Tour Diary - Day Sixteen
Jan. 17th, 2017 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanLeaving Las Vegas...
October 19th, Wednesday - Las Vegas to Mammoth Lakes
An earlier rising than the last couple of days - must mean we're on the move again. No sunrise shots in Las Vegas though. Packing, showering, packing again, last idiot-check of the room, then waking up Travis down in his undercover parking, onto the north freeway (on purpose this time!) & out to Death Valley. Las Vegas is still busy expanding, with housing estates still popping up long after you've left the main part of the city behind. But they're selling, so...
A little while out of town, we passed the Creech Air Force Base & saw a drone coming in to land - someone, somewhere there was having fun with a joystick... Driving on a little further, you arrive at the Amargosa Valley, near the Nevada Test & Training Range & more commonly known as Area 51. We didn't realise where we were - all we saw from the highway was Daddy D's 50s Diner & a petrol station. It wasn't until we pulled in there, with breakfast on our minds, that we saw the 'Area 51 Alien Center' &, more unexpectedly, the 'Alien Cathouse Brothel' right next door to the Diner. Intelligent extra-terrestrial life flew across millions of light-years to come & get laid, it would seem. All 3 establishments are run by a local "business identity" named Dennis Hof (not the Hoff). He also owns the Bunny Ranch elsewhere in Nevada & is running for the Nevada State Office... well, he has a fairly good idea of what his constituents are interested in, I suppose. I learned all this from the publicity cards placed at every table in the Diner. Despite all that, the breakfast was good... basic, but solid without being too huge. I declined Julia's offer to take a tour of the Cathouse - I can't tell if she was disappointed or not, but I don't think anything you'd see in a brothel at midday on a Wednesday would be worth seeing. Certainly not judging by the one guy I saw coming out of there adjusting his zipper & walking a bit funny... He was a little man, but not a green one
Back onto the highway for a while, before TomTom directed us onto a dirt road, which brought us to one of the entrances to Death Valley National Park. True to its name, the vegetation began to thin out & almost disappear entirely as we drove in. I was expecting rather flat ground, or a descent to below sea-level, then a climb back up, but the area is both larger & more mountainous than you'd think. One moment you're up 5000ft, then down to sand dunes & sea level, then back up to 4000ft... It was quite a hot place though - even in the middle ofAutumn Fall. Absolutely no humidity, as you'd expect. We'd been forewarned by roadsigns & by the waitress at the Diner to not run the aircon in the car, so made do with a couple of windows rolled down to get what breeze there was... & to collect a little more sand in the cabin. There were small sand twisters blowing across the Valley floor in a few areas & we drove through at least one of them - windows up!!
Signs of life in the Valley included a small town... more of an outpost, really... where we topped up the petrol tank & checked oil & water levels. There were also far more tourists than we expected, or wanted (How are you supposed to take photos of this lonely desolation when there are people everywhere??!!), unidentified small critters running across the road in front of Travis, a USAF fighter jet buzzing the valley & hills... & 4 coyotes on the side of the road, standing ominously still, silent, then stalking the couple of cars that pulled up to see them, including us. Time to go...
A last climb out of the Valley, then we dropped down into the stretch of land that runs between the walls of Death Valley on the right & the Sierra Nevada mountains on the left, over the other side of which lies the end of our journey... some time next week. For now, we wanted to cross over, preferably via the 120 route through Yosemite, so we could see Half Dome & El Capitan in the snow. Unfortunately, we were told at a little National Parks office at the Valley exit, that the Yosemite route was closed due to a rockslide, so we headed further north, with the hope of crossing the mountains at Bridgeport & heading for Sacramento. We were running out of day by this time though, so detoured to Mammoth Lakes - a ski resort town just starting to wake up for the upcoming season. There is snow on the higher peaks of the Sierra Nevada, so it won't be long...
Our accommodation was the local Travelodge, just off the main road & a short walk to the local pizza joint. Plenty of warning signs about black bear activity were posted & reinforced by the desk clerk, who advised us to get all food & drink out of the car, in case the bears decide to break in for it. I think we got it all... I hope so
Dinner at the pizza place, then back to our room where I've been catching up on 3 days of diary. Now... bed
October 19th, Wednesday - Las Vegas to Mammoth Lakes
An earlier rising than the last couple of days - must mean we're on the move again. No sunrise shots in Las Vegas though. Packing, showering, packing again, last idiot-check of the room, then waking up Travis down in his undercover parking, onto the north freeway (on purpose this time!) & out to Death Valley. Las Vegas is still busy expanding, with housing estates still popping up long after you've left the main part of the city behind. But they're selling, so...
A little while out of town, we passed the Creech Air Force Base & saw a drone coming in to land - someone, somewhere there was having fun with a joystick... Driving on a little further, you arrive at the Amargosa Valley, near the Nevada Test & Training Range & more commonly known as Area 51. We didn't realise where we were - all we saw from the highway was Daddy D's 50s Diner & a petrol station. It wasn't until we pulled in there, with breakfast on our minds, that we saw the 'Area 51 Alien Center' &, more unexpectedly, the 'Alien Cathouse Brothel' right next door to the Diner. Intelligent extra-terrestrial life flew across millions of light-years to come & get laid, it would seem. All 3 establishments are run by a local "business identity" named Dennis Hof (not the Hoff). He also owns the Bunny Ranch elsewhere in Nevada & is running for the Nevada State Office... well, he has a fairly good idea of what his constituents are interested in, I suppose. I learned all this from the publicity cards placed at every table in the Diner. Despite all that, the breakfast was good... basic, but solid without being too huge. I declined Julia's offer to take a tour of the Cathouse - I can't tell if she was disappointed or not, but I don't think anything you'd see in a brothel at midday on a Wednesday would be worth seeing. Certainly not judging by the one guy I saw coming out of there adjusting his zipper & walking a bit funny... He was a little man, but not a green one
Back onto the highway for a while, before TomTom directed us onto a dirt road, which brought us to one of the entrances to Death Valley National Park. True to its name, the vegetation began to thin out & almost disappear entirely as we drove in. I was expecting rather flat ground, or a descent to below sea-level, then a climb back up, but the area is both larger & more mountainous than you'd think. One moment you're up 5000ft, then down to sand dunes & sea level, then back up to 4000ft... It was quite a hot place though - even in the middle of
Signs of life in the Valley included a small town... more of an outpost, really... where we topped up the petrol tank & checked oil & water levels. There were also far more tourists than we expected, or wanted (How are you supposed to take photos of this lonely desolation when there are people everywhere??!!), unidentified small critters running across the road in front of Travis, a USAF fighter jet buzzing the valley & hills... & 4 coyotes on the side of the road, standing ominously still, silent, then stalking the couple of cars that pulled up to see them, including us. Time to go...
A last climb out of the Valley, then we dropped down into the stretch of land that runs between the walls of Death Valley on the right & the Sierra Nevada mountains on the left, over the other side of which lies the end of our journey... some time next week. For now, we wanted to cross over, preferably via the 120 route through Yosemite, so we could see Half Dome & El Capitan in the snow. Unfortunately, we were told at a little National Parks office at the Valley exit, that the Yosemite route was closed due to a rockslide, so we headed further north, with the hope of crossing the mountains at Bridgeport & heading for Sacramento. We were running out of day by this time though, so detoured to Mammoth Lakes - a ski resort town just starting to wake up for the upcoming season. There is snow on the higher peaks of the Sierra Nevada, so it won't be long...
Our accommodation was the local Travelodge, just off the main road & a short walk to the local pizza joint. Plenty of warning signs about black bear activity were posted & reinforced by the desk clerk, who advised us to get all food & drink out of the car, in case the bears decide to break in for it. I think we got it all... I hope so
Dinner at the pizza place, then back to our room where I've been catching up on 3 days of diary. Now... bed
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(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-17 08:25 pm (UTC)Next time I go cross country, I want to see Yosemity and Death Valley and more of that area. Sounds like a beautiful place. We'd gone to Yellowstone last year, which was amazing and worth a few weeks on its own.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-18 01:01 am (UTC)And as the rest of the galaxy knows... 'Earth Girls Are Easy
(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-18 12:47 pm (UTC)