Death Valley

In 2005 during a Las Vegas visit we made an excursion to Death Valley. It's over 100 miles away from the city and all we basically knew it from were the land speed records that were set there on the Salt Flats -oh, and the fact that the highest temperatures in the USA are usually recorded there and the lowest point in the continental USA lives there too.

100 mile drives are what Drivin' Adair lives for!

At the airport on arrival I did my usual Hertz routine. I am a Gold Club member so my car is always waiting with the keys in it. We always go to the car and see what we have awaiting. Then I walk around the lot to see if there is anything I would prefer. Corvette convertible? Looks sexy and fast (which it is) but too low and no room for luggage. Oh!- here's a little gem....an Audi S4 convertible.

So I go to the Hertz office and change the paperwork from a Jaguar to an Audi.

With this car in mind a quick zip up to Death Valley seemed inevitable.

Smooth roads, a pleasure to drive on

This is the outer edge of the park

I'm shooting video at this point

There aren't many people out here...

Beautiful soft colors in the rocks

These are the natural colors!

We're not even in a valley yet

As you can see we are still close to the road and haven't had to go far to take these photos.

We have climbed (walked more like) to a high overlook. You might be able to see the red car way down below at center.

Ah, now we can see the valley beyond 

Back in the car for a drive along the edge of the valley

The park averages 3,000 visitors a day (A million a year). Where are they? The answer lies in the fact that it covers 5,400 square miles....

This is a vast salt flat

 crunchy underfoot

The Sea Level sign on the cliff

Wide open spaces

With a long drive ahead of us and not wanting to be in the park when it got dark-even though it is one of the best places to view the night sky- we drove on. We had the smooth winding valley road to ourselves and I had fun driving at speed on this desert road that was new to me. We could have retraced our tracks and returned via the highway but this was more of an adventure. We left the park at Shoshone and took a country road to Pahrump and from there the city was only 20 miles or so fast drive away.

Back to the Bellagio!

More amazing hotels

One of my favorite hotels to visit in Las Vegas is the Venetian which brings a taste of that most unique city to the Strip. It's an all-suites hotel (4,024 rooms) with a Venetian lagoon out front facing the street.
You can see the gondolas tied up in the photo below. The tower is a replica of Venice's Campanile in St Mark's Square and the Rialto bridge is also on view.

 Inside there is a painted ceiling to give the illusion that we are still outdoors and singing gondoliers take passengers for a ride (for a fee of course). It's all good fun!

In the shopping area is a waterfall

The pumpkins and autumn colors in the photo above would tell me that we took this in the Fall-basically the whole month of October in the USA. When it comes to indoor gardens though the Bellagio has all the other hotels beat as I'll show you at some point in the future.

Of course there's a casino...

And restaurants owned by celebrity chefs- in this case the renowned Italian chef Mario Batali (and his savvy business partner Joe Bastianich)

Nearby the Venetian is a more normal looking hotel which bears the name of the entrepreneur Steve Winn who among other things is responsible for the Mirage Hotel and Bellagio. The Wynn doesn't have an obvious theme like some of the others but offers elegant rooms and grounds and of course a plethora of restaurants-15 or so, some very highly regarded and winners of a Michelin Star.  The interior decorations in the public walkways are the work of his wife and of dubious taste (too ornate and fussy-calm down lady!)

The Wynn has 2700 rooms and those at the rear overlook a lake and the hotel's own18 hole golf course. Rooms range in size from 640 sq.ft to 7,000 sq.ft. villas (yikes!!!)There are 10 villas.
It's sister hotel the Encore sits close behind.
Of course it has a big casino too (111,000 sq.ft). You can see some of the high end shops.

After the Wynn and Encore the famous and stunning hotels thin out. Downtown Las Vegas is a 15 minute walk away but it has a more down-market feel and look to it, although some of the oldest casinos are there and they do put on a neon- light show over the  partly covered main street, Fremont Street each night.

The luxury and pizzaz ends here, for me, so I turn and walk back down the Strip....

and come upon the Mirage-the first themed hotel built on the Strip in 1989. At night a volcano erupts close to the street and inside the hotel lobby it looks like a tropical rain forest (I am not making this up!)

 There is a must-see show for Beatles fans (guilty!) which is Cirque du Soleil acrobatics set to some great Beatles music-the original tapes remastered by George Martin and the sound is incredible high-fidelity for those who originally heard them through 1960's vinyl records, TV sets and cheap radios.

Inside the hotel, once you hack your way through the tropical forest the reception desk features a remarkable 53 feet by 8 feet glass aquarium behind the check-in desk. Try and concentrate while the lady is asking for your information!

The hotel also has dolphins and a white tiger on display and they are real...we saw Siegfried and Roy here many years ago before their trained tiger mauled Roy and ended his fabulous career.

It looks like Caesar's Palace will be coming up next if I keep walking...

Caesar's is a hotel that has kept growing over the years. It speaks of Italy, hence the cypress trees and the fountains and statuary.

The hotel has added more buildings since this photo was taken on one of our first visits. The hotel was built in 1966 and so has had almost 50 years of morphing going on. It now has 3,960 rooms and 166,000 sq. ft devoted to gambling.

 Just peeking into the right side of the frame in this next shot is the round 4300 seat theater called the Colosseum, which was built to house Celine Dion's first 3 year residency at Caesar's back in I think 2003(?). Whenever it was we got front row seats for one of her shows at a then record for Las Vegas $220 each, which is about what the best seats in an Opera house would cost. She is back there again for a contract that will take her through 2017 but in the meantime Bette Middler, Elton John and Cher have all done long residencies at Caesar's. Even President Obama has performed in a show there (a fund raiser)

You will NOT be bored in las Vegas!!

A last look at one of the many gardens at Caesar's

Right, I'm walking back home to the Bellagio now as my feet are killing me!

Valley of Fire State Park

Our Vegas days always start at the Bellagio Buffet, where we fuel up. There is often a line of people waiting for a table at breakfast time but the staff are adept at moving it along so soon you are wandering around the multiple food stations , surveying the many choices. Fresh food keeps being added as they are ready-nothing gets to sit too long. Then when you have mentally selected your favorites you zoom in and start loading your plate. A waitress will come to your table with iced water, coffee and orange juice.

Then it's into the car (we get our own from the parking garage as it saves us time) as we are off on an adventure. We're going to explore what's beyond those mountains we can see from our hotel window. A map tells us we'll find the Valley of Fire State Park and we believe it. We'll leave the city via a highway on the outskirts of the city and drive until we reach Lake Mead, before the Hoover Dam, and then turn left to follow the lake over some winding hilly roads that are fun to drive, even in a car with automatic transmission and no convertible top.

Lake Mead ahoy!

Once we turn left before the lake there will be much less traffic. To get to the Hoover Dam we would have stayed on the road around the lake to the right. It has taken us about 35 minutes to come this far.

As you can see there are no crowds and no casinos here, by the Lake. You can enjoy the peace and quiet.

There are many places where you can pull off the road to take photos or just soak it all in with your eyes.

There are some marinas where people keep their pleasure boats

Ugly, isn't it?

We are not in a rush. We have brought sandwiches with us for lunch-and some cold drinks. There are some barbecue grills here for people who want to cook their own lunch outdoors. Bring your own charcoal.

Eventually we drive on towards the park. Our rental car on this visit was the comfortable Jaguar S Type.

I'm shooting video (on tape) prior to the digital age of videography. We recorded the tape onto a DVD later at home and still have the memories of how quiet and still it was out there.

We resisted the temptation to climb up on the rocks for a better view

I'm sure at some point- probably at this structure, there was a metal box and a sign asking us to make a donation to the upkeep of the park so we dropped $5 or so in to help.

All of the photos back then were taken using a Canon point and shoot digital camera. I haven't been back to this beautiful part of Nevada since I bought a Canon DSLR camera and some editing software. Hopefully at some point in the future we will return. This was also before the days when I photographed every plate of food that was set in front of me even though many of the meals deserved to have their picture taken.

Desert wildflowers

Shrubs and bushes manage to survive out here in the desert

So many colors

Occasionally you will meet other people as you pull into one of the many parking lay-bys to take photos or a break from driving.

We are within 50 miles of Las Vegas-but a world away

Picnic tables and charcoal grilling stations can be found in most of the roadside parking lots

The road runs right through the sandstone rock formations and is as smooth as glass (no potholes!)

We drive slowly through as does everyone else as there is so much beauty to see while driving.

The sandstone here is dated from 150 million years ago

The park is vast-42,000 acres but we see as much as we can without rushing

At some point we have to leave so that we can be out of the park so that we can be out of it and back onto a highway that runs back to the city (not the same way we came). We are at an elevation of 2500 feet so much of the desert road is going downhill, then across a dusty plain which is Native American land. We can see the highway from miles away and once we reach it we can drive at 75 mph towards the city which is just beginning to light up for the night-and there is no place that lights up the dusk more than Las Vegas.

An hour later we are back in the Bellagio for the dinner Buffet before going out to a show-maybe we'll go to the Flamingo across the street to see the great comedian George Wallace? We have many choices...