Day 38 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today is a turning point in our summer vacation…as I look at the car this morning, I see that it is pointed in a North East direction. This can only mean one thing… we are heading for home. The vacation is not over, but every day that passes now will bring us a day closer to when we have to return to work in September. Not a pleasant thought… so lets forget about that and go to Las Vegas instead.

When we planned this trip several months ago, we had decided that when we leave Needles CA that we will head for Hurricane UT and just drive around Las Vegas and avoid that traffic.. Well last night I got to thinking that it would be a fun thing to stop in Vegas for an hour and go and see the setting of one of our favourite TV shows.

So we leave Needles CA behind us and cross the border into Nevada. We drove past the large solar generating plant near Searchlight NV. We saw this 2 years ago when we were leaving Las Vegas and heading to Lake Havasu AZ. The layout has grown since then.

Shortly after that we could see the skyline of Las Vegas. Yes, that is air pollution that is hanging in the air.

The purpose of our alteration in plans and driving into Las Vegas today is to visit the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. No, we are not running out of money and need to pawn something so that we can continue our vacation… If you don’t know this Pawn Shop, then you don’t watch Pawn Stars on the History Channel. This TV show documents the daily activities of the owners and employees in the Pawn Shop and the weird and wonderful things that people bring into the pawn shop to either sell or pawn.

We parked in the pawn shop parking lot and immediately noticed that there was a line-up to get inside. Seems we are not the only ones who watch this show, and the pawn shop has become a tourist attraction. We lined up and waited about 1o minutes before we were allowed to enter.

I guess what surprised me the most was how small the place actually is. Obviously when they are filming there are not 100 fans milling about inside, perhaps that is what made it seem smaller in size than what I had imagined.

We wanted to buy a souvenir of our visit, and there were several different styles of T-shirts that we could have bought, but they were out of our sizes. I asked if they had a hat pin for my pin collection, but no, they didn’t have any hat pins. We followed the line to the back of the shop were we got to pose with Chumlee. I said “hi” to him, and said “it is nice to meet the famous Chumlee”, but he said nothing and just posed with us for this photo. I guess the shop has finally found something productive for Chumlee to do that even he could not screw up, but he really seemed bored with the whole “posing with the fans” thing. All in all, I wasn’t expecting to see any of the stars of the show, they do have a business to run and can’t be standing around all day posing for photos, so having this photo op with Chumlee was a bonus. Apparently the “Old Man” was in the back, but he had already been out on the shop floor posing for photos.

Here is our photo with Chumlee.

We left the shop and headed to our destination of Hurricane UT. By the time we get there, we will have been in 4 states today and moved into a new time zone. California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

The scenery was flat and desert like as we headed North out of Las Vegas.

We saw the Welcome to Arizona sign as we passed from Nevada into Arizona.

The scenery gets more interesting as we head towards the State line of Utah.

Here is the Welcome to Utah sign as we entered Utah.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day and I hope that we can get some good photos. We are going to visit an observation area and hopefully see some California Condors.

Till then, if you would like to see all of todays photos, you can click on this link to my FLICKR site.

Day 16 Summer Vacation 2008

Today is Day 16 Tuesday July 22 2008

Today we are going to start heading for home, via Historic Route 66, but first, there is something that we want to see and since we are in the neighbourhood (sort of) we will go and check it out.

We are going to go and see a bridge. Do you recognize this bridge ?



More about this famous bridge later, first, lets get out of Las Vegas. We had fun here and enjoyed our stay, we will be back, but it is time to move on. Route 66 is calling us. Route 66 is the primary reason for taking this trip.

We started out by heading south to Needles California, a Route 66 town.



Along the way, we could see something blue and shimmering way off in the distance. I thought it was odd that we were seeing such a large lake way out here in the middle of the desert. As we got closer and closer I began to realize that what we were seeing was not a lake, but rather a very large solar plant. What we were seeing is Mirrors that are used in the process of collecting the solar heat, to heat water to boiling temperatures that will then create steam, to power steam generators to make electricity. I found out later that what we were seeing is the Nevada Solar One facility.



We are heading South to Lake Havasu City Arizona to see The London Bridge. Yes, the London Bridge that was made famous in the old song Londong Bridge is Falling Down. It seems that the bridge was actually falling down and rather than being destroyed, it was put up for auction. The city of Lake Havasu was the high bidder, and they took the bridge apart and transported all the pieces to Lake Havasu City. You can actually drive on the bridge, it is part of the city road system. Well worth the visit.



We ate lunch, then headed back north to Topock Arizona and this is where we will get on Route 66 and begin our roadtrip along The Mother Road, Main Street America. Actually we couldn't find Topock, it is just a pile of dust in the desert, so it turned out that Golden Shores is where I took the first picture of several thousand along Route 66.

It is very hard to choose a couple of photos from our first day on Route 66 to place here in my blog, but here are a couple that we took between Golden Shores and Oatman Arizona.

The scenery is beautiful, I don't think we saw anymore than a handful of cars between Golden Shores and Oatman. I like this weathered sign pointing the way to Oatman.

Some will tell you that Oatman Arizona is an old ghost town, but I can tell you that it is very much alive. We parked the car and stepped back in time into an old gold mining town. Oatman is very proud of its Route 66 heritage, and most stores and shops have Route 66 souvenirs for sale. Also for sale are carrots. Why carrots... well to feed the wild burrows of course. These burrows are wandering the street and sometimes wander into the stores.

We left Oatman and followed Route 66 as it twisted and climbed up to the summit at Sitgreaves Pass. 3550 ft altitude. There are plenty of twists and turns, lots of switchbacks, no guard rails and some very dangerous and steep drops if you got too close to the edge of the road. Care is required when driving this.

From Sitgreaves Pass it is now downhill towards Kingman Arizona. The road twists and turns its way into Cool Springs

Cool Springs is an old restored gas station, however it was closed today, so we took some photos and carried on towards Kingman Arizona where we will stay the night.

To see all of our photos from today, please click on my link to my site on Flickr

Day 15 Summer Vacation 2008

Today is Day 15 Monday July 21 2008

Today we don't have anything planned till this evening. During the day we are going to relax and do laundry, get packed and organized for leaving Las Vegas tomorrow. Tonight we are going on a Las Vegas Neon Night Bus Tour.

This is a great tour for those of you who are like me and do not want to drive in Las Vegas. I would not have seen anything if I had to drive.

The tour took us to all the major attractions and seeing the lights at night is really something. Not much energy conservation going on in this city.





The hightlight of the evening was stopping to see the Bellagio Dancing Fountains all lit up at night. I have a VIDEO that I posted on You Tube if you wish to watch.

This is a picture of the giant chocolate fountain inside The Bellagio



One thing that we learnt on the tour that we did not already know was that there is a 61 lb chunk of pure gold on display inside The Golden Nugget Casino. We have been in and out of this casino so many times it is a wonder that we never noticed it. It is the worlds largest gold nugget.

Here is a picture.



There is more pictures and videos on my Flickr site if you wish to see more.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving Las Vegas and heading to Lake Havasu to see The London Bridge.

Day 14 Summer Vacation 2008

Today is Day 14 Sunday July 20 2008

Today we have another full schedule. We have booked a tour through Gray Line Bus Tours and are going to go and see The Hoover Dam. We saw the dam when we drove over it on our way from Sedona to Las Vegas and we saw the dam from our helicopter tour a couple of days ago. This will be an up close and personal guided tour. The tour company picked us up at The Golden Nugget which is just a couple of blocks from our hotel and drove us to the Bus Terminal where we met up with the rest of the guests on the larger tour bus.





The tour was a little dissapointing, most of the areas that used to be on the tour are now off limits since 9-11 , but we did wander through the museum, and did participate in the tour to see the generators, but if you have been to Niagara Falls and seen the generators at the Beck Generating Center, then you have a good idea of what to expect here at the Hoover Dam. Most of what you would want to see is off limits.

Here is a picture of the generating room.



After the Hoover Dam tour we boarded the bus and we were taken to The Hacienda Casino in Boulder City on the shores of Lake Mead for a free buffet lunch and some gambling.



After leaving the Hacienda Casino, our driver spotted some Long Horn Sheep in a park off to the side of the road so he pulled over so that we could get out and take pictures.





We got back on the bus and headed for the final stop of our tour. The Ethel M Chocolate Shop. As one would expect, this is a factory where they make chocolate. We got to sample and purchase chocolate and ice cream.



One thing that we were not expecting at the Chocolate Shop was a Cactus Garden. Karen's favourite cactus is the Saguaro Cactus, and we have spent a lot of time looking for one. Even when we were in Sedona Arizona we were told that saguaro's are not found that far north in Arizona, so it was a real surprise and a treat to find one here in Southern Nevada, even though it is not out in the wild, Karen was happy to have her picture taken in this garden with her favourite cactus.





That concluded our tour and the bus dropped us off back at The Golden Nugget.

After dinner this evening we decided that we should stick around and check out the Fremont Street Experience. Our hotel is located two blocks away from the entrance to The Fremont Street Experience so we have been spending a lot of time in this area during the day, but never at night. About a 5 block long section of Fremont Street is covered with a metal latice type of dome.



It is basically an open air conditioned pedestrian mall under this enclosed area, with dozens of casinos and lots of stores for shopping or browsing. At night time, the Fremont Street Experience comes to life with a video show performance displayed on the ceiling of the dome, the full length of the street.

It is hard to describe, but you can see for yourself what I am talking about if you click on the link to the VIDEO that I placed on You Tube.

Here are a few photos of the lights at night along Fremont Street









We enjoyed Fremont Street at night and if you are in Vegas, this is a must see.

You can click on my Flickr site to see all of our photos and videos from today.