We left Death Valley on the 31st and headed back to Vegas, as Sherry and Clint needed to catch a flight out of there early the next morning. So New Year’s Eve in Vegas it was…
There were people evvverywhere. And it was only 5:30!
I was not about to get out of the car. We decided it was safest to just drive down the strip a couple times, then go find some dinner away from all the craziness.
That was actually harder than anticipated. After striking out at two other places (one too smokey, the other too expensive), Wo Fat knocked it out of the park. It was cheap and delicious:
As planned, Sherry and Clint flew out stupid-early on New Year’s Day. We had such a fantastic time with them, and it was nice once again to spend a holiday with more family. We hope they can visit us again before this trip is over.
We wanted to see more of Vegas, but we waited a couple days after New Years for things to settle down. We stopped by the Bellagio hotel to catch the fountain and light show. Yes, it was rather ostentatious — as is all of Las Vegas — but it was entertaining nonetheless:
A high-fashion candy store across from the Bellagio:
More sights of downtown:
Later in the week, we took a side trip to the Hoover Dam. Wow:
The electricity-generating turbines deep inside the dam:
The Hoover dam is an engineering marvel. I was unable to capture how huge this thing is.
On Friday, we left Las Vegas for good. Like any freak show, it was fun to gawk at but we were more than happy to leave. Vegas just wasn’t our “thing.”
Amy logging some miles on the road to the Mojave Desert for the weekend:
I thought our campground was called “Hole In The Wall” because of its austere and remote location:
…which it was all that, but the name came from something else (more on that in a sec):
In several places, the pavement just…ended. We spent just as much time on unpaved roads as we did on paved ones, and many of the “paved” roads were pretty rough. (We are so hard on our little Scion!)
The view from our campsite:
These are solar panels outside a nearby ranger station. I’m including this as a representative photo of all of the solar panels we see out West. They’re everywhere, as they should be. Solar power is sexy.
We got sort of lost on our way to the “lava tubes” (underground caverns made from hardened lava). There were no road signs, and we were a few miles down a pretty rough unpaved road. We decided to hike up a nearby inactive cinder cone (sort of like a volcano) to get a view of the surrounding roads and figure out where the heck we were. This didn’t look like that much of a hike:
…but it was. Size and scale are so deceiving out here. It was a long hike, but we were able to match the roads up with our map and see exactly where we were:
Stopping for lunch:
We eventually found our lava tubes:
Crawling through a low entry:
…to get inside to a larger space:
At the end of the afternoon, we drove out to the local sand dunes for another hike:
It was windy:
We got back to the car right as the sun set, with the moon high in the sky:
That night the wind howled — growled, actually — and rocked the RV like a boat. It was sunny the next morning, but still windy and cold. We bundled up.
…and double-timed it to get the blood flowing on our way to our morning hike:
Buster the friendly brown dog (he belonged to one of the rangers):
These rock formations are from volcanic explosions several million years ago where thick ash and gas hardened to form these interesting shapes. The holes and pockets that you see are where the gas was once trapped:
There were some installed metal rings in a few spots to make climbing a bit easier:
And that hole up there in that “wall” is the reason for the name “Hole In The Wall.”
Though not as spectacular as Death Valley, the Mojave Desert was wonderful. I love the desert. Let me clarify: I love the desert in January.
We’re now in the podunk town of Acton, CA in an RV park right next to train tracks (a train is passing as I type this.) We’ll explore some things around here over the next few days and then move on toward San Diego at the end of the week. We’ve been in CA for 2 and half months now, so I’m getting antsy to move on to other parts of the country. I’m talking to you, Arizona.