June 21, 2013

Where we stayed last night there was nothing. No towns, no people, no lights. Just us, the wild, the moon and a few other RVs in a lot. Roughing it. By the end of the day we will be in one of the brightest, busiest places in the country. Hard to believe two worlds live so close together.

Again, I was up early to get us rolling.

Today will be hot and passing through the desert in the high sun isn’t going to work for Flyer.

The Utah landscape was as beautiful today as yesterday. Red flowers lined the banks of the highway and mountains rose up on all sides.

Bluffs of red rock bordered the road as we moved further south.

We passed into Arizona and entered a rock cavern. Basically the road had been cut out of this massive mountain of solid rock. The rose colored rock (sorry my camera didn’t pick up the color well) stretched hundreds of feet up around us on all sides. We twisted and turned down through the narrow road. Glad we aren’t trying to come up this!

Passing into Nevada was like skipping a chapter in a book. As quickly as the red rock mountain had come it was gone. There were now brown plains with sprigs of green and dry dusty mountains.

250 miles doesn’t seem like long but with the hills to climb and temps quickly climbing into the 90′s lots of breaks were needed, for everyone. Legoboy decided to take a short stroll while Flyer took a breather at the top of a hill.

It was hot. Even Oscar forfeited his warm sun and engine sleeping spots in favor of places cooler

Soon the outline of the city appeared in the distance and the mountains faded away behind us as we moved down the hill into Las Vegas.

We went to Circus Circus, an indoor amusement park, to spent some time cooling down before heading to our friends. The rides were mostly simple and the kids had a good time

There were random stages as you circled the “dome” and the boys got called on stage to help with the act

It was a good time until Legoboy realized he had lost his hip pack with his camera. He was devastated because “the pictures from his whole life were on that camera”. It was heart breaking to see him so devastated. Fortunately, Sparky had copied all of his pics that were on his camera before we left on our trip to my computer so we still have those. We just lost all his trip ones. He can copy some of mine, but he says, “they aren’t the pictures the way I took them”… so sad… Sorry Legoboy, it’s the best I can offer.

With Legoboy’s birthday just a few days away I guess a trip to Best Buy will be happening tomorrow to get him a new camera.

We arrived at our friends house and the kids were able to expend some more energy in their bouncy house. Perfect, they will sleep well tonight.