Canyons, ditches, deserts and tea

Blimey. It seems an age since Reno. We left town as soon as we were able, and put The Car through a big test right away - up and over three mighty passes over the Sierra Nevada, past Lake Tahoe, and back into California for the Yosemite National Park. Despite stopping to gawk at an amazing wild fire near Walker, CA., we got to Lee Vining, the gateway town for Yosemite, a little earlier than expected, so we took a detour to Bodie. Bodie is a former gold rush town, long since abandoned, and now left as a ghost town and state park. The last three miles of the road up there were unpaved, and, I suspect, driven a little too fast. When we returned to the car, we only made it over the first hill before the engine cut out. We couldn't see anything obvious, so I jogged back to fetch a park ranger. He had no better idea, so we called the AAA for our second tow in 24 hours. We had an hour or so to kill, but the eerie scrub lands of a ghost town at sundown proved a far more pleasant place to be stuck than Reno - by the time Shelly from Lee Vining had shown up only the mossies had disturbed our peace.

It was too late for a hotel - Lee Vining gets full pretty fast - so we camped out in the car, feasting from the fridge at the local Chevron garage. We hadn't been too concerned about the car this time - it was probably something very simple - and sure enough, by morning, the mechanic was able to get us on the road simply by finding the fuel cut-off switch (buried deep in the boot under bags and carpet) which the vibrating road had triggered. We skirted Lake Mono and made for Yosemite. The park is awe-inspiring, particularly the valley, which features kilometer-tall granite cliffs, a 200 metre waterfall, and about as much verdant beauty as two tired Englishmen could stand. We pressed on, lunching at the Mammoth Falls ski resort before taking on the trip we'd been dreading making in The Car - down out of the mountains, back towards the Nevada border, across Death Valley, and up to Vegas.

We had agreed to cross Death Valley at night, so no pictures, I'm afraid, but it made for a far more memorable trip. For starters, there was no-one else there - we saw a few bikers crossing the other way as the sun went down, but the sky was darkening as we made the main valley floor and we were undisturbed until we made the other side. At midnight it was 45 degrees C, an absurd temperature on a cloudless night, and we walked out across the salt pan to the lowest point in the 'States (and the Western Hemisphere), Badwater, at -85 metres. In the sky was Saturn, so bright that it cast our shadows on the hexagonal salt crystals, which with the immense, echoing valley walls and the utter dryness of the air, helped complete this surreal of moments.

A long drive out of the other side (via the always-amusing Parhump, NV) and all of a sudden, Las Vegas was on the horizon, glowing, blazing into the desert night. I popped Elvis on the CD player (thanks for the CD, Jenn!) and cruised onto the strip. I was in my element - and yes, shitheap though it is, The Car gets a LOT of female attention - but it was 4.30am, and Ed was too knackered to enjoy it, so we headed downtown to the budget motels of Fremont street and our first bed since Reno.

Daylight and Vegas really don't mix. For one, it's absurdly hot, but mostly it just doesn't have the crazed, wild-eyed explosion of neon, drunkenness and stupidity that sells it so strongly as a city. I took a laundry and internet day, and returned to find Ed waking up just before sundown. We hit the town, drove, walked, fluttered, but for some reason failed to engage with the Vegas vibe. Perhaps it was sobriety, but for some reason the place never really clicked. We popped into a dozen or so big casinos and a handful of the smaller ones, but by the time we wanted a game of poker, most of the poker rooms had closed. Yes, it was 4am on a Monday morning, but still, this is supposed to be Vegas, right? Still, my main reason for even going to the city was the cruise down the strip, and however many times we did that, it just did not get old.

Bright and early, then, out of town, for a meandering cruise North around Lake Mead, being tourists for the day. The Grand Canyon was the eventual target, but we had to spend the night in Kanab first, where we ate astonishingly well after a long day in the sun. We made the Canyon by 10am the following day, our longer route to the North Rim being rewarded by the relative solitude of the experience and views unfamiliar from photos that tend to be from the more developed South side. It took me a while - conditioned, perhaps by overfamiliarity and expectation - but by the third drive and trek to the rim, I finally got it, and it was quite overwhelming. It was the wind, I think, that did it - whipping along the 130 mile canyon, hot, then up into our faces as we perched dizzyingly on the edge.

The Zion National Park was our next stop - and was somehow even more inspirational. A tight gorge carved out of sandstone, but unlike the Grand Canyon, this was covered in trees, far more varied in colour and erosion style, and had a road cut right into the side, making for an incredible drive. We scrambled up a cliff on Checkerboard Mesa to watch the sun go down before kicking on again into the Navajo nation and our next adventure.

The Car, by the way, was handling all of this magnificently. We are putting in two or three 150+ mile trips a day, and since Lee Vining, we haven't had a whimper out of her - which made what happened next all the more amusing. We'd hit a Navajo town called Kayente over the Utah border, 20-odd miles from Monument Valley, which I wanted to see at dawn. We'd done a lot of driving that day, were knackered, and realised that we hadn't eaten. No restaurants, so we only had fast food to choose from. I'm still not completely sure how it happened, but one second we were pulling into a drive-thru, and the next, Ed (on his thirtieth birthday, no less) had spun the wheel left and we were sliding off the road, nose and driver's side first, into a six-foot, sandy ditch. We were lurched up at a sickening angle, and with no chance of shifting The Car. It was just bizarre. I clambered out and jumped the four feet down to the ground, checked that we weren't spewing fuel, and started laughing immediately. After snapping a few photos I walked into the Burger King.

"Can I help you?"
"Yes," I replied, "do you have a truck?"

The Navajo Nation PD showed up. Ed was on edge - he had possibly, after all, just totalled The Car - but I just could not stop laughing, taking photos, horsing around with the policewoman, and generally having the time of my life. If this were to be how the trip ended, at least it would make for a good story - not to mention a hell of a journey back to the nearest city. I wandered off for some food to stop the police from searching me for drugs, and by the time I'd got back, a passing motorist had rigged us up for a tow. A heave and a yank and a tug and a press and a push and we were out. Incredibly, only the frame had been scratched - out precious fluids were intact, and if anything it seemed to have straightened out the alignment of the front axle.

Ed was now laughing as hysterically as I, so, far too late for accommodation, we trundled up the road with our Sonic double cheeseburgers to find a quiet spot near Monument Valley to lay up in the car. It was warm, so we left the roof open and dozed under a million stars. A mistake, as it turned out - a dust storm in the night coated us, The Car, and crucially, its CD player in a gritty film of sand.

So, the current list of things that have gone wrong with the car stands at:

• Radiator (needed replacing at purchase)
• Tie Rod (ditto)
• Battery cable (ditto)
• Brake booster (ditto)
• Oil filter (ditto)
• Three new tyres (ditto)
• Power steering hose (fixed roadside by passing mechanic)
• Leaky transmission (fixed in Reno)
• Torque converter (broken by above - replaced in Reno)
• U-joints on rear driveshaft (powdered - replaced in Reno)
• Starter motor (knackered - replaced in Reno)
• Dead engine (false alarm - fixed with a button press)
• Driven into ditch (no damage)
• Failed hydraulic cable on roof (heat- and dryness-damaged cable; conversion now manual)
• CD player (died in a sandstorm)

And still I love it more...

Oh, and a quick note on food. On the whole, we've eaten fairly well. On the most part we eat one American-sized meal per day, and snack on fruit and cereal bar the rest of the time. It is the land of calorific plenty. Breakfast tends to be the immovable feast, and this morning I decided that I'd been too long without a cup of tea. The problem with tea in the US is that they bring you hot water and some teabags - clearly useless, if you're drinking black tea. I gently pointed this out as I gave my order, and got back... a cup of very recently boiled water and a very happy-looking waitress. I apologised, but politely suggested, and then insisted, they just let me make it myself in the kitchen. I gave a short tutorial to the clearly uninterested kiitchen staff - boiling water onto the bag, folks! - and sure enough, came away with the best tea I've had since Heathrow. My adventures with waiting staff continue. I keep asking for smaller portions, and they keep staring at me as if I had leprosy.

Back to the trip; Monument Valley is the classic Western backdrop - wide open scrub land punctured by colossal wind-eroded mesas, buttes, and chimney stacks of rock. Roasted red by dawn, nothing blows the cobwebs away like it. A few dozen miles further, we saw yet more iconic geology - the Mexican Hat balancing rock and the stunning Goosenecks.

Colorado was upon us, but, with most of a day to kill we took a 200-mile detour up to the eye-popping valleys of Telluride and Silverton, over four sizable passes which took us well up to the snowline - The Car reaching the highest point of its journey at 11,075ft before the coast back down to Durango, the hip student and snowboarding town that serves as the centre of civilisation in this corner of the world, and from where I write this diary.

The drive, once again was stunning - almost all of it has been, from ocean to forests to rivers to gorges to mountains to high plains to badlands to lakes to deserts - but to run from sandstorm to flurries of snow in one day felt quite magical. I'm concerned that we've seen all the really interesting landscape we're going to - after Santa Fe we'll be crossing the great plains into Northern Texas - and we face almost a thousand miles in a straight line of flat, wide farms and oilfields; but at least it's going to be downhill.

The Gorge, the raft, and The Car

I write this from the only internet cafe in Reno, Nevada, which is by far the nicest place in the city, for it offers a link to the world outside its miserable city limits. The only other places of business I have seen are tattoo parlours, auto title loan sharks, sex shops, strip joints, wedding chapels, divorce firms, second-hand car lots and the tackiest, most desperate and low casinos.

But how did I get here? And why haven't I left yet? Well...

My last entry saw me having just arrived in Eugene. We were staying at Diggy's place. Diggy lives with a guy called Adam, a funny and good-natured local kid, and has a girl called Maddie come round and help with the cleaning. Both in their early twenties, and West Coast through and through, they proved a great laid-back foil to Diggy's occasional intensity, and made for a great pair of guides to local living. For a few days we just hung out - I managed to watch the Champions' League final, took in a local jam band with Maddie, and met Jim's landlord, Paul, who was kind enough to lend Diggy his raft, a six-man inflatable, for a spot of fishing. One night, we four boys hiked out to a local hot springs near Cougar Dam, and bathed naked under the starlight. What a place!

We also followed up a lead on a car, which turned out to be The Car. More on that later.

First, though, we were off to the Sasquatch Festival, a two-day concert at The Gorge, in Washington State. Ed was feeling the pinch after San Francisco, so Diggy and I went alone. We stopped at my friend Jenn's in Portland (a two-hour drive up the freeway), who, after a night on the beers and playing pool in the hipster Belmont district of her city, and even longer sat up singing along to Beatles songs to my guitar, decided to come with us. Bright and early, then, we were away, for one of the most amazing drives of my life. Highway 84 follows the Columbia river out of Portland... no, wait... The Columbia River. It needs the capitals. It's gigantic - we clocked it as exactly a mile across one of the bridges - and has carved a deep path through the local rock. The 84 follows its sweep along the Oregon side for around 100 miles inland; then we cut over a high pass to meet the river as it snakes north into Washington state and beyond. The high pass, at around 150 miles, took in forests, lakes, rivers, high plains, badlands, you name it - and all linked together with smooth bends that made Diggy's Landcruiser a great way to travel.

The concert ground is out in the middle of nowhere, but kids had driven from all over the North West, Mid West and Western Canada to be there. I didn't see why until we made it down to the main stage. Set in front of a natural ampitheatre holding around 20,000 people, the stage left its back open to the most spectacular view of the Gorge beyond. Miles across, and up to a mile deep, this made for the most spectacular backdrop to a concert you could imagine, and the bands did it justice. First up were The Long Winters "out of Seattle", who gave country-tinged rock a good name and boasted one of the better frontmen I've had the pleasure to see. Easy-going, funny, charming, all blonde hair and aviator shades, he reminded me of a dozen great rock singers - and sounded uncannily like Michael Stipe. Manu Chau played the sunset set - I've been a fan for years, and it was wonderful to see him move a crowd that I suspect weren't that familiar with his stuff. Next up were Arcade Fire, and the Canadian ten-piece laid down a truly great set. Collossal amounts of energy, great performances, and killer tunes; Diggy commented that it was the best set he'd ever seen from a band he didn't already know about - and Diggy has seen a LOT of concerts. Bjork closed the show with a spectacular explosion of sound, light and costume, but we were knackered from the drive and headed back to the tent.

Jenn and I wanted to make a move the next morning, which pissed Diggy off, as he wanted to see the Dandy Warhols. After we dropped Jenn off in Portland, Diggy and I had a bit of a row about it, but it was all over and vented by the time we got back. Diggy can be a difficult customer at the best of times, but for a handful of reasons, I guess we'd been headed for a fight, and it was good to have it settled.

The Car was waiting. I'd been driving around with Maddie, and a lady in a second-hand car lot had mentioned a white Mustang convertible that her sister in law was selling. We'd gone to see it, and it was clearly in bad shape, but I confess, I was just taken in by it. It's an '87, undeniably not one of the better years for the marque, but what the hell - a Mustang convertible is a Mustang convertible. We knew we'd need the brakes and tyres fixing, but the engine seemed solid enough, and we picked it up cheap - in retrospect, far too cheaply. We'd left it with Bruce, Diggy's mechanic, before taking the weekend up at The Gorge. Now it was back at Diggy's, having miraculously aquired a puncture, but otherwise looking OK. Ish. The repair bill had extended to include a new radiator, tie rod, battery cable, and oil filter. No matter - we set about cleaning her up. Ed went for the imperfections in the paintwork on the boot where an abortive attempt to fix a spoiler had left bullet sized holes, and I went for the deep clean. It had been sat open in a farmer's yard for a while, and it took me about 15 hours to get the filth out, but when I did - boy, did she look pretty. Washed, waxed, polished on the outside, shampooed, vacuumed, scrubbed and polished on the in; I don't think The Car had been this clean since she was new. It was a glorious Memorial Day; Ed and I working non-stop on the car, Diggy, Adam and Adam's girlfriend Tamara drinking Pina Coladas, wearing hawaiian shirts and prepping the raft.

We took the raft out an hour before sundown; Adam and Tamara were wasted to the point of falling over, so Ed and I took the paddles (Diggy took the Landcruiser back - the raft didn't seem stable enough for more). We did pretty well, and though it was pitch black by the time we got home, we took in an exceptionally pretty stretch of river, with a couple of gentle rapids and a plethora of local fauna to keep things interesting. After clambering up the steep bank to Diggy's house, I cooked our hosts a farewell meal of bangers and mash (chorizo and italian sausage on a puree of potatoes, bacon, onion, garlic, mustard and parmesan under a blackberry and port jus, for my London friends). Most of the next day's light was spent finishing up the car, and suddenly we were off. Diggy was short of cash ("flow", as they call it out here) so it was only Eddie and myself on the way down to Vegas. Fond goodbyes were said, and off we went.

We'd only gone thirty miles before the first of the car problems started; smoke started pouring out of the engine, and the steering was distinctly for the worse. We limped over to the side of the road, feeling slightly screwed. We had AAA and third party insurance, meaning we could be towed, but damage to our car was our own responsibility. Amazingly, however, we happened to have broken down outside the best possible house in Oregon to do to. A big, grease-stained guy ambled up - Matt - and offered to have a look. We pulled it round to his garage where eight vehicles in various states of repair sat, including a dune buggy he'd just been racing through Nevada. He jacked the car and had me turn over the engine. Sickening red arterial spurts arced out from the engine. "Shut it off!" he cried... then: "Hmmm..." then "I can fix this." He janked out the power steering hose and inspected the valve, before removing an o-ring, hammering it back into shape, replacing it, and topping it up. A miracle. We thanked him - he wouldn't even let us give him a beer - and headed back on the road. More miracles, it turned out, would be needed later.

Before that though, a glorious night's driving. I was high on caffeine and adrenaline, and drove for nine straight hours, covering 500 miles of backroads into California before crashing out in a cheap motel in Alturas, CA. Dozens of lakes and mountains dotted the route - I know its a cliche, but America is simply huge, and so much of it is untouched nature. It's not like the UK, where the land has been toiled and shaped for a thousand years - Oregon in particular is utterly beguiling in its untrammelled beauty - and our route was going to take us far from the interstates and further from the cities. The next day, yesterday, was where the problems started, and our remote route started to be problematic. Ed was driving - and I'd like to blame him at this point for all that follows - when The Car started smoking again. The power steering levels were fine, though, as was the brake fluid, the oil, the radiator... and yet drips were coming thick and fast... from, it turned out, the transmission. Bugger. We were in The Middle of Nowhere, Northern CA, and knew that if we let the fluid empty, the transmission would be screwed. We found the dipstick, topped it up with power steering fluid (the best we had) and limped on to Quincy, CA, but it was too late for a mechanic, and we stayed the night.

Next morning, I woke to an empty room, and the phone ringing. Ed had taken The Car to a mechanic on the other side of town, and had Some Bad News. New transmission needed. $2000 and 8-10 days to fix it. The Car, and possibly our entire trip, was fucked.

Through my natural optimism, I told him that this was clearly nonsense; that when the fluids were up, the gearbox worked just fine, that this guy was a backwoodsman, and that we just needed to find someone who knew about transmissions. The next mechanic over cautiously gave us hope along those lines, and we decided to make for Reno. We only made ten miles of the seventy before the leak gave way entirely; we limped to the nearest garage with a phone (having had no mobile coverage since leaving Eugene) and called for a tow to Reno. The guys at the garage recommended a transmission specialist, and before long a guy called Lee turned up to tow The Car into town.

Rich at A-1 Transmissions gave us two options; either it would cost $1800 to replace the transmission (which would put Ed out of the trip entirely) or we might have gotten away without damaging it, and only have to fix the leak - a few hundred at most. Tired, pissed off, and worried, we took off for a motel and brooded for the rest of the afternoon. We did take in a couple of hours worth of Reno, and discovered it to be the most miserable city either of us have ever visited, and I include every hick town in South America, Central Europe and the West Midlands in that assessment. We finally escaped the main strip and ate a burger at a pool bar, swinging between misery, wild optimism and mild self-loathing for being such mugs as to buy The Damn Car in the first place. Eager to spend little, we walked back to the motel and slept fitfully.

This morning, however, bought good news. The transmission, it turns out, wasn't damaged, although a new pump seal would have to be put in. Rich discovered the problems with the starter were serious, though, and replaced it, along with the torque converter and two u-joints on the rear drive shaft. $800 all-in, then, but right now that feels like a blessing. And in fairness, aside from the engine itself, almost every moving part in the car has now been fixed or replaced, so I'm reasonably confident that The Car has given us the last of its major suprises.

Ah, who am I trying to kid? But, boy, she is pretty... what can I say? I think it's love.

Today, then; Yosemite Park - then overnight round there somewhere, followed by an evening drive across Death Valley and, The Car willing, we'll be coasting top-down down the Vegas strip an hour after sundown on Saturday...

PS If anyone needs it, my mobile out here is 001 (415) 412 9174