bringing down the house ...

I'd never really thought Vegas would be my sort of place.

Checking out flights from Denver to California I discovered that rather than flying direct it was cheaper to stop over in Vegas, stay in a 4-star hotel for 3 nights and hire a convertible sports car for 2 days.

So of course that's what we did.

Nothing I saw in the first 24 hours altered my preconceptions, and on the second afternoon I found myself having to escape to the hotel pool to avoid the pulsating neon and crowds of loud margharita swilling tourists wandering the strip.

The first evening we'd restricted ourselves to a few dollars in the 1 cent slot machines (at one stage reaching the dizzying heights of a $5 profit), but no trip to Sin City would be complete without at least trying our hand at some slightly more serious gambling.

Our budget is by no means "hardcore backpacker", but neither is it endless. After blowing $50 in just 20 minutes playing roulette we thought we figured we wouldn't be spending much of our time playing the $10 minimum bet table games.

Since reading Bringing Down the House earlier in the trip (watch out for the film, it's a great story) I'd been keen to at least try playing blackjack, so we decided to commit just another $40 to a few quick hands - our main objective being to spin things out long enough to land a free round of drinks.

So we were quite suprised when 3 hours later we were still playing and had managed to increase our stake five-fold to $200 - and almost as good we'd had at least a dozen free drinks each.

Compared to the MIT students in the book we might only have brought down the equivalent of a small garden shed, but despite my expectations we had a great time here.

I found another 4 beers here from the aptly named Sin City Brewing Company, taking the current total to 144 as we enter the last week of the trip.

the denver dozen ...

Any concerns I might have had about the magnitude of my self imposed target of 150 beers for the league are now a thing of the past.

This weekend I was introduced to Total Beverage, a super-sized liquor warehouse where they have 6 whole chillers full of pick 'n' mix beer (top). With 9 varieties of microbrewed beer on each shelf (no repeats) I calculated a staggering 324 different bottled microbrews to choose from.

At this late stage in our trip staying in Denver for a month to sample them all was out of the question so I had to be content with just four before we heaed out for the evening with our friends Cathy and Leon took us for a fantastic seafood meal at their local branch of Bonefish Grill.

If there was a downside it was only minor, just one new beer on the menu, the "low alcohol" Michelob Ultra. Hitting the magic 150 is one thing, but not if you have to compromise your principles.

After dinner it all came right with a visit to the nearby Rock Bottom microbrewery where it didn't take long for me to decide from a long menu of choices - their 8 beer sampler (below), served on laminated tasting notes.

A move as natural as it was good.

A big thanks to Cathy and Leon for all their hospitality during our weekend in Denver - we had a great time and the beer league wouldn't be in such great shape without you.

With 140 beers now sampled, the target for the rest of the trip has come into sharp focus - a beer a day for the next 10 days ...

the joy of six ...

I've just found a very useful facility in the liqour store near our cabin in the rockies - a whole shelf of beer from which you are encouraged to "pick'n'mix" your own six pack.

Better still, I managed to fill my hopper with 6 beers I hadn't tried yet.

Being from small breweries they all have interesting names like Mothership Wit, Tommyknocker Maple Nut Brown Ale, Road Dog and my personal favourite - Moose Drool. Add another couple sampled on the way up here and we have 8 more beers for the league, bringing the total upto 128.

With just two weeks left to go I've decided to set myself a challenging target - 150 before I return to the UK.

So it's lucky that we're going to Denver next. Apparently they have more microbreweries than anywhere else in the US - although even I won't be able to sample all the output in just 36 hours.

But I will try ...

snowed in ...

First stop over the border into Colorado was the old mining town of Silverton.

Located in a secluded valley over 9,000 feet high in the mountains and surrounded by snow-capped peaks, winter was still in evidence here with snow reaching the upper storeys of some buildings as we explored the historic town.

It was here that we discovered that it is not only Bolivia where you can get a high altitude hangover. Of course it wasn't really our fault - the only place open after 7pm was the local tavern.

In fact, the following morning's hangover was so bad I had to continually fight the urge to stop and bury my head in the snow drifts for relief. But despite the headaches our drive through the stunning Red Canyon was fantastic with superb far reaching views and 12-foot long icicles hanging by the side of the road.

It wasn't until lunchtime the following day that we reached Rocky Mountains National Park in the north of Colorado.

After stocking up on supplies at the local store we found a cabin for the evening just as a snowstorm was beginning to hit. By 6pm there was already 3 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature had fallen to -4C, but it takes more than that to stop us making full use of the hot tub - the contrast in temperatures was invigorating.

Especially the walk to and from the cabin in flip-flops.

We're having such a good time here that we've abandoned our plans to visit Boulder in favour of another two nights in the cabin.

Driving around the National Park by day offers some unbeatable views, but we've discovered that the wildlife around our cabin is just as plentiful as in the protected area. Every day we've seen scores of ground squirrels and deer, and even a coyote hanging around this morning.

truth or consequences ...

If we hadn't already known Texas is the "bible belt" of the US, we'd have worked it out pretty quickly arriving in El Paso.

As I went in search of the indoor pool I stumbled across an audience of several hundred in one of the hotels atriums. Some kind of religious conference was in full swing, with loud clapping and cheering at every other sentence.

In the process of collecting our hire car we discovered there are two kinds of clientelle at the airport here, groups of teenagers wearing a uniform of bible camp t-shirts, or military types from the nearby Fort Bliss sporting crew cuts and combats.

It struck me just how easily religion and the machinery of war sit side by side here - yet somehow we never seem to hear much about the dangers of Christian fundamentalism in the media.

Driving into New Mexico our first stop was the unusually named town of Truth or Consequences, who intially won their name on a radio show - you can read more about that here. After spending the night in a refurbished 1950's motel we hit the hot springs, enjoying a private pool along the banks of the Rio Grande overlooking turtleback mountain.

Food in Mexico tends to be quite different from the Mexican food we enjoy at home, which is probably more accurately described as Tex-Mex (i.e the americanised version) and to my taste at least far nicer.

Here of course they prefer to use the term New Mexican.

Continuing the drive north we stopped at a diner in Albuquerque for lunch where I had the nicest burrito I'm ever likely to taste (stuffed with chilli con carne and refried beans, topped with loads of cheese, guacamole and sour cream) - hardly diet food, but then again we are on holiday - which has been the universal excuse for pretty much everything over the last 50 weeks.

Our final stop in New Mexico was the town of Santa Fe in the high desert, characterised by it's trademark adobe buildings. To be honest, it all seemed a bit manufactured - even the town carpark (below) got the same treatment ...