From one extreme to another, then another!

When we awoke on Thursday morning, it was to scenes like this:

And, when we retired for the night, it was with this around us:

En route from Grand Canyon (-2 degrees Celcius, but a dry cold, quite brisk and with brilliant blue skies) to Las Vegas, we passed a couple of old mining towns (Mineral and Chloride - neither of which were worth our 10-15min detours to investigate them, sorry!) and spent time at Hoover Dam, an engineering feat for its time: 2.6 million cubic meters of concrete, 221.3 meters high, 201.2 meters wide at the base, 17 generators, completed in 1935, created America's largest man-made reservoir (Lake Mead), provides irrigation for more than 1 million acres of land in the USA and almost 1/2 million acres in Mexico (and California provides 1/3 of the food crops for the USA!), provides water for more than 20 million people, generates low-cost power in 3 states, provides recreation facilities for lots of people.  We went on a tour inside the dam and the power plant - at one stage, the waters of Lake Mead were separated from us by a mere 40 feet of concrete (that is old concrete - don't forget, it was made in 1931-1935!!).

Then, Las Vegas.  Glitz, glamour, lights, noise, smoking, gambling, people, cars.  It was frenetic and wild.  We saw the water and sound show at the Bellagio and the volcano eruption at the Mirage.  We went inside the Planet Hollywood casino (and ate dinner, and wandered around).  We saw scantily clad women (g-strings and stickers over their nipples, and feathers in their headgear) - the (younger) boys didn't take that much notice of them - they were more interested in the Minions and Superheroes located along every block of the Strip.  But, there were also seedier parts of the city - we went up some stairs to cross a major road, and there was a definite smell of marijuana in the air, and there were homeless people on the bridge as well).  That is something that Karl has particularly noticed, and commented on - the number of homeless people in the cities we have been to (apparently, there are even homeless people living in hollows under rocks around Joshua Tree).  He asked us the other day, "Do the homeless people die before other people, because they are homeless?".

Today, we left Las Vegas behind, and eventually left Nevada, crossing back into California once more.  We drove past Area 51 in the Nevada Desert, site of the atomic bomb testing (look it up on Google maps - you can see the rounds of the impact zones), saw some pilot-less US Air Force MQ-1 Predator drones flying, saw some sand storms ("twirly whirly roundy things"), and even saw a brothel in the middle of the desert (the boys weren't looking out of the windows at that stage).

Looked through Rhyolite, an old mining town within Death Valley that only lasted for about 10 years before the dreams died.  It went from up to 10,000 people to less than 1,000 in the space of about 2 years, and is now virtually abandoned, with some artists there and that's about all - a real ghost town.  One of the houses was made of over 30,000 bottles, and other stone structures have survived (the wooden ones were removed to other towns or sold and used as firewood).

Finally, Death Valley National Park.  A short visit, unfortunately, but interesting.  We went down to 185.5 meters below sea level at Badwater Basin (and yes, we did taste the salt there, just because we could!).  The colours in the rocks and sands along the valley walls was amazing - reds, pinks, greens, whites, browns, tans, coppers - due to the various minerals in the Valley - gold, copper, borax, talc.  There are old borax mines in the area.  Luckily for us, the temperature was no higher than about 37 degrees Celcius, but again, it was a dry heat, with a cooling wind.  In fact, it was quite pleasant when we were there.  There a number of springs and oases in the valley, and a couple of nice places to stay (if money is not an issue).

The boys hurriedly completed their third Junior Ranger badge.

Finally, ended up here in Ridgecrest for the night - a typical 2-double bed room.  Apparently, the town used to be called Crumville!!  Not sure if we will find anything to do here tomorrow before we head north-ish, but who knows?