We started in Las Vegas. Jamie had bought tickets to the Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio. It was the aquatic show called “O”. I reminded Jamie about how he was fascinated by the Bellagio fountain when he was young, but he just looked at me blankly and paused and  then said  “Oh Yeah” as if he only half remembered it.

Meanwhile Mikey said it was a good thing this was an aquatic show because a friend of his saw  a performer in the Cirque du Soleil fall 50 feet to her death at the MGM Grand.

Mikey was on top of the world. His comedy series just goes on and on. He has made a lot of money. Now he is learning to fly small aircraft. He is in the middle of training. The day before coming up to Vegas he had completed a chandelle – where you put up the plane’s nose, bank and make a 180 degree turn. He was very exhilarated over that.

Then we took off to a cluster of desert ranch houses near Twenty Nine Palms where we stayed before. Maureen had brought turkeys and we had a big roast dinner with brussel sprouts and sweet potato and green beans.

It was bitterly cold and windy in the desert but we braved the gale and enjoyed the hot tubs and hiked in the Joshua Tree National Park.

Then the plan was for something completely different. We were to drive 150 miles to the Havasupai reservation and hike down to Supai village at the bottom of the canyon. You can only reach reach the village on foot, by mule or by helicopter.

As we hiked down the narrow gorges, I looked up at the sand-and-wind-moulded shapes of the rock perched high above us on the canyon walls – an old man asleep, a fox’s head, the snout of a boar, a teepee – and wondered how often they tumbled down on to the path below.

The indians at Supai had round unsmiling faces and followed their own times and hours. Everything closed at 5:00pm and there was no hot water in the lodge. We did some hurried shopping at the store and picnicked in one of the rooms in the evening and resolved to stay two nights and trek down to the falls the next day.

We headed off down after a breakfast of Indian tacos and fry bread. 

The river is a beautiful blue-green colour and Mikey and Jamie swam in the river below the falls. 

That evening we got ourselves to the cafe in good time and had an early night, got up early and hiked up 3000 feet to the Hualapai trailhead.

Then it was back Los Angeles, in the rented Ford Durango, arriving at about 10pm.

The big surprise for us all was that Jamie bought a girlfriend. She was a 23-year-old Afro American girl from New York called Alyssa. “She seemed very sweet,” Maureen said.