We are back from a road trip to Las Vegas. We met my brother for his birthday out there. The last time I was there was in 2006 My blog post from 2006. I don't feel any strong intrinsic need to go there then or now. But it is a well known destination and certainly the road trip from SoCal to Vegas is the iconic American road trip. We stopped in San Bernadino to visit the original site of McDonalds. While in Vegas, we may have enjoyed "downtown" better than the strip. I didn't even know it existed, but there are neon signs, cheesy clubs, cheesy casinos, cheesy buffets and even cheesier people.
Central Asia
We are back from our most recent crazy trip. This time it was Central Asia and the "five stans" - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. We made all of our objectives. And we have now been to 104 countries. Angie has 95 and I have 94 countries. Together it is 104. These five countries were packed into 12 days, 7 flights, 2 high speed trains, 1 cable car ride, 1 horse ride, and lots of hours in car trips. They are all Muslim countries, but they are better characterized as former Soviet countries. Russian langauge is a strong second language in all of these countries. There isn't much English spoken in any of them. Angie being fluent in Russian made all the difference and did intrepreting for me as well as a couple of British backpackers we met in Turkmenistan. Tajikistan is the Country with the distinct langauage being a derivitive of Persian with the others being Turkic. Ethnically, Southern Uzbecs are Tajik. Interesting, the spelling of many...
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