Day 35 - September 24
We left Reno by 7:30 a.m. and stopped for breakfast just outside of town. By 8 we were on the road to Las Vegas. The drive was very nice. The road was excellent and the scenery was very different. The mountains here look smoother and they are often on both sides of us. In between, it is sagebrush and other low bushes with either gravel or sand. There are very few towns, most of them small and very poor in appearance. We stopped for lunch in one of the larger ones, Tonopah. There are lots of donkeys, some horses and some cattle. You cross lots of cattle guards in the roads. It’s hard to see what the animals can eat. There is very little green to see. We think they are going through about a 3-year drought which has probably changed things quite a lot. We also saw lots of dried-up lakes, but there were also some very large lakes, like Lake Walker. The boat launch ramps are now about 50 feet from the water's edge there. Every once in a while you see some green trees and grass along a river valley. It looks like a very harsh place to live and we would never want to live here.
We arrived in Las Vegas around 3:30 and checked in at the KOA. It was so hot here, 38 degrees. We took showers and got cleaned up and then drove to the ‘strip’. We found free parking at Circus Circus (one of the casinos) thanks to our KOA lady who was very helpful.
We then spent the evening walking up and down the main strip and had supper. We can say with certainty that we are not Las Vegas people! There are so many people here and the airplanes are coming and going constantly. We saw the most amazing array of dress and undress, drunk and high, poor and rich, happy and sad that you will ever want to see. And the smells, marijuana, cigarettes, cologne, perfume, food……I could go on and on. We did get to see the eruption of the Mirage Casino volcano which you can feel the heat from across the street and saw the gondolas of the Venice Casino. We got back to our parked van exhausted and happy to be leaving the Las Vegas Strip.





Wow! I'm pretty sure we would not be 'Las Vegas People' either :(
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