Friends from Vegas
Trip Start
Nov 31, 2005
1
2
6
Trip End
Ongoing
Las Vegas, AZ outback, Nevada
Saturday, January 21, 2006
So we arrive home very late, like 2 am. Since there is a time change from Vegas to AZ. We don't have Daylight savings in AZ so we are on Mountain time zone in the winter and Pacific time zone in the summer. Whatever!
In the morning we woke up and checked out the local cool stuff. We took our time, made some breakfast and then it was off to the Petroglyphs, where many travelers have been coming for thousands of years apparently. We tried to decipher some of the glyphs to the best of our symbolic knowledge, but who knows! It's fun to make believe though. Then we went to the Hualapai Joshua tree forest for a view of that and the Grand wash cliffs. The cliffs are majestic looking with there great white stripped walls and sitting atop a green canvas created by the Joshuas.
From there we went to Choride, a nearby "Ghost town". Although people still live there. We went to see the murals that some hippy artist in the 60's painted on these giant rocks up this mountain. It was a 1.3 mile hike uphill, but we got the sunset over the valley included with the view of the murals. ALthough it was kinda dark by the time we got there. We had fun walking down the hill in the dark with nothing but a green colored mini light. We did find a deep hole in the side of the mountain. I tried to convince D&S to go in there, but fortunately they have more common sense than I and refused to go. I was just bluffing anyway. It's always a good way to look like a fearless stud.
As we reached the bottom of the hill and wandered back to town, we decided to stop at the local saloon. Holy shit, it was the classic scene of the record scratching and everyone staring at us as we walked in the door. Only the Juke box wasn't playing, everyone just stared. We brushed it off. Immediately the locals start talking to us. Hah ha, fresh blood. These people wanted new ears to listen to them so badly. We listened and before you knew it they were buying us drinks. We bonded with them from being in the military and they were all about us.
The next day we stopped in at Willow beach on the way back to Vegas. It's a beautiful boat launch on the Colorado river, just downstream from the Hoover Dam. We looked for Big Horn Sheep, but to no avail. So I gave them the 5 cent tour of Hoover Dam, and we returned to Vegas to meet up with Stacy's Grand Ma. It was fun. We went out to dinner with her and got loaded. Not that I wasn't loaded already. We popped a cork on some white Bordeaux, and cheese earlier in the afternoon. Then we saw the Freemont experience. Kinda cool, but it makes me feel like I have to re-enlist in the military. It's so patriotic. I was almost brainwashed to go look up the nearest recruiter. The next day we went to Madame Tuseauds wax museum. It was a little pricey, I recommend you try to tell them your a student, they get in for $14 dollars, while us unedumacated people have to pay $22. It was worth it at least once though. Madame Tuseaud got her start doing death masks in early 17th century France, after people lost their heads in the guillotine. Some of the wax figures look more real than others, some show you historical figures that you have never seen except in art or a drawing or engraving, i.e. George Washington. Weird seeing him in real life, as well as John Wayne, and Larry King. Who looked very creepy and very real. I found myself wondering if this is what some of these people really looked like. It's really kinda intriguing. And one of the cheaper things you can do in Las Vegas.
When Jimmy came down for the week, we started off by taking a route 66 road trip. We drove from Kingman to Seligman and back on Rte. 66. It was really interesting. Beautiful scenery, some roadside gas stations museums, kept like they were in the early 40s and 50s during the Hay day of "the Mother road". We stopped and checked out the Grand Canyon Caverns, which we found out has nothing really to do with the Grand Canyon. Except that it gets it's air from there, almost 65 miles away, through an underground air vent. We then stopped in one of the roadside diners, and got the best cornbread we have ever tried. Mmmm, it was so moist and fat. With butter and Honey, aaaaforgetit. The next two days Jimmy helped me with the Earthship for a little bit each day, in the remaining time we made a trip to nearby Antelope canyon, and we made a race for the sunset at the Grand Canyon, about 30 miles from my home, but about 22 miles of that is rough dirt road. Thankfully Jimmy had a free upgrade on his rental, which meant that we got the Chevy Colorado, shorted, truck. We made good time dodging cows and making hairpin turns way too fast for our skill level at times. After getting there we see a sign that says, "closed after dusk", do we care, no. We went in anyway and even though the sun won the race and set under the horizon before we arrived, we still had a lot of light. We drove Diamond Bar road right until it ended at the edge of the canyon. With red and brown stripes running horizontally through it, and a view on three sides. I was taken aback. I will go back and gladly pay the fee to go and see the sunset there again only I will beat the sun next time.
