Sat. morning. 19 degrees, no wind and sunny. We're off!!
Driving through Kingman, I see a quail walking in a driveway, hollyhocks in a garden, lots of Cypress trees and lots of oleanders. The flowers are really beautiful, but as we drive off onto the road, the landscape changes dramatically and it is cacti world. We made a couple of stops to take some photos of some very special ones.
We drove by the exit for Bullhead City. There is a real spread of homes down in the valley below. Our temperature is going up. We are now 24 degrees at 2750' elev. Now 26 degrees.
From a scenic viewpoint, we can see Black Canyon and Mohave Lake. A very dry area. The colour of the rock is very muted yellows, grays, greens.
10h30 - Welcome to Nevada! We arrive at the Hoover Dam. At 726' high, it is one of the highest concrete dams ever constructed. Built in 1931-35 (during the Depression), in Black Canyon for flood control and water storage. We walked to the Visitor Center using the Overlook (32 deg.). Very interesting exhibits and information on the building of the dam. We walked back and had lunch in our cooler RV then drove up to the Colorado River Bridge which reroutes vehicule traffic from the top of the Hoover Dam, opened in Oct. 2010. We took the pedestrian sidewalk along the bridge's north side giving us optimum viewing at a height of 900'. see photos.
We head off to Las Vegas which is only 30 mins away. We found our campsite at Circus Circus, a huge hotel resort with an inside amusement park. The campground is basically a parking lot with very few trees but would you believe it, we are parked under a tree with the pool behind us with lawn chairs and table we can use. We are unbelievably lucky....
Las Vegas has a city pop. of 478,434 approx. which must bulge up to incredible numbers with the tourists-gamblers. There is a lot of traffic as you can see from one of the photos.
We started our walk up Las Vegas Blvd (The Strip) around 3h30 and returned around 8h30. We wore our feet out. We figured we walked 10 kms incl. inside stuff. The Strip is a glittery real-life make-believe world...dancing Italian fountains, pirate ships, Venice (photo), the Eiffel Tower (photo) replicates and people, people. And when you walk inside these huge hotels, more people, people gambling... quite something. We had dinner at the bar, on the roof top level, at Margaritaville with hamburgers, me with my margarita and Ross with a beer, soaking up the atmosphere.
When we think of where we were two nights ago, this is certainly the other extreme!!! Good night!!
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