The Bonneville Run

[FIL]

ok... the Australian dollar is at 93.4 US cents today, which means I'll get about 91c to the dollar after the bank takes their cut...

our flights cost us au$1520 each... so around us$1380...

I've allowed us$900 for fuel, but should probably up that a little (will depend on fuel prices and where we actually end up going anyway) - there are 3 of us in the car for most of the trip too, so us$400 each should be pretty safe...

as for accomodation, bonneville is costing us us$200+ per room per night, but the rest of the trip is probably going to average about us$75 per night... we're going to be on the road for about 20 nights, so maybe another us$1500 per room there too... and we'll be staying at my brothers place in San Jose for the rest of the time, and will be taking them out to dinner a bit to make up for staying in their spare room

so thats over us$2500 per person now, and we haven't even included food or any spending money...

 

[FIL]

Less than 2 months to go now till we land at SFO... We've got most of the accommodation booked, in particular, all the busy stuff like Bonneville, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite national park and Death Valley are booked, as is LA and Vegas.

We still need to book somewhere near Tahoe, near Bakersfield and in Beaver in Utah... And maybe a night down in Santa Cruz or Monterey... But we'll work on that over the next couple of weeks...

 

[FIL]

It must be about time for me to put another update and a few more details up here....

Since the post above, our government decided to announce a big new tax on the mining industry, BP trashed an oil rig and Greece's economy collapsed... the mining tax and greece happened around the same time and saw lots of money going towards the US$, sending our dollar downwards to around 78c... however, since then, it's clawed it's way back up to around 87c today...

We've now got just under 5 weeks to go until we land in San Francisco, and we'll be spending a bit over a day in SF and San Jose before we head off to LA. I'm trying to get a few people interested in a gathering at the Bob's Big Boy in Downey on the Tuesday night (it's the first Tuesday in August)... The next night we're heading to the cruise in at the Wally Parks NHRA museum, then we have another couple of days in LA, with the last night being the Saturday night at the Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino (We're staying in Culver City the rest of the week)

When we leave LA, we head up through Barstow to Death Valley, hoping to make it to Death Valley in time for a tour of Scotty's Castle, then our overnight stop is in Beatty, Nevada, nice and close to the Rhyolite ghost town, which I intend to check out around sunset, so I can get a few shots after it gets dark.

From Beatty, we head to Vegas, where we've booked a couple of nights at the Bellagio, before heading out to the Grand Canyon, where we've booked a cabin on the North Rim, the cabin is supposed to be less than a quarter mile from the edge of the canyon...

We then head up towards Bonneville, spending the next night at the town of Beaver in Utah, then we should be at Bonneville by 3pm the next day... (That's the day before racing starts, which is apparently a good time to check out the race cars and chat to a few crews)

We're at Bonneville until the Tuesday, when we head off towards Bakersfield... The first night is in Mill City, the next at South Lake Tahoe and then the next night we've booked rooms at the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite... I particularly want to get to see the grove of giant Sequoia and I've given us under 4 hours on the road each day in this section, so that hopefully we'll still have time to stop and check stuff out on the way and have some time to see the Sequoia too...

Then it's Friday and we're headed down to Bakersfield... Famoso raceway have their Summer Nationals on that weekend, and we've booked hotel rooms in town for Friday to Sunday night. Monday morning and we're headed back to San Jose, after which the only dates we have booked at the following weekend for the GoodGuys show in Pleasanton, and we'll probably get to the cruise in at John's Char Burger in Livermore as well. We haven't even looked at rooms for that weekend yet, but we may well end up booking something around there for those days... (I'd like to get to Sacramento Vintage Ford some time too, and maybe we will go there on that Friday)

The Caddy got dropped off at a workshop in San Jose the other day, where it's getting a bit of loving to make sure it can handle the trip, and we're adding more places to go and things to see every day... (We're definitely going to run out of time again, but that just means we'll have to come back again some time)

 

[FIL]

Just over 2 weeks until we jump on a plane... The Caddy is still in for service and when it gets out it's getting an alarm and stereo wired up (which looks like it'll happen a day or 2 before we arrive now)

Anyone got any suggestions with regards to electrical installers in San Jose? My brother has a head unit for it and I've had a Python 991 alarm delivered to him, would love to get central locking fitted too, but haven't ordered the solenoids for that yet... (Will probably end up doing it when it's back here)

 

[FIL]

9 more sleeps to go... just put a new post on the blog over at: http://tbr.landbarge.com

it's looking like a pretty busy week and a bit here before we go, tidying up all the loose ends that will need to be done before we leave... we even have a rent inspection the day before we fly out...