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 18 Summer Vacation 2009

Today we will be re-tracing some of the roads that we drove on yesterday. First stop is to visit at The Nevada State Museum in Carson City Nevada. They have a Lincoln Highway Concrete Marker out front.

This museum is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Carson City. Everything is so nicely displayed and described.

I liked this big Mammoth skeleton and tusks.

Back outside the Museum we found the Frontier Motel and Cactus Jack, both Carson City Lincoln Highway Icons.

I had mentioned to a lady in the Museum that I was hoping that there would have been a small display about The Ponderosa Ranch and the Cartwrights, but she seemed a little put off by my question, stating that this is a museum of fact, not TV fiction. She did tell me that the town of Virginia City was not far away and was well worth a visit to get that feeling of an Old West town back in the late 1800’s, so we took a side trip to Virginia City.

If you remember the show Bonanza, the Cartwrights would often ride into Virginia City from their Ponderosa Ranch. The present day owner of the Ponderosa Ranch has no interest in allowing the public onto his property, so the Ponderosa has been closed since 2004. Too bad, I would have loved to have gone there, but Virginia City will have to do.

Here are some photos of the road to Virginia City from Carson City NV.

As you enter Virginia City, the first thing you see is this impressive building. The old school House. I suppose this could be where Little Joe and Hoss got their education.

And the main street was full to overflowing with tourists and parked cars. This small town in America is not feeling the recession.

We had lunch at The Bonanza Cafe. It was the only Bonanza TV show related business that we could find. I guess that the images and notoriety of the show are copyrighted and therefore the town of Virginia City cannot ride on the shirttails of the popular TV show. I did ask if the Cartwrights were in town, but I was told that they were not.

We bought some ice cream for dessert at Grandma’s Fudge Shop across the street. We also bought a LB of fudge and I am enjoying some right now as I write this blog. Here is a photo of Grandma’s Fudge Shop to the left of the Silver Queen Casino & Hotel.

It was time to get a move on and get back out onto the Lincoln Highway heading West.

Back in Carson City NV we found the King’s Canyon Road, but it quickly turned into a dirt and gravel road. We felt that we had driven on enough rough roads and decided to give the suspension on the car a bit of a break so we turned around and headed back to the US 50 version of the Lincoln Highway.

We took US 50 into the Lake Tahoe area again and got some more photos of the lake.

We crossed the border from Nevada into California.

We arrived in Sacramento California and are bunking down for the night here. Tomorrow we will continue on into San Francisco.

Again today, we had blue skies and hot 34 C temperatures. I think we are going to find San Francisco a lot cooler, but that will be a welcome change from these scorching temperatures we have been experiencing.

If you would like to see all of our photos from today, you can check them out on my FLICKR site.

San Francisco, here we come.