Places, Earth
Southern Nevada
Southern Nevada
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Places, Earth
Southern Nevada |
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Day One, Getting There This trip began two years earlier. I had planned a trip and at the last minute, my wife bowed out. I went by myself but my wife begged me to be home for her birthday which originally we were planning to celebrate on the trip. She promised to finish the trip at Thanksgiving, then that got postponed a year. After a morning of mishaps, we finally left about 8:20 AM. Heading east to Interstate 15 north, we passed through Barstow, stopped at the C. V. Kane rest area, and crossed into Nevada about 12:30. We arrived in Las Vegas about 1:15 PM. My thought was to walk through a few of the famous casinos before checking into our accommodations. I drove around Luxor but didn't see any visitor parking and guest parking was too expensive to justify a quick walk-through. The Las Vegas Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) was quite congested and everywhere were temporary lighting trusses and bleachers. I later learned there had been a big auto race the week before. We tried Paris Casino but the same parking issue. We got gas on a side street and continued north. My wife took a few photos from the car and we drove to Fremont Street Experience which is a few blocks closed to vehicles and covered with an arched roof with a light show on the ceiling. We were getting a bit overwhelmed so we headed north to the hotel. The hotel was nice, the location was a bit industrial, but we liked it and the staff was very friendly. We had packed a nice Thanksgiving diner which we ate in the room while watching a video and relaxed the rest of the evening. Day Two, Loose Ends We slept well, but as always, I awoke early and got tired of lying in bed, so I got up. We got ready, ate, and about 8:30 left for Springs Preserve. The Springs Preserve is a large complex with two museums, other educational facilities, Water Works, historic buildings, spring mound, botanical gardens, and more. We first visited the Origin Museum with a beautiful exhibit of black and white photos of Hoover Dam and a few of Parker Dam, local history, the Mojave Desert, and an outdoors area with native animals. Next was the Nevada State Museum with exhibits on local history, natural exhibits, geology, prehistoric skeletons, and an exhibit on Liberace. I found interesting a long aerial black and white photograph of the Las Vegas Strip about 1960 or 1970 with smaller casinos and hotels and vacant lots, not the wall-to-wall facilities of today. My wife waited at the Nevada State Museum while I walked to Boomtown 1905, a collection of old buildings from early Las Vegas history. I returned to the Nevada State Museum and viewed the Liberace exhibit with my wife. An important exhibit that many people skip is the spring mound. This water source was important to early settlers, both Native American and Anglo. The way a spring mound is formed is dust blows into a spring, the moisture keeps it from blowing away, it builds, plants grow, the mound grows taller, more water, more dust, more plants until a large mound grows. Again my wife waited while I walked through the Botanical Garden. This is where I have a my biggest criticism. It was hard to find it and I walked down several dead ends before I found it and even more trying to get back. If there was a main path to the garden, I never found it. As a professional designer, I never would have gotten away with this. Satisfied that we had seen enough, we found our way back to the car and returned to the hotel for lunch (leftovers from dinner yesterday). My wife stayed in the room while I visited National Atomic Testing Museum. This Smithsonian affiliated museum covers the history of the testing of nuclear weapons in the test range northwest of Las Vegas. Testing began above ground, then was moved underground, and is now simulated in a super computer. Two years ago I showed up at the museum at 3:00 because the web site said it closed at 5:00, but it had just closed. Today I spent two hour wandering through the galleries. There were full size models of "The Gadget" which was the first test bomb,"Fat Man" which was dropped on Nagasaki, and various atomic missiles and projectiles. There were exhibits on test subjects like buildings, vehicles, and mannequins. I remember the days when my classes had "drop and cover" drills in case of nuclear attack. There were exhibits on how the atomic testing had been used in popular entertainments of the day and there was a small exhibit on spying. I returned to the hotel where my wife and I enjoyed dinner and left for the Neon Museum. This was our favorite stop for the day as we wandered the two acres site filled with old neon signs, some working, some not. These are signs from the early days of Las Vegas as a casino capitol and this museum rescued some of the fabulous neon signs. Then we enjoyed Brilliant Jackpot, a projection show simulating the lighting of signs beyond repair, accompanied by music. We were quite worn out by the time we returned to our room where we enjoyed a good sleep. Day Three, Train, Dam, and Cactus We arose early, again, and got ready. We left the hotel about 8:20 heading south on Interstate 15, then east on I-215 and south on I-11 to Boulder City. We arrived at Nevada State Railroad Museum in Boulder City a little after 9:00 AM. I bought two tickets for the Christmas train and we waited in the car. I had seen the rest of the museum two years earlier, but the train wasn't running then and my wife missed the trip, so we were just here for the train ride. At promptly 10:00 AM (plus a few extra minutes), the train departed. We rolled caboose first at about 3 miles an hour for about fifteen minutes during which time Santa Claus came through greeting the kids (and my wife) and posing for photos. About three and a half miles up the tracks, the train stopped and the locomotive pulled us back to the depot. I had seen Hoover Dam two years earlier and while my wife wasn't interested, I really thought she should see this engineering wonder, so off to Hoover Dam we went. I had done the tour before and didn't think my wife would be interested in that, so we skipped it and just walked across the dam on the lake side and back on the downstream side, entering Arizona for the second time in two months. I drove across the dam hoping to connect to I-11, but the road was closed to through traffic so we had to turn around. I made a wrong turn into a parking lot and it took a minute for the cars ahead to move forward enough that there was space to turn around. A man in tactical gear seemed upset by this and crossed in front of me and stood so close that I was afraid I would run over his toes. I explained it was a mistake and I was only trying to leave. I repeated "I'm only trying to turn around" and he made reference to going slowly, but I was going slowly enough for him to walk in front of my car. I said, "I'm not speeding." He let me go saying "Have a good day, California." If he was implying that I was a Californian with an attitude, he was the one with a bad attitude, I just turned in the wrong place and was turning around. I would have filed a complaint, but didn't know his name or to whom. I always wanted to drive over the I-11bridge over the river so I did, but it turns out you can't see anything anyway. So back across and on to Bolder City. In Bolder City, we parked and walked around a bit. We found the Boulder Dam Hotel and Museum which we enjoyed. There are artifacts, displays, and a video on the building of the dam. Next we walked a few blocks each way and both sides of the street photographing the street art, various statues. We stopped for an early dinner at A & W Root Beer. Two years earlier I stopped to use their parking lot for a minutes to consult my maps and filed the memory away. Growing up, my family would often stop at an A & W during cross country trips and the last time I had been to an A & W was with my wife's family in Lodi almost twenty years earlier. My wife also had good memories from childhood. My wife ordered a Hot Dog and a Hot Fudge Sundae and I ordered a pair of Chicken Tender Sliders and a Root Beer. It brought back good memories for both of us. Our last stop of the day was Ethel M. Chocolate Factory and Cactus Garden. I had seen this two years earlier and knew my wife would enjoy it, so I took her. We bought some chocolate and got in line for the garden. The garden is beautifully decorated with multi-colored balls, colored lights, colored lights on metal frameworks, and other light effects. We wandered the path about an hour, doing our best to photograph our favorites. Once finished, we passed a very long line of people still trying to enter and car parking had overflowed into the lots of surrounding businesses. It is very popular. We were glad we came early. About a half hour later we were back in our hotel room and tried to get ready to go home. Day Four, Getting There is Half the Fun, Getting Home is the Other Half. Once again I awoke at 3:00 and got up at 4:00. We got ready, skipping breakfast, and checked out about 5:45 AM. About forty-five minutes later we stopped for gas at Terrible's Road House with 96 gas pumps. My wife found the rest rooms humorous with whimsical phrases above the toilets. About ten minutes later we were back in California. We exited the highway at Baker and I had to photograph Alien Fresh Jerky with theme architecture and detail. Mad Greek Cafe' opens at 8:00 AM and it was 7:30 so we waited in the car for it to open. Across the street is the world's tallest thermometer at 134 feet commemorating the day in 1913 when the temperature in Death Valley hit 134 degrees. The Greek food was good. We got back on the road and made it home without incident, arriving home about 12:15. Our four-footed family was happy to have us home. |
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