Lili Wilkinson

Death Valley is the lowest point in the US, 282 feet below sea level. It’s hot, dry, and empty.

It’s also the location of my favorite Christmas ever. I was 17, had just finished year 12, and was traveling around the West Coast with my parents. We were on our way to the Grand Canyon and realized too late that it was Christmas Eve and we weren’t going to get out of Death Valley in time for Christmas Day. We stopped for the night at some tiny, rustic cabins in a place called Panamint Springs. The only food we had was a tin of beans. Those who have ever met me will know that I like Christmas. A lot. A dingy cabin in the desert with a tin of beans was not my idea of a good Christmas.

Luckily there was a little bar that made us some burgers, and even poured me an underage Christmas Eve Baileys. We chatted to a pair of teachers from North Carolina, who asked is if we were staying for Christmas lunch tomorrow. “Um,” we said. “Hell, no.” But then the barman joined in, telling us we must stay. So we did. We went for a hike the next morning, and when we arrived back, the tiny bar was transformed. Nearly a hundred people had come from all over the world for this free, traditional Christmas Dinner. We ate next to a Japanese fighter pilot and someone from Mum’s hometown in Derby. It was wonderful.

We didn’t stay in Death Valley this time, just stopped to look at the sand dunes and the salt flats and remark about how damn hot it was (about 38 degrees, relatively cool for DV).

We drove out of the Valley and stopped in Bishop for the night. The plan was to drive through Yosemite the next day and end up in San Francisco, a 5-6 hour drive. The plan was not to be. A crazy storm system from the North dumped a pile of snow on the mountains, and all the roads to San Francisco were closed. ALL OF THEM. We ended up driving up to Reno, a four hour detour. It was a long day, with much snow. Snow. One day after 38 degree desert. California, you are peculiar.

Everyone says you should be careful of scams when in Vegas. So when a guy came up to us as we were checking in and asked if we’d like free tickets to a show and $150 of gambling credit in exchange for attending a presentation about a timeshare, we said… Sure, why not?

The presentation was actually pretty convincing, delivered by an awesome Jewish/Italian lady with a thick Brooklyn accent. If you were the kind of person who travelled a lot, and always wanted to stay in resorts, then it’s a pretty good deal. But needless to say, we decided not to sink $15k into a Vegas timeshare.

This is Mj being happy that we didn’t buy it.

That’s our room at the Luxor, by the way, which is a casino inside a giant black pyramid. Our room had a spa in the corner where the wall slopes (cause it’s a pyramid), which was very awesome. Also all the elevators in the Luxor travel diagonally, which is a very strange feeling.

(I should add, that if you’re planning to visit Vegas and want a fancy spa room for a very small amount of money, check out smartervegas.com, which lists all the deals. Vegas can be VERY cheap if you’re not the gambling type)

So we left the boys in the hotel room watching TV, and set out to see the sights of the tackiest, most ridiculous city in the US.

We already had tickets to see Beatles Love, which was utterly amazing. So we decided that we should go to the other end of the scale, and see Tournament of Kings, where you watch jousting and eat a chicken with your hands. It was about as craptastic as you might imagine. Lots of “huzzah!”ing and raising of tankards.

I hoped the boys were getting along.

Then came our $150 of gambling credits. We were both a bit scared. The only gambling I’ve ever done before is betting on horses at the Melbourne Cup, and I’ve always been anti-gambling. Seems like an easy way to lose money to me. But we had free credit, so we had a go at the Ghostbusters slot machine (surprisingly fun) and played a few rounds of blackjack, which wasn’t so scary once you got the hang of it. When we’d used up all our credit, we had $120 of real chips that we’d won, which would have been a loss if it hadn’t been free to start with.

So here are my thoughts about gambling: it’s quite fun when you’re not using your own money. But after an hour and a half, I was quite ready to cash out, take our free $120 back to our room and have a glass of wine in the spa.

I can see how Vegas might make you go weird though. You have to walk through a casino to get anywhere, and they keep the lights dark all day so it always feels like drinking and gambling time. And there’s sex and nightclubs and strip poker around every corner, as well as sexy pirates and real lions in the middle of a casino and in one night you can visit Egypt and Paris and China and Venice and New York.

It’s not my kind of place, but it’s no wonder that it makes people do… strange things.

It isn’t possible to capture the Grand Canyon in a photo. It’s so big, so deep, so overwhelming. It’s quite frightening, really.

Have I mentioned that I have a fear of edges? Not really heights, but edges. Nothing is more terrifying to me than walking along a jetty without a handrail. The Grand Canyon is one big edge.

It covers a million acres of land. It’s billions of years old, carved by water and wind. There’s nothing else like it.

And I confronted my fear. It didn’t make it go away, but I felt a little stronger.

Imagine Mars. Plus water.

That’s basically Lake Powell. In the 50s, the Colorado River was dammed here, in the middle of the desert, to create a water reservoir and a power station. The lake has 1000 miles of ‘coast’, and is around 300 feet deep.

We went on a boat tour through this stunning landscape, although to be honest I wish we’d had a few extra days and had hired a houseboat, and just drifted through the canyons.

(the white line is the Bath Ring, the point where the lake was at it’s highest, in the 80s)

The boat took us to Rainbow Bridge, an amazing natural bridge formed by air and water, that is a sacred place for the Navajo people. It’s a massive arch that a photo doesn’t really capture – but the Statue of Liberty could fit underneath it.

If you ever visit Lake Powell and want a good dinner that isn’t fried, go to Blue Buddha. We’d already had an AMAZING meal at Green Goddess in New Orleans, so the Coloured Deity restaurant seemed like a good bet, despite the fact that it’s a sushi bar that is more than 500 miles from the ocean. But it was truly excellent, with an almost Melbourne standard of laid back funkiness.

I’m a bit behind, due to the massive lack of phone reception/wifi in the middle part of the US.

Firstly, a few people have asked me the following questions:

Did you hear about all those people in New Mexico who died from eating cantaloupe?
Did you eat any cantaloupe in New Mexico?
Are you okay?

The answer to all these questions is: yes.

Monument Valley is part of the Navajo Nation, which is the largest semi-autonomous Native American reservation in the US. It’s stunning.

The other people booked for our tour didn’t show, so we got a private tour with our local Navajo guide, Larry. He told us all about the Navajo people (actually, Navajo is a Spanish mistranslation of Diné, which means “we, the People”), and many stories about the Valley. We went on the backroads that the big tours don’t access, on vinyl seats bolted to the back of Larry’s pickup, with the wind in our hair. He sang us traditional songs in a stunning natural amphitheater. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

The Big Texan Steakhouse in Amarillo is pretty famous. There’s even a Simpson’s article about it. So even though the food reviews were so-so, we went along. It’s an awesome place, busting at the seams with weird taxidermy and Ye Olde Western kitsch.

It’s famed for its 72 oz (2kg) steak challenge, where if you can eat a full steak dinner – meat, fat, gristle and two sides – in under an hour, then it’s free. If you take on the challenge, you have to sit up at a special table with timers and sick buckets. Luckily no one took the challenge while we were there. Apparently the fastest human ever to do it was in about 8 minutes (ugh), and the fastest ever was a Siberian Tiger who did it in 90 seconds.

Just outside of Amarillo is Cadillac Ranch, which is reasonable self-explanatory.

As we drove into New Mexico, the landscape started to change from dryish fields to something hot, barren and deserty. Which meant the last thing we were expecting to see was… Scuba divers?

This is Blue Hole, an 80 ft deep sinkhole in the middle of the desert. It’s about the size of our living room, but I guess if you’re a scuba enthusiast in New Mexico, you can’t be too fussy.

We spent the night at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup. The hotel was built in the 30s by DW Griffiths’s brother, to house filmstars shooting Westerns in the desert. The hotel has seen better days, but was also full of kitschy taxidermy, a self-playing old pianola and about a zillion framed photos of the stars who stayed there.

As we turned off the interstate and headed North, everything became suddenly more dramatic, with giant red cliffs stretching along the horizon. This is the Intercontinental Divide, the point that separates the water that runs off east to the Atlantic, from the water that runs west, to the Pacific. We were getting pretty tired, so we let the muppets drive for a bit. This, it turns out, was a mistake.

My phone died in New Orleans, but resurrected itself three days later in Texas. So I don’t have many photos of the Big Easy. But basically, it was a weird, steamy combination of beautiful and quaint, and loud and raucous. We ate amazing food, and someone tossed me a string of beads from a balcony even though I didn’t flash at them.

After New Orleans, we headed over to Breaux Bridge where we took a tour around Lake Martin Swamp on a teeny flat bottomed boat. We saw many frogs and turtles and lizards and alligators and a prehistoric bird that has solid bones and can kill a 3 ft alligator by spearing it through the head with its beak.

(note alligator in the bottom right hand corner)

We stayed in a cute little cabin that backed out onto the bayou, and sampled some homemade boudin sausage (nom), pork crackling (meh) and root beer (gahhh vile vile vile). Then we ate a “swamp platter” at a Cajun restaurant that was mostly crab and crawfish, but there was one deep fried frog leg, that tasted exactly as you would expect. Slimy. I’m sorry, Kermit.

We saw a touring production of Hair in Dallas, which was fun (but not as good as the Melbourne production I saw many times as a kid). I particularly liked the way the Very Serious Dallas Performing Arts Centre was transformed to look a little hippyish.

Today’s drive saw the landscape get drier and redder, until we could have been in Australia. Now we’re in Amarillo. Some big driving days ahead!

We…

Went to Elvis’s house, where I didn’t particularly gain an appreciation for the King, but gained an insight into the American psyche. And swam in our motel’s guitar-shaped pool.

Went to a scary dilapidated strip mall in Memphis that housed the dodgy-looking Uncle Lou’s Southern Kitchen with its amazing fried chicken in Sweet and Spicy Hot Love Sauce.

Cruised down the Blues Highway, listening to Keith Richards’ autobiography (read by Johnny Depp), pausing at Morgan Freeman’s bar (Ground Zero) and the Blues museum in Clarksdale.

Visited Jim Henson’s home town and shed a small tear in the little museum. Then Mj played Rainbow Connection on his ukulele by the creek which was the Best Ever.

Ate awesome hot tamales from a roadside stall in Greenville.

Drove through fields of burning cotton.

Drove off the beaten track so we could put our feet in the Mississippi.

Ate po’boys and crawfish étouffée in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Rode a steamboat down the Mississippi and pretended Mark Twain was writing it.

Listened to blues in an awesome little bar called the Three Muses.

Another two days in the South, then we start north again into Texas!

The first day of our road trip was a little hairy, getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road, and taking a few “short” cuts that added hours onto our trip. Also the mountain “resort” we stayed in was rustic in the extreme, and the allegedly acclaimed restaurant served what is absolutely the worst breakfast I’ve ever had. But there was tap dancing teenagers in the evening, so that was both entertaining, embarrassing and hilarious.

Day Two was much better, because a) we ended up in this totally amazing B&B (White Birches in Abingdon); b) we didn’t get lost once; and c) we visited Luray Caverns, which is totally like the Goonies. Here’s the evidence:

1. You enter the caverns through this fireplace.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. You enter through a doorway and a staircase, but it’s RIGHT NEXT to the fireplace.

2. It looks a bit like a movie set, (but in actual fact it’s 7 million years old).

3. There is an underground wishing well.

4. And an underground organ.

It’s not made out of bones like in The Goonies. But it is way cooler. In the 1950s, a guy called Leland W Sprinkle (I know, right?) spent three years tapping different stalagmites and stalactites in the caverns, until he identified 47 different notes, over an area of 3.5 acres. He then devised an ingenious system of rubber mallets and microphones, all wired up to a playable organ. We experienced a performance, and it was amazing.

5. At one point, our tour guide turned off all the lights, and Mj and I held hands and whispered. “I like the dark. I love the dark. But I hate nature. I HATE nature.”

6. Black ORV. Bullet holes. BULLET HOLES!

1. Have the Best Friends Ever bankroll your muppet experience for your 30th birthday

2. Visit FAO Schwarz in New York City. Head to the Whatnot Workshop. A Whatnot costs $99, and you can order one online, but it’s much more fun to do it instore.

3. Using a kit of vinyl stickers, design your Whatnot. You choose your body, eyes, nose, hair (or fur) and outfit. Only one of the three Whatnot staff members got the muppet reference on Mj’s Tshirt (a one of a kind original by Snazzy).

4. Here is my designed muppet.

5. Hand the design over to the Whatnot staff, and go hang out with Harrison Ford for half an hour.

6. Pick up your Muppet! Here is Mj’s, his name is Vince.

And here’s mine! I’m not sure what his name is yet. Any suggestions are welcome!

Stopping in London on the way to New York is an excellent way to catch up with many friends and meet snuggly babbies. It is also an excellent way to get Really Bad Jetlag.

My first real awareness of New York City came from Michael Foreman’s CAT AND CANARY, a picture book about a housecat and pet canary who escaped their NYC apartment each day when their owner went to work, and sailed high above the city on a kite. The city was so atmospheric, the buildings grand, austere, beautiful and more than a little scary.

The apartment we’re staying in reminds me a lot of that book, as it’s in Midtown, up on the 21st floor, with fabulous views of the Empire State and the Chrysler. I feel a bit like Cat, floating high above streets and rooftops and water towers.

We’ve been having a great time, I met my US editor which was lovely, and we’ve done plenty of shopping, including MUPPETS (of which more in another post).

Today is the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The city is sombre, and crawling with extra security. I feel a bit guilty shopping and heading off to see some theatre this afternoon, like I’m upstairs in someone’s house watching cartoons while they hold a wake downstairs. But it’d feel equally inappropriate to join in the memorial services being held today, so theatre it is.

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By the way, I’m going to the UK tonight. If you happen to be at the Edinburgh Festival, come and say hi!

My grandparents have guests, so Mum and I are staying in the house next door. It’s empty, because the Italian couple who used to live there died over two years ago. But the house is still full of all their furniture and clothes* and toothbrushes**. And crucifixes. LOTS of crucifixes***. Crucifixes and lots of fancy ornate furniture and a gold satin bedspread****.

Above the ornate bed and the gold satin bedspread, there’s a light-up picture of Jesus looking miserable.

I feel like I’m in the first scene of a horror film. I’m about to go and have a shower, and I know I’m going to come out, wearing a towel, and I’ll walk down the hall and it will be colder than I remembered. And I’ll open the door to the bedroom, and Mum will be lying on the bed, but she’ll be all wrinkled and grey and sunken, like she’s been dead for a hundred years.
I’ll scream (and, depending on what kind of horror film it is, my towel might fall down). Then sunken-dead Mum will open her eyes and draw a ragged, gasping breath…

______________________________________________

*dead-people clothes!

**dead-people toothbrushes!

***crucifixes? Should it be crucifices?

****PLEASE TELL ME somebody washed the sheets after they died.

INT Thai Restaurant, afternoon. Adelaide.

LILI, MUM and GRANDMA are putting out place-cards at the table. A WAITRESS is doing something with prawn crackers.

GRANDMA

We can’t put Barbara and Ley on that side of the 

table, because they won’t be able to get out with

 their walking-sticks.

MUM

But if we put them there, then Auntie Peg won’t be 

able to talk to Mary.

GRANDMA

But if Peg is there, then she’ll have to sit next to 

Dennis, and she won’t like that.

WAITRESS

I don’t have a grandma.

LILI

If Mum and I are round there, we’ll have to clamber

 over everyone to get out and make our speech 

and run the slideshow.

GRANDMA

But if Kat and Brian are there, they won’t be able 

to go outside to smoke.

LILI

So?

WAITRESS

My grandma is in Cambodia. I never met her.

MUM

Put us on the end.

GRANDMA

Make sure you’re next to your Dad, Carole.

MUM

Wouldn’t it be better if you were next to me?

GRANDMA

Why?

MUM

Because you talk so much, and you’re stuck in the 

corner. Dad never talks to anyone, and he’s in 

the middle.

LILI

So why don’t we move them over there?

WAITRESS

You’re so lucky to have a grandma.

GRANDMA

No, because we can’t move Barbara and Ley. 

It can’t be done.

The WAITRESS starts to cry.

MUM

So let’s just swap you and Dad.

LILI

But then it won’t be gender-balanced! For the love 

of God, it has to be boy-girl!

SILENCE, except for the choking sobs of the WAITRESS.

So I’m standing in line, ready to get on the ferry to Ellis Island. It’s a long line, I’ll be here for an hour and a half. It’s also outside, and about 1 degree. Brr.

There’s a gruff-looking soldier standing, supervising the line with disinterest. A Swedish guy goes over to him and asks in broken English where to buy tickets. The Gruff Soldier stares at him, and does this irritating thing where he refuses to anticipate what Swedish is trying to say, even though he’s struggling, and also even though Gruff must get asked that question about a million times a day. He doesn’t even smile or nod to indicate that he’s listening. He insists on waiting until Swedish has managed a complete sentence before he jerks his head and mutters a few words.

‘Nice,’ I think. ‘Very courteous. Bloody Americans.’

There is a Squirl* sniffing around the park, eating all the things that the tourists drop. He stops near Gruff and looks up at him, its Squirly nose all twitchy and adorable. Gruff looks down at Squirl and continues to look gruff.

Squirl is clearly disconcerted that Gruff didn’t acknowledg

e him. So it shuffles a bit closer, and puts a little Squirly paw on Gruff’s khaki trouser leg. Gruff exhibits no discernable emotion.

Squirl is just plain pissed now. Can’t this stupid man see how CUTE the Squirl is? The fluffy tail? The twitchy nose? The adorable wide eyes?

Squirl does a little shudder of the tail, and then runs up the outside of Gruff’s military issue trousers, grabs his belt, and fixes him with a beady and slightly pugnacious eye.

Gruff looks down at the adorable ball of fur attached to his hip pocket.

And he winks at Squirl.

——————————————–

*Squirrel. Like this one:

So this is New York. It’s cold, but not too cold. It’s full of people and trains and shops and museums and Christmas trees.

At the moment we’re staying in Queens with Sarah’s Uncle Larry. His car’s SatNav has a mind of its own, and is always trying to take us to other places.

Yesterday we visited the American Natural History Museum, which had this great way of explaining the universe. There’s an enormous sphere (about 35 m across) called the Hayden Sphere. And you walk around it down a spiral ramp. At the each station on the ramp, there is a comparison, like ‘if the Hayden sphere is the size of the known universe, then this marble is the size of the Virgo supercluster of galaxies’. As you move down you get smaller in powers of 10, until the comparison is ‘if the Hayden sphere is a raindrop, this (small lump) is the size of a red blood-cell’. It was an amazing way of describing scale and understanding the universe.

Tomorrow is my First Ever Thanksgiving.

in Tokyo.

It’s strange being back here. We caught the train past my old apartment, and went to some familiar shopping haunts today (not too fat for Japanese clothes!).

I also learnt that the difference between Western Breakfast and Japanese Breakfast is – Western Breakfast has a knife and fork. Otherwise it’s still fish and miso (oiishi!).

Tomorrow – New York.

The Deal:

Remember Douglas Adams’ Meaning of Liff? Where he and John Lloyd took place names and gave them dictionary definitions?

Well I want you to do that with some of the places I’ve been to in the last fortnight (on tour with work). They are all actual places in regional Victoria. And the best two will win a free copy of Scatterheart.

An Example:

Yeungroon: (verb) The noise you make when you’ve eaten three vanilla slices in rapid succession. The girl went a funny greenish-yellow colour and let out a pained yeungroon.

Now it’s your turn. I offer the following placenames for your consideration:

Manangatang

Patchewallock

Boinka

Boigbeat

Teddywally West

Bollangum

Minyip

Wycheproof

Nyah

Boomahnoomoonah

(submit your entries in the comments. competition will be open until… i don’t know. a fortnight? we’ll see. you can enter as many times as you like. apologies to anyone who lives in these towns, or speaks the language that they are named in, and is offended)