Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Day Fifty-Three: If You've Never Had the Chance to Drive to Las Vegas....

Keep it that way!! Not much out here, except for maybe heat rash...I guess this means that we are now headed on our way back. We have now completed 2 sides of our circle (fully aware circles don't have sides)
We woke up quite early this morning to some drunk neighbors. (Not tent neighbors, neighborhood neighbors.) Really drunk. And really mad at each other for some reason. They went on for like 2 hours yelling at each other. Found out this morning that a bunch of them were arrested and that we would (maybe) be getting a refund for the night. So after being able to fall back asleep around 2, we woke up at 5:30 to start our day. We figured that if we left early enough, we would be able to get to Las Vegas before it got too hot for the car. We packed so quickly that we were able to leave camp before 6:15. (I'm pretty sure that the staff member thought we were packing up early because of what had happened during the night.)
It's about 5 1/2 hours from San Diego to Las Vegas, with maybe 3 towns in between! OK, maybe five in California and three in Nevada. And there wasn't much to see on the sides of the road. We had to make sure that we had enough gas to get out here. Everyone warns about making sure you have enough so you don't have to push. I don't think it would be very fun to push a car 30 miles in 100+ degree heat. Lucky we had enough to get about half way out before filling, and then decided to refill just to be on the safe side. After we got out of the San Diego metro area, there was one other rather large area around Riverside and San Bernadino. Beyond that, nothing. The other two towns we passed through were Barstow and Baker. (Baker has a population of 600, but makes the map because it's your last chance to fill up.) This is also the area of the Mojave Preserve. On the other side was Death Valley. We took a few quick pictures of the signs pointing that way, but there was no way we were going to turn off the road!
After miles and miles of desert and Joshua Trees, we finally made it to Nevada! It's state number 16 on our list. It was kind of funny because the sign said that Primm (the first town in the state) was 3/4 mile away and it looked like it was literally right behind the sign. I guess that's what happens when there is nothing around. It was a small town, but it had 3 or 4 different "casinos" and an amusement park. One of them was called "Terrible's". The gas station also had over 30 pumps! I've never seen one that big before! And some slot machines. Just for fun! Forty more miles to go to Las Vegas. After we left California, there were no other large cities to give mileage for alongside the road. The first one we saw was Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Vegas had a distance, but it was blank for SLC. On the next sign, it said SLC was 502 miles. Not much else in between, I guess!
Around 12:30, we made it to Las Vegas. It was amazing to see the city among the desert. We also saw a sign for Dunkin Donuts- which made us really excited!! We continued down I-15 and saw all the hotels and everything everyone always talks about. Since we still had some time before check-in, we decided to go to the outlets at the end of the strip. It wasn't unbearably hot, but they had water misters, and it actually made it a little uncomfortable. We did some shopping, and then went to Treasure Island to check in. The wait wasn't too long. The room is gorgeous! We are on the 29th floor with a view of the strip. We can see everything out our window. I am pretty sure the bathroom is larger than my bedroom!! The beds and the pillows are super comfy- can't wait to sleep on a bed for a few days!! After settling in, we went downstairs and looked around a little. We decided to go out and do some more shopping- got some new outfits, too! We walked down to Caesar's Palace. That hotel is absolutely amazing! The fact that they have a spiral escalator!! We walked through the shops, stopped at Peter Lik's gallery and looked at some of his pictures. They were neat, but then we walked through some more and saw very similar pictures. After awhile, we decided that it was dinnertime. We got down as far as the Eiffel Tower. Since we had some long days recently, we decided to head back towards the hotel. We played a little on the machines (we were up $10.00 on our $2, but kept going till we had nothing left. High rollers, I know!!) After that, we came upstairs and now it's time to rest up for another long day!!

No comments:

Post a Comment