Vacation Day 8: Leaving Las Vegas ... leaving for good

The original plan was to stay two nights Vegas mainly to avoid the frenetic traffic of losers heading back to LA on I-15.  Hotels.com screwed up the second night reservation so were were faced with some alternatives ... one, book another night in Vegas ourselves; two, head to Laughlin for a night; or three, head straight to LA.

We opted for option two, Laughlin, on the lower Colorado River, another gambling town.  We had big breakfast at the Golden Nugget and hit the road.  We take US 95 south.  The road climbs and passes through Searchlight, an old mining town, hometown to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV).  A left turn took us down to Laughlin where it was 107 degrees.  My younger son commented "It's an imitation of Las Vegas and Las Vegas is an imitation."  That sealed it for us.  We decided to push on toward LA, with maybe an overnight stop in Barstow.

We paralleled the Colorado River along it's western side and picked up I-40 at Needles.  From there, we gathered speed toward LA.  We blazed through the inhospitable looking town of Barstow.  It's amazing how LA sprawl has spread to the High Desert.  People with barely the means to qualify for a home mortgage bought there first homes in places like Hesperia only to tragically losing them when the bubble burst.

Before we knew it we were crossing Cajon Pass in the greater LA.  We made a quick stop in Rancho Cucamonga to look at the first house I bought and later joined by my wife.  Times were different then, much better.

We took the 210 across the alluvial fans that emanate from the San Gabriel Mountains ... Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Claremont, Azusa, Monrovia, Arcadia, Pasadena.  Our last hurdle was Rocky Peak before reaching our destination in Simi valley to spend a few days with my wife's sister's family.

Vacation Day 7: Fear and Loathing

We left Kingman in the morning after breakfast at the hotel that included the universal waffles from the ubiquitous hotel waffle maker.  The Comfort Inn where we stayed was adequate and I'm being nice.  It was kind of a smaller hotel and I suspect of cheap construction as some of the doors were rather ill-fitting.  This building was not built to last.

We made a bee line course northward on US 93 that follows a straight shot down the center of a valley known as Detrital Valley because it's filled with, and I'm not making this up, detritus.  Our initial destination was Hoover Dam followed by Las Vegas.

When we reached Hoover Dam it was 11 am and already 105 degrees.  We parked on the Arizona side and walked across the top along with a few hundred other tourists.  The dam is, without a doubt, a marvel of engineering.  The Art Deco details are pretty cool, classic 1930s.  The modern bridge that spans the canyon is nearly completed.  It was $8 to access the visitor center.  We decided we'd seen enough already.

It was on to Las Vegas.  We made a stop in Henderson for lunch at the Sunset Pizzeria.  The pizza was excellent.  Henderson is the nice suburb of Las Vegas.

We had reservations at the Golden Nugget downtown.  We arrived, parked, and checked in.  It's a nice hotel but everything above and beyond your room you pay extra.  I decided not to opt for the $12.99 internet access.  The pool was closed because of some biohazard, probably a drunk guy that barfed in the water I was guessing.  The boys opted out of the pool because they didn't want to swim around with drunk old people.

We strolled around downtown along an arcade street, checking out the shops, kiosks, and the strange people tha Vegas attracts.  In a way, it's a rather sad place.

After our late afternoon stroll we drove down to the Strip and parked at Bellagio.  The interior of Bellagio is incredible, awesomely beautiful, but like everything in Vegas, it is excessive and unreal.  We walked down the Strip and dropped into the Harley-Davidson Las Vegas Cafe.  The food was excellent.

After dinner we walked further, spending far too long in the M&Ms place, where you can buy anything and everything related to M&Ms colorful candy, plain or peanut.

We walked down to Luxor, a must see according to my brother-in-law.  It is impressive and excessive, like everything in Vegas.

The strip was buzzing with all manner of people.  Pretty girls in tight dresses, guys looking for girls, cougars, and even familys with small children in strollers (I don't get that ... please parents, grow up and act like parents).  On every corner, presumably illegal immigrants hired for this express purpose, are flipping cards to you of naked women you can have in your room in like 20 minutes, if you can hold out that long.  It's amazing that you can walk around with drinks, some with huge drinks.

I don't get Vegas.  For sure, I don't like it.

The following photographs represent interesting people observed in Las Vegas.

Vacation Day 4: Evening Hummer Tour

After snoozing away most of the afternoon in the air conditioned comfort of our hotel room, we met up again at 6 pm for the evening Hummer tour.  This was easy, just sit back and let the guide crawl the Hummer over rock and sand.  This tour is kind of the stock tour for the couch potato class.  We embarked with four full Hummers, each holding eight people.  We shared our Hummer with a family from upstate New York, a notoriously conservative part of the country, somewhat the antithesis of western Washington.  They weren't very chatty and we weren't either after spending the first part of the day canyoneering.

Our guide Steve, was a former science teacher and, as I found out later from him, he is the high school principal.  One of the other guides was a police officer in town.  I got the impression that if you had connections in Moab, you could moonlight as a guide and collect juicy tips from tourists.

Our first stop was to look at dinosaur tracks, which were difficult to see after being run over thousands of times by Jeeps, Hummers, Unimogs, and a few mountain bikes.  Steve talked about the dinosaurs and Navajo sandstone.

The Hummers are amazing vehicles.  However, unless you are a serious off-road enthusiast who likes fixing broken things, you probably wouldn't want to take your shiny new FJ Cruiser on these tracks.

This sunset tour was a great way to end our stay in Moab.  Tomorrow Flagstaff, another six hour drive.

Vacation Day 3: Westwater Canyon

We had to be at Moab Adventure Center at 7:30 am and by golly we made it.  We went through the usual formalities, signing releases etc.  I struck up a conversation with Clint, the lead guide and another guide Jen who grew up in Lynnwood and graduated from Meadowdale High - Class of 1999.

We rode a bus to the put-in, an hour and a half trip that might have been more pleasant had it not been for the blasting air conditioning.  The put-in was at the Westwater Ranger Station, off of Interstate 70 a few bumpy road miles.  The Bureau of Land Management manages Westwater Canyon.

The guides got all the rafts ready, fitted us into life vests, and soon we were launched into the current, three paddle rafts and an oar raft.  We had nine people in our raft, us, another family of three, and two women from Minnesota.  Our guide was Mack, a soft spoken guy, probably late thirties.

The first part of the trip is about seven miles of relatively flat water.  We spotted a couple bald eagles that had a nest in a big cottonwood tree.  The canyon gradually narrowed and the walls grew higher.  We paddled and paddled for what seemed like an interminable time.

The cliff forming unit of the canyon is the Wingate Sandstone, late Triassic to early Jurrassic, roughly 200 million years old.  The Wingate is formed from ancient sand dunes and one can readily see some nice cross bedding in the cliffs.  The Wingate sits atop the Chinle Formation, also late Triassic, composed of softer shales and sandstones formed in lakes and meandering rivers.

What is really unique about Westwater Canyon is that it cuts into Precambrian metamorphic rocks, the black-colored Vishnu schist, which itself is cut by granitic bodies known as the Zoraster granite.  The only other exposure of this rock is in the Granite Gorge of the Grand Canyon.

As we floated down the river, looking at rocks and pontificating about their origins, it became evident that there was another geologist in the group, Andy.  Andy was in our raft with his wife and son, the family being from Massachusetts.

We pulled off for lunch on a sandy bank.  The guides prepared a sandwich bar, which in our experience is the standard raft trip lunch.  After lunch, we received a thorough safety briefing before we launched into the next leg, where we'd hit a series of rapids, including Funnel Falls, Skull, and Last Chance.  The river was flowing about 11,000 cfs and the rapids were rated about Class III.  Still, we hit some good sized waves and got thoroughly splashed.  It reminded me a little of the Wenatchee River, only much warmer.  Mack deftly maneuvered us through the rapids and we didn't lose anyone.  One of our rafts had a couple swimmers go in at Skull.  They were quickly back in their raft.

The last stage of the trip was over flat water, more miles of mindless paddling.  At least the scenery was awe-inspiring.  We finally made it to our take-out at Cisco.  We loaded back into the bus and drove for another hour and a half back to Moab.

We had dinner at the Moab Brewery which was excellent.  I had the Scorpian Pale Ale, a hoppy brew to finish a great day.