Happy Birthday Ryan!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, we have to report on Las Vegas.Woooooooaaaaaah.The hotels are like huge shopping malls. I think we much prefer nature.We drove through on the Vegas Strip, from north to south, oooooh-ing and aaaaaaah-ing at all the hotels and casinos. One minute we drive by Rome, then Venice, then we visit New York (with a statue of Liberty!) and Paris (with an Eiffel tower!) and then we found it: our hotel for the night is a pyramid, the Luxor hotel. A huge black pyramid out of which at night shines a bright light straight up into space. This light and the Wall of China are visible manmade structure from the International Space Station!So our room is on the 11th floor, the elevator goes up diagonally and inside the pyramid are huge Egyptian statues, waterfalls and a small city with skyscrapers. I mean, this place is HUGE. And it is just one of the hotels here. The first floor is the casino.The room costs the same as the Comfort Inn in Surprise, last night, but no in-room coffee, no free waterbottles, no complimentary breakfast. And, WiFi internet is $15USD a day!We visited the hotel/casinos next door, the Mandalay (great shark/lizard/tropical aquarium) and the Excalibur with it's Medieval theme. All enormous and huge.And not cheap. But then people come here to play and spend money, right? Coming here on a budget is equal to not having that much fun. You are restricted in where to go, but it is possible to find certain buffets that are 2 for 1. There is A LOT of advertising. It is like living in an ad. You are bombarded with it. And some of it is pretty sleezy. This is after all known as sin-city. Also, it's kinda sad to see the people sitting at the slotmachines pressing a button (not even the excercise of pulling the handle on a one-arm-bandit) and wasting their money/time. Well, you never know, maybe this next one will be a winner......We figure it's all about addictions. Sex, liquor, gambling. And you can get it all and do it all here. Our addiction is Nature, we've discovered. Leaving Las Vegas behind we leave on tuesday and treck through Death Valley.Now there's something spectacular to write home about.
What an amazing scenic area this is! We go from elevation 3000 feet all the way down to -200 (below sea level), through amazing rock formations. All kinds of colors due to the mineral conditions. Pioneers came through here hungry and thirsty looking for water they could drink. They found places like "salty creek" and "devils" hills, death valley and funeral creek being the result.We find some dried up streams (there was a rainstorm here last night and so new snow on the mountains too) but not too dried up for us to check the clay situations. Back in Casa Grande, with the Native artists, we learned how to look for clay, what color, consistency and how to collect it so you can use it later. So out we go checking here and there where we see the tell-tale cracked dirt signs of a clay deposit. We got some nice samples! I have a strainer full of clay samples between the seats in the van, I don't have to tell you what that looks like...hope we don't have any kinds of inspections coming up...On the west side of the park, after passing through some funky little 'towns' or settlements with RV parks (which we figure we will come back to on our next trip...) the road climbs up, every 2 minutes a sign - 1000 ft, 2000 ft - and big snowy mountains loom ahead of us. According to the map the pass is only 4900 ft. so we may encounter some snow. Ears are popping!By the way, yes it IS hot at the bottom of the Valley. And this is winter time. We were trying to imagine this place in the summer. Better to avoid it then, we figured.The valley is beautiful and we definitely recommend coming here for a visit or drive through. It takes a minimum of 3 hours to go from one side of the park to the other, without stopping; but you'll want to make stops here and there. Also not for vehicles of 30 ft. or longer, and not for the faint of heart; steep dropoffs and narrow roads (scarier than driving in Mexico!) the van just fit...On the other side of the park you come through a couple more valleys, and then a historic village at Owen's Lake (Olancha).
From here we turn north. This was a bit of a gamble as we will have some passes to go through at about 8000 feet - there will definitely be snow there. The other way is south and through Bakersfield. But we've already been there on this trip on the way South. No use repeating ourselves!

We end up not having much snow at all through the passes. Smooth driving, careful at over 8000 feet because there was some blowing snow but nothing major. Not like in Canada! We had to laugh at the Californians we met with their parkas and rabbitfur hats, and here we are driving around (and stopping along the way) at 8000 feet in the snow with our hawaii print shirt and flip flops and tans...wimps! :o)
After more driving, we end up at 10 pm at Carson City.