Started the big trip - USA

Been travelling a week now. First stop Las Vegas. The city is full of themed hotels , this hotel is called Excalibur as it is themed on a castle.

Others are based on Venice and this has Gondolas sailing through it. Egyptian hotel called Luxor which is shaped as a pyramid and has a huge sphynx sitting outside.

New York New York has a replica Statue of Liberty outside and a roller coaster outside and in. The MGM hotel has real lions inside it.

Away from the city you can visit Red Rocks State Park. This area is part of the Mojave Desert and is extremely hot and dry.

These tortoises roam free but unfortuantely people started to take them home as pets and now they are a protected species. This is one of several at the Red Rocks Visitor Centre.

Whilst walking at Red Rocks Mr Lockwood spotted this Green Backed Rattlesnake after it rattled at him!

These snakes are highly venomous and can strike up to a metre so you need to keep your distance.
As with all wild animals they are best left alone and watched from a distance.

After Las Vegas we travelled through Death Valley which up until recently had the highest temperature ever recorded in the world at 134F.

When we travelled through it was only 117F 47C.

This desert area is actually below sea level as you can see from the sign and it contains salf flats as well as scrub. A salt flat is a large area of white salt crystals that have formed where there was once water. Despite the heat there are small pools of water within the salt flats where specially adapted fish - pup fish survive.

Within Death Valley where the wind has been sheltered sand dunes have formed.
Some of the dunes are over 100 feet high. It is so hot on the dunes that the wild life only come out at night to feed but their tracks can be clearly seen during the day if you walk into the dunes.

We saw Lizards, Kangaroo Rats and Sidewinder Rattlesnake tracks on this particular morning.

The Sidewinder Rattlesnake follows the Kangaroo Rat into its burrow then eats it and then uses the burrow as its home until it needs to feed again.