Royal Links Golf Club

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 1st January, 2010
Photo Location: 8th hole, Royal Links Golf Club, Las Vegas

This photo was taken on the par 3 8th hole at the Royal Links Golf Club.

This course is modeled on many famous holes from golf courses in the United Kingdom which have hosted the British Open. The course is pretty cool and I had a very good round to boot.

http://www.royallinksgolfclub.com for the courses official site. I did not get to use the services of the “Par Mates”, maybe next time.

In-room breakfast – what a view!

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 27th December 2009
Photo Location: Palazzo, Las Vegas

From our room in the Palazzo we could see out towards the Mountains in the distance and had a view of the Mirage, Treasure Island (including the Pirate ships in the front of the Treasure Island) and the Fashion Mall.

On the 27th we had in-room dining for breakfast and took in the view. A cracking big breakfast with a beautiful view of the Strip.

Too nice to eat!

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 26th December 2009
Photo Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Funny photo. This was taken at one of my favourite restaurants, “The Cheesecake Factory” at the Forum Shops in Las Vegas. This restaurant has “good” food and “great” cheesecakes, like every restaurant in the US, the serve sizes are massive!

Kylie and Jackson are pictured with some type of chocolate cheesecake. Sadly, I must report that after having eaten their “entrees” (mains in ‘ztraylian”) the two of them were only able to eat but a few bites, after posing with silly looks and threatening to eat the whole piece.

The plan for the day was to travel from Brisbane to Los Angeles (depart 12pm) and then have a short stop in Los Angeles before flying to Las Vegas. Once in Las Vegas we’d transfer to the hotel and kick off the holidays. I’m glad to report things went pretty much to plan…..

Best change of the day was the upgrade V Australia (web www.vaustralia.com twitter @vaustralia) gave us for the flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles. We were booked in Premium Economy, but to get upgraded to Business Class was aewsome. The seats lay all the way down to beds….. freaking awesome!

This is the view of the roof, when you’ve got the bed kicked right out and you’re stretched out… ah, nice! (Is that the Southern Cross?)

Our transfer through Los Angeles was fairly uneventful, the flight was delayed about an hour and we ended up sitting around in LAX for about 4 hours…. seriously, could they make that airport any more boring? People were pretty stressed about being at the airport, one lady who was in front of us was evidently going to miss her flight home on Christmas Day and was pretty upset. The whole check-in, then clear security thing in the states is pretty stressful, you have to unpack electronics from your carry-on, undress yourself (of belts, shoes, jackets, hats and anything else metallic), clear security and then grap all your crap on the secured side and get out of the way of everyone going through security as quickly as possible… Even with all the security you hear stories about Nigerians trying to blow up planes on the day you’re travelling… -> link to the story. The TSA do a great job, I’m sure but it’s still disconcerting to see those type of stories.

Probably the most interesting stat / piece of info about our stay in Los Angeles was that we had to line up for nearly as long to clear security as our flight was from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Seriously….. this photo doesnt do it justice, but the line up to clear security goes for a long way outside the terminal. This isnt the line to check in, this is the line AFTER checking in, to clear security…

So, we’re now in Las Vegas and we’re staying at the Palazzo (www.palazzolasvegas.com & @PALAZZOLASVEGAS. This is a very nice hotel, good choice – thanks tripadvisor! We stay here until the 30th of December and then switch over to the Signature MGM. We arrived at the hotel but our room wasnt quite ready when we arrived, but we were told we had a great room with a great view of the strip, up nice and high (41st floor) and was just what we’d requested. So, we said we’d wait and went for a bit of a walk and had lunch. Around 3pm we checked back at reception if our room was ready and we’d been swapped to a different room on a lower floor, but after some “discussion” we were moved up to a great room on the 31st floor… It’s great!

We didnt do too much after lunch and checking in….. unpacked and rested. Fell asleep pretty early, though I woke up after a couple of hours sleep thinking it was morning, so have uploaded some piccies and types up this quick update. It’s now approaching 1am on the 26th, so I am going back to bed now & that ends the 29 hour Christmas day, which included travelling nearly 12,000 kilometre’s, a lot of time spent in planes / airports and two christmas breakfasts & lunches….

This slideshow http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157622946959017/show/ has a few pics in it:

over n out…

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to play some fantastic golf courses and I thought that would be an interesting topic to write about.

Laguna Quays www.lagunawhitsundays.info

Located in the beautiful Whitsundays, Kylie and I holidayed at Laguna Quays many years ago, before we were married. I played golf each day, whilst Kylie lounged by the pool. In hindsight, I was probably lucky to keep Kylie after playing so much golf….. This is a fantastic course, with a couple of stand-out holes. The 13th, which is a par 3 of 148 metres from the whites, features a sheltered tee area which hits into an open seaside green – the wind can play havoc with that tee shot. My other favourite would be the 9th hole, which is 425m par 5 from the white tees, with a water hazard hugging the right hand side of the hole. This 9th hole also has a lot of condo’s looking out onto the fairway, having a couple of guests watching me play the approach shot is about as close as I will probably come to having a gallery.

Most memorable about this course was that I hit a 49 on one nine, which was the first time I had broken 50 for nine holes. Also memorable is aforementioned fortune to have played golf quite a few days in a row and for Kylie to have not been driven off…

Bel Air Country Club www.bel-aircc.org

In Beverly Hills baby! Having the opportunity to play “The Bel Air” is probably the greatest golfing experience I will ever enjoy. It’s a private club with a significant sign-up and then annual fee. The member we had take us around the course said something like “You don’t ask to join, you are asked to join”. The day we played we had an ex-NFL Quarterback playing in the group in front of us (who one of us, not me, nearly hit with a wayward shot), there was a famous fashion designer a couple of groups back from us and there were many famous Los Angelians in the clubhouse before and after we teed off.

The course is immaculate and you are accompanied by a caddy who makes club recommendations, rakes the bunkers, fetches drinks and entertains you as you play the course. “Chicago” was his nickname, I recommend him if you get to play there.

A couple of lasting memories from the day here are:

• in the locker room before teeing off, I sat down to put my shoes on and having done up the laces looked up and the name on the locker I was sitting in front of was G Norman. I kid you not!

• having completed the first nine holes, you get in your buggy to drive off to the 10th, which you need to get through a tunnel, which is deep underground. Part way along the tunnel the caddy says to stop, so you do. He says get in that lift and press the button to whatever floor (I cant remember what floor). So you do and when you get to the floor you are in the club house! amazing….

• having ridden the lift, you step out of the clubhouse and practically straight onto the 10th tee. The 10th tee has you hitting a par 3 (?) over a canyon, which has a suspension bridge to get you from one side to the other. The caddy is on the other side, with our buggies waiting for us….

• the caddy and our host pointing out and rattling off the names of famous people such as Audrey Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock and many others who own houses overlooking parts of the course

I’d say my favourite hole on this course was the 1st, which is just awesome. You’re standing on the tee, driver in hand (which freaks me out a little ordinarily anyway) which looks out over Los Angeles, an ex-NFL Quarterback in the group in front of you, you’ve just put your shoes on in front of G Norman’s locker and your head is spinning a little from the whole experience…

Other favourites include the par 3 10th, which has you hitting over a canyon after riding a lift to the tee box and the 18th hole which comes in under the suspension bridge of the 10th and is just a beautiful way to finish a round of golf.

I have no photos, it didnt seem the thing to do to take photos, but click through to their site for a few big pics on the home page: www.bel-aircc.org

The Grand www.grandgolf.com.au

Another of Queensland’s beautiful golf courses and located just in behind the Gold Coast. I played The Grand with three golf journalists who I was hosting as part of their visit to Queensland, when my role at TQ was to host these type of visits. Talk about a good job.

The story of The Grand is pretty amazing. G Norman was commissioned by a consortium of Japanese to build the course, but after an investment of $30m, the course was completed and open for only one day as the owners did not have the funds to keep the course open. The course was left to become overgrown for 5 years before being bought by a group of Australian businessmen, who again commissioned G Norman to bring the course back to life. The course is a private course, with there being an initial offer 120 shares, of which you must own one to bring guests onto the course.

The day I played the course it absolutely poured with rain and we were the only players on the course. Someone was ferrying towels from the clubhouse to us, so we could try to stay dry. Wasn’t going to happen….

I don’t remember specifically the favourite holes (it was somewhere around 1997 or 1998), but I do remember a beautiful uphill par 4 with a large dead tree off on the right as you tee off.

Pauite Golf Las Vegas http://www.lvpaiutegolf.com

I thoroughly enjoyed playing this course. It’s set about an hour or so outside Las Vegas, NV, in the middle of the desert. The fairways are cut beautifully into a rocky landscape. The guys at the pro shop told us, if you hit your ball off the fairway, leave it. Apparently this is because of the snakes, but I part suspect that it might have been to increase the number of balls they collect and sell second hand.

Most treasured memories from this course were the appearance of a lone wolf who trotted across one of the fairways as we aimed up for our approach shots. Beautiful to see. The course was also “buzzed” (at high altitude) by some sort of fighter planes and also attack helicopters of some kind, there must be an air force base close by, which made for interesting viewing against the mountaineous background of the area.

My favourite hole on this course would be the 15th, which is a par 3 of 110 yards (off the white) where the green is an island. I had to hit a 9 iron in and missed the island on two attempts from the tee. This is the hole http://www.lvpaiutegolf.com/wolf_course_15.html#1

I have played on quite a few of the Gold Coast’s courses and will find time to update this list in the future.

Over time I will put together my top 10 courses I have played list (once I’ve played some more golf)

We did a walk up and down the strip on the Wednesday. There are a lot of interesting things to take in on a walk up and down the strip and we went into quite a lot of casino’s and walked through them to have a look at the slot machines and gaming tables and we went into their stores (some have malls!) and the special attractions they have. Yes – we took Jackson through the casino’s, but I only let him play the one cent machines – I JOKE!! But we did walk him through the casinos, we had to so that we could get to the shops and attractions. Jackson, for some reason, thinks the poker machines are coke machines. I can’t remember why – so as we’d walk through and past the machines, Jackson would ask me if I was going to get a can of coke? Some of the special attractions we saw were real live Lions at the MGM, M&M World and real live M&M characters for Jackson to get his photo with, we went to see the dolphins at one, but the line was long and the admission charge high, we saw large aquariums, we saw dozens of people on street corners handing out “business cards” for *ahem* ladies of the “night”, or day apparently, coke (as in the beverage) world, we also saw the eiffel tower, lots on construction being done on new casino’s, robotic statues fighting over atlantis, a pirate ship being renovated, rode a tram, a monorail and a gondola down a venetian canal and saw bits of Paris, New York, Monte Carlo, Italy and ancient Rome. It was a long day and our feet were tired from the walk – we’d set off at 730am or so and got back to the hotel about 11 or 12 hours later…. room service dinner at our table with a view of the strip and an early night…. a very interesting day

Our stay in Las Vegas ended on Thursday, as we checked out to head to San Francisco. We did a bunch of amazing stuff in Las Vegas and I didn’t really get warmed up on the gambling front. During our walk around on the day before, I had spent some time in a few of the casino’s on reconnaissance missions to find just the right poker machine for a last minute raid on the floors before we checked out of Vegas. So, while Kylie and Jackson were sleeping I headed off to my meeting with the multi-hand blackjack machine – what a lovely little poker machine it was. I played it for about an hour or so with reasonable success, except for the one game when I pressed bet maximum instead of deal and bet $70 on one hand and lost it all… grrrrr. Kylie wants to get the casino video of the second I realised I’d pressed the wrong button, I just want to forget it and move on. dumb machines. I also found a star wars poker machine, which game me back some of my losses from my wrong button pressing mistake.

Back to the hotel and we checked out and headed to the airport. The guy who picked us up from the hotel for our transfer told us that we probably wouldnt get around the excess luggage charges on our bags unless we looked after the guy at curbside check-in. That sounded like a challenge to me. So, when we got to the airport and all our luggage was on the curbside, I got in line to see what we could do about this excess luggage problem and considering I hadnt made our fortunes on the casino floor we needed to minimise the excess luggage charges. The charges by the way are $100 for each bag of the size and weight we are travelling with, so we’d have been looking at $300 in excess luggage charges. Anyways… after some discussions about how nice a place Australia is, and the guy seeing my poor helpless son and the bag he’d have to carry to the check in counter if we couldnt do curbside and me letting him now we’d look after him, we were able to check in curbside and avoid the excess luggage costs! yippee! it did cost us $2 per bag and a $60 tip – but it still saved us a couple of hundred dollars, which I was happy about.

We passed through the security checks in a breeze and our flight was uneventful and we were in San Francisco by mid afternoon.

This was Thanksgiving Day and I had arranged for us to go to a nice restaurant for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Jackson was very well behaved and we were able to enjoy a lovely traditional US Thanksgiving dinner of Turkey and deserts were ice cream for Jackson, Pumpkin Pie for Kylie and I had warm bread and butter pudding – all of this washed down with a lovely pinot from carlton, oregon!

The hotel we are staying at in San Fran is perched on top of the main hill – Nob Hill – and has excellent views towards the bay and of San Francisco. We can see a slither of Alcatraz from our room. The hotel is well positioned, but next time I think we’ll stay down in Union Square – it’s where most of the action is, shops, cable cars start there and restaurants too.

The hill we had to walk up after dinner would have burned off some of the bread and butter pudding….

The car rental place in Vegas is massive. You dont just pick your car up at the airport, they have a whole other “terminal” for car picks up and all the major car rental companies have a presence there and the parking garage must hold thousands of cars – hertz alone had over 700 parks there.

We had hired a mustang, but they had a Shelby GT available, which was a little more $ wise, but a much nicer “zoomer car” as Jackson likes to say. The Shelby is a convertible, which was very nice!! We took the upgrade and I am glad we did. What an awesome car and it was a lot of fun to drive out on the highways they have there. I even got to slow right down to a near complete stop and plant it and accelerate very quickly (up to the speed limit – i promise)! Jackson said he thought the car was Lightning McQueen when I did this… so, you see when I was doing this I was making my son happy (and me too)

We drove out of Vegas headed for a little town called Searchlight. We had to detour off the highway for an accident – which got us a bit turned around and lost and back onto the highway heading in the wrong direction (oops), but we got back in the right direction and headed along the highway. The scenery was made by the large mountains / hills which were a few miles off the highway, the scenery nearby the highway was tumbleweeds and cacti. The folk at Energex will be really interested with the photos kylie took of the very low hanging power lines and the incredibly large solar power station we drove by (these photos will go nicely with the pictures Kylie had me take of the nuclear power station we drove by in Florida).

We found searchlight and realised calling it a town was a bit generous, it was more a construction site – I presume they were building a by-pass…..

We turned onto the Joshua Tree Highway towards a township called Nipton. The Joshua Tree Highway is aptly named as the highway is lined by literally thousands of Joshua trees, we only saw 4 or 5 cars on this highway and it was a nice straight open road. This road was good for lots of doing whatever you do wen you hire a convertible zoomer car and you have miles of straight highway, with literally no other cars around…. (tige, you would love it…)

We then turned Northish onto the interstate 15 highway for Vegas and our stop in at the outlet stores. This was another succesful shopping venture, with Jackson picking up a couple of fighter jets, I got a nice die-cast model of a Shelby as a momento of the car and we all got (what felt like) another suitcase worth of clothes…. These outlets stores were really good and are worth the trip out – you can catch a bus for $15 return from the MGM in Vegas to them, or you can hire a “zoomer car” and have a lot more fun.

We left the outlets mid afternoon and headed back to Vegas. We arrived back into Vegas near to sunset, so we decided to drop our shopping off at the hotel and do some laps of the strip. We drove up and down the strip a couple of times, once with the top up and then a couple with the top down and the car in convertible mode. This was a lot of fun!

All in all this was a top day! I only got lost once, I NEVER ONCE drove on the wrong side of the road but I did manage to turn the windscreen wipers on instead of the indicators quite a few times…..

I have added one picture, from the hertz website, of the car. We have about 150 photos from this day, so we’ll post them when we get home.

cc, kc and jacko

The tour picked us up at 110pm or so and took us out to their base for a briefing on the tour. The company we went with is Maverick helicopters and they run an excellent operation – right from the pick up from the hotel to the touchdown inside the Grand Canyon and the trip back. They were running 7 or 8 helicopters, with 7 passengers on each flight and they are apparently fully booked for months. This same company runs tours out of a few different cities to the Canyon and they will have 50 helicopters running by this time next year. Talk about demand for a product!

The tour was actually 3 flights. One from Vegas to the Grand Canyon of 40 minutes, another to their re-fuelling station (10 minutes) and then another back into Vegas (30 minutes). We were lucky to sit in the front on the flight out from Vegas to the Grand Canyon and we had a great view out the front of the cockpit and the viewing panel in the front lower section of the cockpit. We flew over the Lake Mead and Hoover Dam area on the way to the Grand Canyon, past (lower than) the Native American owned sky walkway and then landed on the Canyon floor, for some champa’s and cheese and crackers.

On the way out to the canyon Jackson even managed to doze off for about 10 minutes! He was very excited about the flight and was enjoying it and was definitely mesmerised by the view below and around us, then he just dropped off to sleep. unbelievable…. anyways, it turned out this quick power nap recharged his batteries and he was ready to rock again once we landed and he had his energy back.

The size of the Grand Canyon is near impossible to describe – it is miles deep and miles wide. The river which flows through the canyon seemed as wide as the Brisbane River near Friday’s / Riverside and looked to be moving very quickly.

The spot we landed in was pretty quiet, in that we were one of four or five choppers landed in the one section of the canyon we landed at. The canyon is a bit like a helicopter highway, the number of chopper tours going out there, just from Vegas, on a per day basis must exceed 100. There were many, many flights which flew over us while we were there.

The scenery is fantastic – with massive cliff faces, rock formations and colours, as well as many different shaped cacti (all very spiky) and of course the river too (which was as Brown as the Brisbane River).

We all had our own individual headsets and microphones and on the way back Jackson started to feel a bit more comfortable about the people and being on the helicopter and rattled off a few “5 – 4 – 3- 2 – 1, blastoff!” and some other phrases from the thunderbirds, even an “FAB Scott” – which in Thunderbirds talk is “Fully Acknowledge Broadcast” and Scott is one of the characters from the show.

Our flight back was timed to co-incide with sunset and we flew basically right over the strip. The lights coming on and all the traffic and looking at the casino’s light up was a great way to end the tour. The handy cam ran out of battery power right as we were coming in to land, that means I had the camera turned on for 3 hours of a just over 4 hour trip….

This trip was amazing and I would definitely do it again when /if we come back to Vegas. At the end of the day I asked Jackson which he liked most – the stretch hummer or the helicopter. He answered “Both!”. No amount of re-phrasing the question could get him to pick one, he enjoyed both so much! I would take the chopper tour in a heart beat – this was a great day out. The company we went with is Maverick helicopters, their website is: http://www.maverickhelicopter.com/

The downside of all this efficiency is that we were WAY ahead of our schedule and our flight was not due to leave Orlando, for Miami for a connection to Vegas until 1pm. This left us with a long wait at the Orlando Airport. meh, the price you pay I guess.

Our flights were ok. Jackson dozed off on the Orlando to Miami flight, which was only 40 minutes long and would not then sleep on the Miami to Vegas flight, so he was a bit painful on this flight – asking to go to the toilet 3 times on a 5 hour flight and being rowdy and rambunctious for a lot of the flight.

Our arrival into Vegas made it all worthwhile…

We had hired a stretch hummer to transfer us from the airport to our hotel. This was very cool and we all had a great time riding in it. We got to do a bit of a tour of the strip and stopped in front of the “welcome to vegas” sign for a couple of pics. This car was amazingly long and spacey inside, with a few lounge like chairs and led lights in the roof. Very funky and fun, though afterwards I did feel a bit dirty (environmentally wise) and as though we should look to offset the carbon emissions of the trip somehow…. lots of pics of this

The hotel we are in is awesome! The Signature at MGM is part of the MGM Casino, but set back a block from the strip and is connected to the casino by a covered walkway inclusive of travel walkways (flat escalators) to help move you to the slot machines faster. We have an apartment style room, which is great for the space and a room which overlooks the strip and we can see from the New York New York casino and hotel right the way down to Wynn at the other end – we are up on the 27th floor and basically look right out at the “Eiffel Tower” at the Paris Casino. The staff here are amazingly helpful (tips please) and we’re loving our time here.

Monday morning I woke up at about 4am or so (time zone change – I swear) and while Kylie and Jackson were sleeping I headed over to the Casino at the MGM for a look around. I found a few poker machines which didnt pay out – coxy, you will be glad to know I did the free spin dance for you (only once though). I found a great game the punters club would enjoy, which I will try to get a photo of today, it looks like it was built in the 1950′s and is a mechanical horse racing game where the horses do a lap of the circuit and your challenge is to bet on what the quinella will be. Lots of fun! The sportsbook (where you bet on sports) was massive and they had was seemed like about 50 big TV’s showing highlights of all the sports being played around the country.

I went back to the hotel by 7 and we headed off to look around the strip. We did the monorail up and down the strip, which was good.

We went into the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and did some scouting around. Kylie is by far streets ahead of me in the shoe shopping department (who needs dozens of pairs of black shoes anyway) but I think I am holding up my own in terms of general shopping capabilities. Those who know us well will know that I’ve changed a little (size wise) since Kylie and I got married. My wedding ring hasnt fit on my wedding ring finger for a while, so there was this jewellery store which we had seen in Nassau in the forum shops and they had a ring there which I liked, so I now have a wedding ring on my wedding ring finger again.

We dropped into the FAO Schwarz toy shop and they have a store inside that store called FAOSchweetz. We bought Jackson a chocolate milshake and the guy serving us warned us of how big it was – he wasnt half wrong – this thing was the biggest milkshake I have ever seen. I would have been at least a litre of milk – at least! Jackson, Kylie and I had to tackle it…. again – we have photos.

Later Monday we did our helicopter tour to the Grand Canyon. More on this to come soon, but needless to say this was amazing!

Tuesday we did a drive out through the desert, more on this to come soon too.

We’re still having mountains of fun! Hope all is well back home.

Chris, Kylie and Jackson

no time for blogging.

mum; send more money.

chris

ps – we have free wifi in the hotel and are looking forward to a restful afternoon / morning or evening soon – so we will post a more comprehensive update soon.