Tag: America

Bear Burger, New York

One of the best gluten free places I’ve ever eaten is BareBurger in New York.

Keep in mind that we’d struggled to find somewhere close to the hotel which offered a decent gluten free menu. As those of you with dietary restrictions will know, options are usually limited to a salad or the most unappetising option possible. Once we found this place, it all changed!

The staff were really friendly from the outset and had a great knowledge of what we could and couldn’t eat. They were also really good at making suggestions of what could be changed in the menu to cater for our allergies.

Set in a quirky little venue, the lightshades were made of forks and the decor was quite rustic in style. The menu was mostly organic but always natural, meaning that you can eat guilt free! The best thing about this place? The burgers are huge!!! When they arrived at our table, we worries that we might not finish them all – especially as the chips were also gluten free!

Most gluten free buns are ‘okay’ at best – usually a bit dry, a bit crumbly; but this place has it cracked!

As for cross- contamination, although they use the same kitchen, they do have separate areas for cooking gluten free and vegan options.

BareBurger became the ‘go to’ place for us on our trip.

An Old Ghost-Town That Everybody Forgot

We’d been talking about trying to include a trip to a good ol’ American ghost town but one of the biggest (Bodie) was a little too far off our route.

Instead, we picked a visit to Grafton on the way back from Zion. Grafton was evacuated in 1866 due to flooding and fighting, with the last few families moving in 1944. The buildings have been restored and it’s a great glimpse into the past.

There were around five buildings remaining, one being the church / school house and a small graveyard.

It was quite eerie to wander around the empty buildings; being one of those people who watch far too many scary films, I couldn’t help thinking about the abandoned buildings in the Blair Witch. It was easy to imagine someone or something hiding in the dusty corners of the buildings.

There was only one other small group of people on the site when we visited and that added to the sense of isolation. The backdrop was stunning, all red rock mountains and dust-ground floors.

It wasn’t a long visit but it was a big change from the other sites on our trip and really gave a sense of history to the scenery we were experiencing.

The Secret Location for the AllSpark and Megatron – Otherwise Known as the Hoover Dam

My main memory of the Hoover Dam was heat. It was blisteringly hot and that’s coming from someone who had just spent a day or too baking in the Vegas sun. The problem with the Hoover Dam is that there is no shelter, none at all. So if you are planning to visit, lather up on sunscreen – trust us it’s worth it!

Once you get past the heat, it’s easy to be blown away by the sheer size of the Hoover Dam. It. Is. Huge! If you have vertigo / get dizzy with heights, this could be a challenging place. One peak over the edge of the wall had my head spinning. But it was worth it. The views are incredible and as we visited on such a sunny day, the colours of the dam walls against the blue of the water and sky was striking.

Wandering Beeb was enthralled with the sheer engineering feat of building something so huge. Being a bit of a history buff, he was completely fascinated with the history of the build and there was plenty of information dotted around the dam to keep him busy.  He worked his way around the site, absorbing information on the construction and the stories behind the dam.

I’m a bit more visual, so I spent my time snapping pictures and taking in the site. I also wanted to get my geek on by spending time looking at the place where they stored Megatron’s body in Transformers (the dam was the base for Sector Seven in the Transformers movie).

I’ve heard a number of people talk about the costs at the Hoover Dam, and it’s true, you can be charged for everything; a tour inside the building, a tour around the site, for drinks (don’t forget that heat I mentioned before – make sure you take loads of water!). However, if you want to go on a budget, just don’t take any of the tours! We spent an hour or so there and didn’t spend a penny.  The site has lots of information dotted around and there is plenty to see without paying for a tour.

A product of a design competition winner, the winged statues guard the entrance to the dam. The unusual method of installing the statues involved using blocks of ice, which melted in the sun to help the engineers to get the placement and finish for the statues just right. Known as ‘Winged Figures of the Republic’, they sit on jet black bases, reminding me of those two statues Atreyu had to pass through in ‘The Neverending Story’.

With over one million visitors each year churning through the Hoover Dam site, you can expect any visit to be busy, however I think that we were quite lucky. We stopped off at the dam fairly early in the morning on our route to the Grand Canyon. It was a long day but it was well worth it to avoid the crowds.

Whether your visit is due to an interest in the history of the dam, to wonder at the sights or (like me) to see where the AllSpark is hidden (Transformers again!), Hoover Dam is a great place to visit and is guaranteed to get you some great photos.

Half Dome: Subdome

You can read part one and part two of our trip up half dome here:

Part one

Part two

The Sub-dome was in sight! After a gruelling but beautiful hike past Vernal Falls, Nevada Falls and through Little Yosemite Valley, we reached a sign to say that Half Dome was a mere 2 miles away.

By this point, I was done in. I was struggling to breath (asthma and altitude do not go hand in hand) my voice had gone almost completely and I was shattered. I also knew that we still had a roughly 4-5 hour hike back down to the valley. I am a very stubborn person and I refused to turn back until I made the Sub-dome. By this point, I’d accepted that there was no way I was going to make it to the top of Half Dome. Physically, I was too knackered to pull myself up those cables, and I’m not sure if I’d have been entirely ok with the height, but I was determined to meet my goal of reaching the Sub-dome.

After some challengingly steep switchbacks through the forest, we passed through the section of the trail where a permit was required and broke above the tree line.

Being that high up, and that close to the Sub-dome was incredible. Despite feeling broken, it was probably one of the biggest highs of my life!

The views were incredible. Snow-topped mountains in the distance, blue skies and harsh granite surrounded us from all angles. It felt like we were in the sky and Wandering Beeb was in his element, snapping pictures of anything and everything! We had achieved our goal and it felt amazing to have been successful at something so physical.

After spending some time taking in the views (and catching our breath), we decide to retrace our steps and head back down the trail. By the time we hit the bottom of the waterfalls, it was almost dark. Torches on, we continued to navigate our way down. There were few people left on the trail and as it got darker, we realised that we must have take a wrong turn somewhere. We could see the lights from the toilet block across the river but there was no way we could see of reaching them. The path had gotten narrower and we were both starting to feel panicky. Afterwards, we admitted to really understanding the dangers of the park at this point, given that we were in bear territory and unsure of where we were.

Trying to remain calm, we hiked back up the path, eventually realising that we had taken a hidden fork in the trail and had headed down a bridal path instead of the main trail. It was such a relief to find the right path and head down past the toilets and water fountains, knowing that we would soon by back in the Valley, surrounded by people rather than bears and mountain lions.

We eventually arrived back in the valley at about 10pm. We were hungry, knackered and sore, and still had a 45 minute drive back to Wawona to our tent. It didn’t matter. We’d reached the Sub-dome, we’d pushed ourselves to the limit and we’d almost touched the sky.

Wash your spirit clean

– John Muir