I’m not sure there’s a lot I can add to that which you can’t see in the photos and video really, other than the fact that it was obviously amazing and Jen was much better at it than me (mainly because she didn’t breath in a lung full of sea water each time she fell in!).
Apparently this is the first place in the world these jet packs have been available for public use and they’ve only been running since June 15th. Unsurprisingly they’ve been booked out every day too. If they ever open up a place like this in England we’re going to be broke, very quickly.
I’ve also added a few photos from this evening. We took a boat over to Sunset Key to eat at an amazing restaurant on the beach called Latitudes. Oh, and yes we did see a man on the way who’d trained cats to tightrope and jump through hoops of fire. I took a photo just in case nobody believed us.
Sadly, it’s our last day in Las Vegas today. We spent our last evening at the Stratosphere tower before seeing Penn and Teller at the Rio.
The Stratosphere is apparently the 5th tallest structure in the US and the only skyscraper I know of with fairground rides on top of it. You take the elevator to level 109 and after walking through the gift shop (obviously, this is America), you take another elevator up to the roof where the rides are.
The ride that chucks you over the edge of the tower looked a bit much for me, but the bit of your brain that stops normal people from chucking themselves over the edge of the 5th tallest structure in America is obviously missing from Jen, so as she queued up for her first go I took some photos from the observation deck. She enjoyed it so much she even went up for a second go.
We finished the night by going to see magicians Penn and Teller. Normally I can’t stand watching magic shows (something to do with magicians being smug and delighting in keeping secrets from you). Penn and Teller, as usual though were brilliantly funny and clever, and most importantly they understand that how a trick is done is often much more impressive than the resulting trick, so they don’t mind showing you how most of them are done!
We also got to meet them afterwards for photos and signings, and yes, Teller does talk and he’s a nice guy too, which is a bonus.
I think today might have been our most tiring day so far.
The alarm rang at 6am because we had to be in Downtown Vancouver by 8:30 to board the boat for our whale watching trip. We left plenty of time because this was Monday morning rush hour and we were heading through Downtown Vancouver. Strangely, there was no traffic at all and we got there an hour and a half early.
We waited to be called for boarding until about 9:20am, by which point we were starting to wonder what had happened. Unfortunately the captain came out to explain that their boat was out of action and today’s tour would have to be cancelled. Luckily, we have one more day in Canada tomorrow so we swapped some stuff around and decided to bring forward our trip to Whistler .
So, we got back on the road and did the 2 hour trip to Whistler, the home of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics , where we had a date with the world’s longest zip line .
Ziptrek organise zip line tours down the side of the Blackcomb mountain . Basically they drive you up the mountain (right next to the start of the bobsled run) and let you make your way back down the mountain using a series of treetop bridges and zip lines. Our tour consisted of 5 zip lines, a small one to start with, leading up to the one we’d really been looking forward to, which is apparently the longest in the world.
It’s 2000ft long and over 20 storeys high apparently, and it looked it. They say you can get up to 80 km/h, although I think that’s fairly theoretical.
There’s a great video below which Jen took. She managed to be the only person to “bounce” off the landing platform and slide back across the canyon, requiring the guide to scoot back out there on a harness to rescue her. She kept the video running throughout the “rescue” though which is entertaining.
She managed to redeem herself on the last zipline though which was the only one you could hang upside down on. Unlike me, she managed to flip herself completely upside down and hold her arms out!
If you’re going anywhere near Whistler/Vancouver at any point you really can’t miss this. Brilliant fun. Another 2 hour drive home and we’re about as tired as it’s possible to be. Good job we don’t have to be up at 6am again for our whale watching tomorrow…
We spent our last day in Yellowstone doing a “Paddle and Saddle” day with The Flying Pig  Rafting Company. A horse back trail ride in the morning and white water rafting in the afternoon.
I haven’t ridden a horse or rafted before and Jen has only ridden a horse a few time. Luckily, they were both pretty tame.
The trail ride was a slow trek through some amazing countryside. I think they put us on really old horses who were incapable of bolting even if they’d wanted to. Mine seemed more interested in stopping to eat some flowers every couple of minutes than misbehaving itself.
In the afternoon we got to have a go at white water rafting on the Yellowstone river. Again, it was fairly slow, which suited me fine. I’d chosen not to wear a wetsuit because I didn’t realise how cold the water was going to be so I’m fairly glad I didn’t leave the raft. Jen was wearing a wetsuit though and seemed happy to jump off the raft and swim about. I promise I didn’t push her…
I’m going to miss Yellowstone but I’m sure we’ll come back. I’ve been bitten by every insect in the park and the rafting has given me pain in back muscles I didn’t know I had, but it was well worth it.
Tonight we’re in Spokane in Washington and hopefully by tomorrow night we’ll be in Seattle .
