WHEN I WAS FORTY MINUS A DAY

One of my favourite legs on our US trip would have to have been Los Angeles to Las Vegas. It was such an incredible landscape, so vast and impressive and not like anything I’d seen in my travels around Australia and Europe. It reminded me very much of any number of movies I’d grown up watching, and everything I identified as American. Suitably dressed in our Mickey Mouse ears (from yesterday’s Disneyland adventure) and chewing our way through packets of jerky sticks we imagined we fitted right in.
Desperately hungry for lunch, even after all the jerky sticks, we stopped in for lunch at Peggy Sue’s Diner, which is roughly halfway between Los Angeles and Vegas. I giggle to myself, even a year later, remembering how excited I was when I walked inside and how quickly my camera came out. I wonder if they ever tire of Aussie tourists who look (and act) like they’ve just seen McDonalds for the first time. Only this was waaaaaaay better than McDonalds. I could have sat there for hours simply taking it all in, watching all types of people come and go, countless images being filed away in my mind as I mentally ‘pinned’ them.  That’s right – I have my own mental pinterest account – you wouldn’t believe some of the boards I have going on in there.
We eventually rolled out the door, still acclimatising to the local north american portion sizes, and continued on our way. Jaedon spotted a few trains, which made his day – even they were bigger and better than the ones back home. And Alicia-Rae counted down the minutes until we arrived at the castle we were staying in for the next couple of nights. It doesn’t take much to make a five year-old girl happy, even if she was unlikely to find a prince charming awaiting her there.  Life at that moment was one grand adventure for us all, and it cetainly wasn’t the worst way to spend the last day of my thirties.

Narrelle x