exhausted but not dead.

It's been a whirlwind couple of days, but I'll try to make this linear.
We spent a lot of time on the bus, going from San Francisco to Visalia, then from Visalia to Vegas, and finally from Vegas to where I am now, Flagstaff, Arizona.

I hardly remember arriving in Visalia. It was hot, and the motel we stayed at was kind of on the fringes of town, but our room had air con and cable and was near a little restuarant complex so it was OK. Our first night there we stocked up on food and beer and hid away in the cool darkness watching endless episodes of Scrubs. Heaven, after the Greyhound. They're dirty and never on time, and waiting at the San Francisco station with us was a man who was either schizophrenic or had Tourettes. Either way, he kept spitting everywhere and having little outbursts of crazy muttering. Jason and I both got wet from all his sputtering. I've never been so relieved as I was when he boarded a different bus than us.

Anyway, back to Visalia. We caught the shuttle to the national park and spent the day hiking and climbing. It was beautiful. I climbed to the top of Moro rock while Jason waited below. We also saw the biggest tree in the world, and took a lot of photos. It was just gorgeous.

The trip to Vegas was relatively uneventful, but the town itself is an abomination. On the positive end of the scale, the buffet at Harrah's casino is to die for. It was so hot there that a man we spoke to got third degree burns when he fell on the footpath. I could feel it radiating through my sneakers so strongly it actually hurt.
We ended up ducking into a mall attached to a casino. It was pretty cool, they'd painted the ceiling to look like the sky and had it all set up to look like we were outside when we actually in sweet, sweet air conditioning. We took advantage of happy hour at a bar and saw a couple of magic shows, and then I bought shoes. On our way back to the hostel we ducked into Circus Circus and caught a free performance.

Today has been a bit of a nightmare. We got up late and hungover from our little happy hour adventure last night and had to run for the bus in our huge packs while trying not to vomit. We caught the bus just in time, only to have it breakdown on us two hours out of Las Vegas. We managed to get to a gas station before the bus died completely. It was 6 hours before another bus arrived, and we ended up arriving in Flagstaff at 6.30pm instead of 11.45am. But we're here now and the hostel seems decent and hopefully, if we can sort out shuttles and all that, tomorrow we'll be going to the Grand Canyon.