Las Vegas and Death Valley

After we left Grand Canyon on Thursday, we drove to Las Vegas.  There was still snow on the ground at Grand Canyon when we woke up and we had to clear it off the car.

On the way to Las Vegas, we went to Hoover Dam, which was built in the 1930s along the Colorado River.  There was so much concrete it would have taken 100 years to cure, but they put cooling pipes inside it to help it cure faster.  We went inside and saw the power plant generators and we looked out an air vent shaped like a shield and could see down the dam to the Colorado River.  I waved my hand outside the vent and there is a myth that says a person is buried inside the dam and if we wave our hands through the vent, people might see it and think it is true.

In Las Vegas we got a hotel then went to a casino to have dinner and we saw tonnes of people gambling.  We walked along the Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) and saw people dressed up as people from movies and cartoons, including Iron Man, Minions, Thor, Captain America, Chewbacca, Bert & Ernie and others.  We got to the water and sound show outside the Bellagio casino and the volcano explosion outside the Mirage casino.  There were heaps of people and cars around at night in Las Vegas and the lights on the Strip were terrific.

On Friday, we went to a ghost town named Rhyolite, which was a mining town in Desert Valley.  I didn't like it, as I am scared of ghosts.  There are remains of stone buildings, a wooden building and a house made out of over 30,000 bottles.  At one stage there were over 10,000 people living here, but the town died out within about 10 years as mining stopped.  There is an art gallery there now as well as the ruins.

We then drove into Death Valley National Park, and went to the Visitor Centre at Furnace Creek where Robin & I got our 3rd Junior Ranger badge.  We went to Badwater Basin which is -85 meters below sea level and is the lowest in the Western Hemisphere.  Death Valley is the hottest and driest place on earth, but it was not really hot when we were there as it was late afternoon/evening when we were there.  The colors of the rocks in Death Valley were green, brown, blue and pink - due to the different minerals found there. We finished our day with a long evening drive to Crestridge where we had dinner and stayed the night.