roomie was tryign to kill us!! He actually threw rocks at Barbera myslef and tried to blame an earthquake!! (He wandered why I changed his nickname to Bad Roomie!!) That night we went to a Cowboy dinner and saw a country band perform whcih was interesting to say the least. The next day we went to Zion National Park. This is the park that roomie definitely can't come around with us, so we set off on the shuttle bus and did three hikes in total. We saw 2 snakes and apparently there was a tarantula nearby as well!! I was very disappointed that I didn't get to see a mountain lion, although i didn't need roomies warning about fighting back if i saw a lion, trust me I would hav fought back!! The next day we headed back into Nevada and to LAS VEGAS!!! Its my final night so we decided to use the rest of the kitty money and splurge on dinner at the Luxor. It was very nice and we started drinking from an early time!! We did the party bus that night, so our group had a bottle of vodka and some red bull to keep us going, which should hav spelt disaster from the beginning!!! As the saying goes what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and that night will stay in our groups heads for a long time to come!! The next day, with an enormous hangover we went arpound all the different hotels and then went to my new hotel for the night Circus Circus. We went up to Stratosphere, but was not up for any of the rides!! Will hav to come back in the future for them!! I should say now that the hangover was so bad that after that night in Vegas i didn't touch alcohol for over a week and a half!! It took a couple of days for me to eat again!! I will start a new blog to tell you all of my next adventures in Alaska!!