Vegas and Death Valley

We finally said goodbye to Utah, and we headed to Las Vegas. We spent a day visiting the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, swimming in the R.V. park pool, and then we took the kids to a casino/hotel where they have a giant fish tank and live mermaids that swim in it. Unfortunately there were no mermaids swimming because there was a problem with their breathing machines. So we left there and took the kids on a drive down the strip to see the lights.

It would have been fun to take them to see the pirate show at Treasure Island, the river through the Venetian, the volcano at the Mirage, the fountains at the Bellagio, etc. But they were fussy and tired and walking all of them down the strip while people thrust pictures of naked women at them, didn’t seem like the best idea. We stayed at an RV park (a real CLASSY joint called the Hitchin’ Post) in a not-so-nice area of town. Andy went out walking at night to try and ‘make some money’ at a casino. He came home 10$ richer. He claims he won it playing blackjack.

Vegas

The next morning was ridiculously hot again, so we spent some time in the pool then we headed to the playground across the street. It LOOKED nice from across the street, but it was the dirtiest playground we’ve been to this entire trip. It was covered in trash, graffiti and questionable stains. I started to feel sick watching them play on it (the kids were oblivious to the filth), so I rushed them off to the R.V. to sanitize.

Then we started our drive across the desert back into California. We stopped at the World’s Largest Firecracker and Andy bought some fireworks to light off for the kids. We also stopped at a real live ghost town (maybe not so ‘live’) called Rhyolite. The night before, Andy and I had been reading an article on msn on ghost towns and we were saying ‘that would be cool to see one of those,’ and then we drove right past one of the featured towns. Annika, Soren, Sawyer, and I explored the town, which went from 8000 people in 1907 to 14 people by 1920. Once the mine stopped producing, the town died. The remnants of the buildings are interesting and you could see the old mine scars on the hillsides. One of the town’s houses is made out of glass bottles, which was cool looking. 

We could barely look at the camera; the sun was SO bright.

Ghost town in Rhyolite, NV. The people would take the train from Las Vegas.

Glass Bottle House

The old ruins of the Bank. Cost 90,000 to build.

After that stop we headed into Death Valley National Park but just before we crossed the border into Cali, we realized that the fireworks we’d bought were not legal to bring into California, so we had a little impromptu fireworks show on the side of the road. Each day we wake up and have NO IDEA what that day will involve, but it’s always interesting.

Death Valley was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was so hot, so dry, so dead. Very little green, that’s for sure. And a National Park without trees is so odd-looking. There were these amazing sand dunes though, so we pulled over so I could bike to them and explore. I loved climbing to the top of them and jumping down into the soft sand and I loved seeing the patterns that the wind had created on the sand.

Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park, CA

Can you spot my bike and the R.V.?

SAND...so beautiful.

 

Now we are in a small little western town called ‘Lone Pine’. Andy wants to climb the highest peak in the continental U.S. (Mt. Whitney), and this town is the portal to do so. This town is tiny; the kind of town where there are signs on the shops that say “Gone to Bank, Be right Back” and where the lawyer’s office has the high school volleyball team’s game schedule posted in their window.  Apparently it is also a town where they filmed lots of Western movies. After we leave here, we’re headed to Coastal California. The R.V. got in a fight with a gas pump yesterday when we were leaving Vegas, and the R.V. could use some time getting repaired.  Something tells me that Lone Pine doesn’t have the kind of repair shop we are looking for.