Monday, Kingman to Death Valley

We took our time getting up, particularly Ms Tina… who has a fondness for sleeping in… Leaving Kingman we used the phone to find a Starbucks (for which Ms Tina also has a fondness for…)  It was up what might have appeared to be a side street, then across the freeway… and it showed us a extensive well developed part of Kingman which as tourists we would likely never have found…  but rather than exploring the suburbia of Kingman, we instead found the freeway entrance, then the exit for Las Vegas and headed northeast…

The area between Kingman and Boulder (or Hoover) dam is not exactly uninhabited desert… there are mobile homes on 5 acre lots and lots of 5 acre lots to be had… signs for the old mining town of Cloride…  an abandoned Santa’s village… located next to a junk yard...  (we might have stopped and taken photos.)  In general this route is a a place of clutter…

The country gets interesting as you drop down towards the lake and the dam and the new bridge…  Driving across the new bridge is underwhelming… with high double guard rails you don’t see what you are crossing… on the north side there is a exit which will take you to the dam and a view of the bridge, and a chance to walk across the bridge, but it is a long two lane road which on this day was quite congested…  we passed…  We did however get our penalty hour back as we returned to the Pacific Time Zone…

Beyond the bridge you first see a casino, then reach the town of Boulder… (as in Boulder Dam)  The town was built to house the dam workers, but the view from the highway is of a modern suburban community with big houses… You have to turn off the main road towards “historic Boulder” to find the older town of older houses and smaller cute shops… with a bonus…  really good street art… I suspect the art came from transportation enhancement funds as compensation when the new road to the new bridge bypassed the older town… the art is in the form of bronze statues… there are lots… statues of dam workers… statues of a kid on a tricycle… and my favorite and the one we were looking for, the  Statue of Alabam the “Belatedly Appreciated Outhouse Cleaner”…  was a Hoover Dam worker who cleaned and restocked the outhouses. The bronze statue depicts him as he often looked in life, with rolls of toilet paper draped over his shoulder.  It was worth the detour…

Beyond Boulder you reach Las Vegas… on a whim we detoured and tried to drive down the strip… tried being the operative word… the strip on this day before New Year’s eve was gridlocked… we made it about 4 blocks before turning off and finding the freeway via equally gridlocked side streets.

It was near lunch so Tina brought the phone out and tried to find somewhere to stop… there were issues…  a “nearby restaurant” search covered a circumference of 20 miles and all the dining possibilities in Las Vegas…  While we have visited Las Vegas several times, we don’t really know the neighborhoods, so narrowing the search was a challenge… as we she would narrow the search we would pass candidate restaurants as we drove up I 95… Eventually we found a good target…  Wine-5-Café… great reviews, but not many…   What Tina didn’t pick up from the reviews was that it was a Kenyan-Fusion restaurant…  It was a spectacular lunch… 

Now back on I-95… I wanted to come it to Las Vegas from the junction off I-95, not the short cut through Pahrump…  So we stay on I-95… We had a bit of excitement passing Creech AFB at Indian Springs… Tina noted an unusual airplane to our right… It was a Predator drone…  The scourge of Afganistan… landing at the base… 

Beyond we reached the Jct, with the Area 51 Alien Visitor Center… complete with store, bar, gas station and whore house… next door is the fireworks store with the “world’s largest fire cracker” (in reality the water tower painted red and decorated….)  We stopped, took a couple of pictures and went into the store, which adjoined the bar (and the house out back)…  the girls from the house outback were wandering about, adding a bit of reality to the visit… 

Back on the road, this time headed south… we pass a large fiberglass cow… a sign for a casino… then reach Death Valley Jct… one time railroad junction, with the Amagosa Opera House, café, and hotel… we look about, then head westward into Death Valley…  We detour to visit Dante’s View, high above the valley floor…  Then drop down the canyon towards Furnace Creek… pausing again at Zybrinski point as the sun dropped behind Telegraph peak…. then to Badwater in twilight…   This was the lovely Tina’s first visit to Death Valley…  While she has traveled in the desert, Death Valley was a surprise… for its vastness, for its complete lack of vegetation, and for the geologic features…

Back to Furnace Creek to check in… drop bags at the room, then we went over to Airport road, to look for Coyotes (none spotted) but also to get a bit away from anything to look at stars…  Back to Furnace Creek to find dinner (we ate in the bar, the “Corkscrew Saloon”) then walk back to our room, through the gift shop (nothing compelling) through the museum’s outdoor exhibits (whatever is identified by sign post 61 is still missing….) stopping at the corral (a single mule was a bit social and came over to visit) then out onto the golf course to again get away from lights and stare at the sky…  the sky alone is worth the visit…