Seven Magic Mountains

Went sightseeing yesterday before we parked the car until we leave.  Drove south of town to an art project called Seven Magic Mountains.  The artist built the stones out in the middle of nowhere (which isn't hard to do in Nevada).  Very colorful and in stark contrast to the surrounding desert.  It's about ten miles south on Las Vegas Blvd which parallels I-15. 

We had seen a news story about the art project and had bookmarked the story to make sure we visited it on this trip.  The stones all have a rod running through them to anchor them; otherwise, I'm sure someone would try to topple them. It's only supposed to be in place for a couple of years, then he's going to move it somewhere else.

As you can imagine, Las Vegas is very crowded (talk about an understatement!).  You're shoulder to shoulder wherever you go.  Fun people-watching - all sizes, shapes, ethnic, geographic groups - a lot of families.  Tonight is the firework display on the Strip - supposed to last eight minutes and cost in access of $500,000.  Not sure where we will watch from - crowds ain't our thing, so it might be from the hotel room.

Tomorrow we're leaving Las Vegas and heading south to Laughlin for a couple of days.  Hank and Diane Arends (Hank is Mary's brother) will be there before they head further south to spend the winter in Parker, CA.  They're from Minnesota and always spend the winter in their fifth-wheel in Parker which is on the CA-AZ border. 

Hope you all have a Happy New Year and celebrate safely, but with a lot of fun. 

Las Vegas, NV

Pahrump was a good and bad stop on the way to Las Vegas (more on the bad later).  We stayed at the Golden Nugget in the center of town.  One of Pahrump's claims to fame is that they are one of the gateways to Death Valley, so you can imagine the scenery is of desert and mountains.  On Thursday we played golf at Lakeview which is an executive golf course (only par 3's and 4's), so our score looked pretty good.  Course was in winter shape with some temporary greens and, because of the rain, was a little muddy.  You can see Mt Charleston in the background

The "bad" part of our trip was caused by an unexpected trip to the Desert View Hospital emergency room.  I had been experiencing a sharp pain in my groin area and we decided it was better to get it checked out before it got worse.  So we cut our golf game short (after nine holes) and went to DVH.  Nice little hospital in Pahrump and we were in an out in about an hour.  Dr. Heller diagnosis was an inguinal hernia which wasn't bad enough for an operation, but needed something for pain management and some restrictions on what I could and couldn't do.  So Vi gets to lift the suitcases in and out of the car :-).  He said riding in the car wouldn't be a problem, so we're continuing on with our trip.  So yesterday I was at the hospital in sympathy with Danny (wisdom teeth removal) and JT (pins in his broken leg). 

Our drive into Las Vegas was without incident and we arrived, with our normal good timing, right at rush hour!  I think it took as long to get from where we entered LV as it did for the trip from Pahrump to LV.  We're here with 300,000 of our closest friends to ring in the new year.  Great room at Ballys with a view of the High Roller.

 

We'll explore Las Vegas today and then may just keep the Red Baron parked.

Pahrump, NV

Ahhh, the sun is shining and the temperature is twice what it was when we left home this morning.  As you may have heard on the news, there were several earthquakes in the Hawthorne, NV area earlier in the day.  Because we weren't sure exactly what the road conditions would be through Hawthorne, we decided to take a different route.  We had to stop at Fallon NAS and take care of some errands, so we continued further east on US 50 to Middlegate. 

US 50 is billed as the "Loneliest Highway in the United States, but it's a major thoroughfare when compared to NV 361 which we took south off US 50.  We went 100 miles and didn't see another car the entire route.  There was a shortcut off NV 361 which I thought we might try; however, when we got to that turn-off, we found that the Gabbs Poleline Road was not a paved road and was totally muddy and snow-covered.  Discretion was the better part of valor - didn't want to subject the Red Baron to 60 some odd miles of mud and snow.  Can just see the headlines now!  We didn't want to be the next story like the couple from Indiana which got stuck going to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Went through Gabbs, NV which is a thriving metropolis - must be all of a hundred souls living there.  It's the site of the oldest active mine in Nevada, so the magnesium and silver business must be doing well.  When we went through Tonopah, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground, but it was melting pretty fast.  The elevation at Tonopah is around 6000' and when you head south out of there, it gets lower and warmer.  We ended up here in Pahrump at around 2900' with temperatures near 60 degrees.  Absolutely balmy - so tomorrow we play golf before heading to Las Vegas.

Packing Up

Just wanted to set up a blog so that you could keep track of our travels (or not, as the case may be!).  I enjoy using the blog as a way of keeping track of our trip.  If others find it interesting, that's a plus.

We leave tomorrow (Wednesday) heading south in search of warmer weather.  The first stop is Pahrump, NV where we hope to play golf and stay a day or two.  Then, it's on to Las Vegas for several days where we will celebrate New Year's Eve with approximately 300,000 of our closest friends.  Then we figure since we're that far south, we might as well continue on and visit Char and the boys in Florida.  The Red Baron rides again!

Last night we celebrated with friends (it was their 48th anniversary), married one year longer than we. 

Hopefully, we will write tomorrow evening from a warm area.  Hope you all are enjoying life.  Take care and we'll try to keep you posted on our travels.