Stop 11: Las Vegas, NV

I'll begin by saying that Las Vegas isn't even close to being one of our favorite places on Earth. We don't gamble and the stench (mostly cigarette) of the casinos is overwhelming. We do enjoy some of the shows so that makes it marginally tolerable.

It's a long way across the desert to the parks of Utah and Las Vegas usually ends up being a stopping point. The last couple of times that we've been here, we wanted to see Chriss Angel Believe, a combination magician and Cirque du Soleil performance. The show has always been dark when we've been here. We are staying 3 nights in Vegas so that we can see the show on Tuesday night (it's dark on Sunday and Monday).

Our first afternoon here, we just relaxed outside the trailer. We're staying at a KOA that is associated with Circus Circus. We can sit outside and watch the insane people bungie jump off the tower and go on the crazy rides that are up at the top.

Our view of the Stratiphere as we sit outside our trailer.

Our truck and trailer with everyone's favorite casino-hotel, Circus Circus in the background.

 After dinner, we wandered over to Circus Circus and, of all of the good acts that we might have encountered, we lucked into a juggler.

A table juggler at Circus Circus (she also juggled that flower pot to the right and a couple of scarves).

 On our first full day here, we started with getting some of our business (laundry, paying bills, etc.) out of the way.

I might have mentioned previously that we got rained on as we were preparing to leave Three Rivers a few days back. I know that I didn't mention that we were parked under an oak tree and that the truck and trailer were covered with a nasty, sticky, residue. The truck was easily taken care of at a gas station carwash. The trailer was a problem.

No RV park that we've ever seen lets you wash your RV and the Las Vegas KOA is no exception. Their flyer mentions a service that they will allow to come on sight to wash your RV. Kristen kept encouraging me to call them but I didn't want to waste an afternoon waiting for them to come. While we were eating lunch, we saw this company's truck go by slowly, several times. Kristen encouraged me to flag them down and we now have a Trailer that is as clean as it was when we left home.

After lunch (and the Trailer washing) we decided to visit some of the Las Vegas sites that we had never seen. We occasionally watch Pawn Stars on TV, so we decided to look up Gold & Silver Pawn.

The real Pawn Stars (Rick, the Old Man, Cory and Chumley were nowhere to be seen)

The pawn shop was much bigger than it appears to be on TV.

 Next stop was the Fremont Mall, a now covered area that was the original Las Vegas strip.

The Fremont Mall.

Slotzilla, a new giant slot machine / zip line ride at the Fremont Mall.

Fremont Mall.

One of many old casinos in the Fremont Mall.

Our next stop was the Luxor box office to get our Chriss Angel Believe tickets. Once we found the box office (not easy) we learned that we could get a huge discount if we were to join the Luxor's players club (free to join) so we went off to do that.

To our surprise, we learned that I had been a member since 2005. It must have happened during a fugue state - I had no idea that I was a player. No really, Kristen and I have stayed at the Luxor a couple of times and I think that we saw a show there once. We must have used the same trick to get the discount once before. At any rate, we ended up getting down close tickets for what we would have paid for the nosebleed section.

Day 2, we took care of some chores (marketing, etc.) and, after lunch, took off to do some site seeing prior to eating dinner and seeing our show.

Years ago, when we were there with the kids and the strip was still a wasteland between The Excalibur and Ceasars (No New York New York, no Monte Carlo, no Belagio, no Paris, no Venetian, no Palazzo - just dirt). We walked the couple of miles (in a sandstorm) to go to Treasure Island and see the pirate ship battle. We thought that it might be fun to see it again. We got there and learned that it had very recently been permanently discontinued. The ships are still there and all of the mechanical stuff that used to be under water is fully exposed. We decided to cross the street to The Venetian instead.

The lagoon at The Venetian.

After returning to our truck, we drove down to the Luxor and spent a couple of hours exploring that end of the strip. Buca di Beppo had a sign advertising their $10 margaritas and we decided to rest our feet for a while.

Decided to rest our feet and enjoy some margaritas at Buca di Beppo (Excalibur). Didn't expect these.

 After dinner at Hussongs Cantina (Mandalay Bay), we went to see Chriss Angel Believe. We enjoyed the show immensely and were surprised to see that the Cirque du Soleil aspect of the show was basically clowns that were there to help distract the audience's attention.

They didn't allow photography at Chriss Angel Believe but Chriss did open it up at the end of the show.

We returned to our trailer just as a major wind event started. It rattled us all night and was particularly disturbing in light of our plans to drive across the desert to Utah in the morning.

-JC-

Stop 10: Acton, CA (near Palmdale) and Riley's 1st Birthday Party

Acton is probably not a place that we would ever have come to without good cause. When we realized that we would miss out on our Granddaughter Riley's 1st birthday if we were to set out on our Western Adventure in early April, we made some changes. Our start date became the same but the early part became a loop up the East side of the Sierras and back down the West side. All of this was timed to get us close enough to attend the party. Our first thought was Palmdale so that we'd have a jump on crossing the desert to our next stop. We didn't find any RV Parks in Palmdale so, Acton it was.

Acton is interesting. We're way out in Soledad Canyon which is the home of several movie ranches and of the Shambala Wildlife Preserve. Shambala is next door and is the place that Tippi Hedren set up years ago to rescue big cats. Jack Bauer apparently spent a lot of time out here filming 24 (as did his daughter Kim and the mountain lion).

The Pacific Crest Trail passes through the end of our campground and there's a lawn area where hikers can pitch their tents. I never thought of Pacific Crest hikers stopping at a KOA for the night,

Interesting rocks on the hills surrounding our campground.

 Saturday morning, we headed off for Riley's party.

That's me and the birthday girl. She woke up from her nap to a houseful of people and I'm not sure that she ever quite got back to being her normal, happy self.

Time to blow out the candle!

And here's a volunteer to help with that candle.

Looks good! Riley's first cupcake.

Tasty! Of course the frosting goes first.

Judging from the chocolate on her face, some cake must have found its way into her mouth as well.

Opening presents with lots of help from Colton. Riley seemed more interested in the empty box than she was in what Colton had just taken out of it.

I've mentioned in the past that our Magellan GPS has given us a lot of trouble. We've been through several, good and bad. My Z had a built in GPS that came to be called "Wrong Way Corrigan" for reasons that I won't go into. Kristen has a Magellan, "Maggie", in her car that has never given us a bit of trouble. Someone else must have programmed "Madge", our special RV edition Magellan. "Madge" has never gotten with the program.

On this trip, several people have mentioned that the best RV GPS on the market is made by Rand McNally. We've been waiting until we we're near a Camping World so we could get one. "Madge" is now officially retired. In here place we now have "Mac" (this one has a male voice), our Rand McNally GPS. Hope he works out better.

Tomorrow, we head East to Las Vegas.

Addendum: (Sunday morning) The big cats next door are roaring like crazy!

-JC-

Stop 9: Three Rivers, CA (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks)

We are here for 3 nights. Three Rivers is located where the three forks of the Kaweah River come together. It apparently got started in the late 1800's as some sort of experiment in Socialism. Now, it's better known as a community of artists. Wikipedia says that William Shatner, Angelica Houston, Harvey Keitel and Robert Blake all have homes here. It seems like a very nice place and the RV park that we're in is beautiful.

We spent our first afternoon here checking out the town and relaxing outside our trailer. We're amazed at the enormous number and variety of birds here.

View from our camp chairs.

One of many, many woodpeckers. It's apparently breeding season so they're all too busy to peck trees (Hurray!).

Another woodpecker.

The swimmin' hole (on the North Fork of the Kaweah River).

North Fork of the Kaweah River

North Fork of the Kaweah River

Some quail crossing the campground.

On our first full day here, we headed for Sequoia National Park. It's a long, winding, steep road through the park to get to the Giant Forest, a 3 square mile grove that holds the majority of the worlds largest trees. "World's largest" seems to be a bit of a subjective term. The tallest trees are Coastal Redwoods. The widest trees are Baobabs. The oldest trees are Great Basin Bristlecones. When they say that the Sequoias are largest, they mean that they are the most massive (some sort of volume measurement).

The tree in the center is the General Sherman, the world's most massive tree (274.9' tall, 32.7' diameter).

General Sherman

General Sherman

Looking up into General Sherman.

General Sherman and Kristen (she's the one who isn't a tree).

Looking up between 2 sequoias.

The Sentinel, the world's 42nd most massive tree (257.6' tall, 25.1' diameter) who keeps track of this stuff?).

Looking up into The Sentinel.

The road divides here and the lanes pass between trees.

On a clear day, you can supposedly see 11 ranges of mountains fading into the distance from this view point. The picture doesn't do it justice. The drop off here was straight down for thousands of feet.

Day 2 was our day to visit Kings Canyon National Park. It abuts Sequoia National Park but is actually in 2 separate pieces. The first, more easily accessible, piece was originally called Grant National Park. It was essentially the Grant Grove of sequoias and not much else. When Congress later created Kings Canyon National Park, they incorporated Grant National Park into it.

As luck would have it, the road into that newer, less accessible, portion of the park opened for the season at noon today. Unfortunately, the trip to the more accessible part of the park took so long that, by the time that we'd had some lunch and seen what there was to see, it was time to head back to our trailer. The 80 winding miles to and from the Kings Canyon portion of the park were out of the question.

We did enjoy the portion of the park that we did see even though the air was full of smoke. They were having some sort of controlled burn today and, in most of the park, it was just choking. Fortunately, the least smoky areas were the areas that we wanted to hike in.

On the loop to the General Grant Tree.

On the loop to the General Grant Tree.

On the loop to the General Grant Tree. It's interesting how lighting has shaped the top of these trees. As soon as they get taller that everything around them, lightning blows off the top.

The map showed a shortcut trail to get back to the beginning of the General Grant Tree loop.The trail passed through the length of this burned out, fallen sequoia.

On the loop to the General Grant Tree.

On the loop to the General Grant Tree.

On the loop to the General Grant Tree.

Tada! The General Grant Tree, the world's 2nd most massive tree and the Nation's Christmas Tree (268.1' high, 34.2' diameter). Note that it's another lightning topped tree.

The burned side of the General Grant Tree.

Another shot of the burned side.

General Grant Tree (looking up at the lightning damage).

On the loop to the General Grant Tree.

Our next stop was the Big Stump. It was a very long downhill trail to the stump and it was hard to not think about the uphill climb back to the car. We saw some really big stumps but I don't think that we ever got to "The" Big Stump.

Huge branch on the trail to the Big Stump.

A big stump (not "The" Big Stump).

That's me on that big stump.

Kristen in front of another big stump (but not "The" Big Stump).

Another shot of that tree with the big branch.

Tomorrow, we're off for Acton, CA (near Palmdale) where we'll stay while we attend our Granddaughter Riley's 1st birthday party. Then we'll be able to really start on our Western Adventure.

-JC-