Las Vegas - Day 3

November 8^th 2012

We woke up relatively early; the bed was not really comfortable. We packed our stuff and got ready to leave. We figured out some plans yesterday (trying to avoid another discussion). We checked out, put our stuff to the car and walked to the Aria casino. J. wanted to buy something with sign saying “Aria”. It was really windy and cold. Long journey and at the end, we were in the casino (nothing special really) and found store, where J. bought something. Good job. After walking back, we could finally drive out of the parking garage.

The city looks much worse during day light. We were making small detour to see the sign “Welcome to Las Vegas”. Apparently one of the “must to do” things. So we did it.

We stopped by Einstein Bagels and got some quick and cheap breakfast. In less then five minutes, we dot on freeway I-15 (leads to Salt Lake City) and started going north. Again, after leaving the Strip, the city became pretty boring and ugly. Forty miles on freeway, after first seven miles (still the city) it just became the desert. There was pretty much nothing. The turn from freeway, gas station and road to the Valley of Fire State Park.

At least the landscape changed, it was more hilly and less boring. And then we got into the part, where there were really interesting rock formation.

There were some hike possibilities, but we did not have so much time, so we were going to make as many stops as possible and basically drive through the park. One of the stops was nice stairway to the platform with old drawings in the stone. One thing, some people are really a..h.. and wrote on the stone. Really??? Still pretty cold and extremely windy.

Our next destination was visitor’s center. As we learned before, some of them are not very useful, as we the case with this one. They had some displays, gift shop and few alive animals – lizard and some spiders.

When we got to the center, we saw state trooper blocking the road to the dead end park road. We wanted to drive there and ended up waiting few minutes because they were shooting the commercial for Audi. We saw the same crew later on our way out.

The dead end road was about 5 miles long. It was really interesting landscape and nice views. But the end of the road had some rock formation that were supposed to be visited by mile long hike, which we did not have time for. And there was another road that was closed. Too bad.

J. was getting a bit sick because of the windy and bumpy road. We stopped at the cabins. They were built in 30’s with New Deal works. They were not in use anymore and it was just reminder of old times. Pretty one.

Well, that was pretty much our last stop. We had to realize, that we had over five hours of driving ahead of us (plus we were loosing an hour due to time change). It was really nice detour and it was incredible how this formation just existed in the middle of boring desert. But we had some boring driving ahead of us.

For over an hour, we were driving within Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We even had to show our Federal annual pass. Time to time, we saw glimpses of lake in the distance, otherwise it was just pretty boring and flat landscape. Oh … Nevada.

We saw a lot of rivers like this one:

And we are back in Arizona:

It was very windy. We passed the Hoover Dam and it felt like the time in South Dakota (when we were moving from Michigan to Washington State). We had an hour on horribly boring (and pretty straight) road number 93 (to get on freeway). It started to rain some. On and off.

We got coffee and gasoline in Kingman (town on freeway I-40) and started to go home. It was a bit less then 150 miles. Pretty boring drive. Some rain. Weather forecast calling for strong winds, rain and later even snow.

When we were getting close to Flagstaff, it got dark. Cold. Rainy. It is time to get out of here. Something a bit warmer and nicer. And … I still think Las Vegas’ word is trashy.