Leaving Las Vegas

 

Good morning from sunny Las Vegas, where we are spending a relatively chill morning in the comfort of our hotel room. No need to rush to check-out, even though we fly out today - the flight is only at midnight, and I booked a second day at the hotel just so we would have somewhere to crash today, and not be "homeless" until we collected our bags and went to the airport. So I blog, we watch the news, snack on granola bars and apples left from the campervan. We plan on eating later, since our schedule is going to be a little delayed with the super late flight. There's some last-minute repacking going on, but we've come to the conclusion that we really have bought too much stuff, and will be needing to purchase a large duffle bag to crate it all home.  

Back to the monorail we go, to give it a little more love, and to head out to the center of the Las Vegas Strip for Brunch. We grab a table at The Henry, an up-scale American brunch place in the Cosmopolitan, where the food is good, the portions huge, and you could probably drown in your cup of coffee! I was very happy with my brioche French toast, except for one thing: as a born and bred Quebecoise, I find it very insulting when restaurants try to pass fake table syrup as maple syrup. As a chef, I am even more insulted at a menu that specifically lists maple syrup as an ingredient in a dish, here as an accompaniment, and then tries to fool me with a cup of that cloyingly sweet and thick-as-glue Auntie Jemima stuff. That's false advertising, and just not good. I made a very serious mention of it to our server, who was completely aware of the switch, but said the chef sometimes can't access the real stuff, and possible just doesn't care about the substitution - either way, it seemed that my critique was not going to make an ounce of difference, and so I ate my Brioche with the very good Bonne Maman Strawberry preserves instead.

We opted to fill our time today with a visit to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, playing at the Shops at the Crystals, a VERY high-end mall next to the Cosmopolitan. We've had the pleasure of experiencing one of these shows before, in New York City: Paintings are projected across the walls of a large hall, often with some editing and movement done to make the piece feel more alive, and it is always set to mood-appropriate music. It's a very special way to experience art you are already familiar with. Mario and I both love Van Gogh, and have seen many of his works around the world, so this was going to extra special. 

Admiring Van Gogh's Cyprus trees under active skies	Self portrait with straw hat (candles are added in)
Olive trees enveloppe the hall	Wheatfield with Crows

Imagine suddenly being surrounded by a dark night sky filled with stars, the landscape full of tall Cyprus trees seemingly shifting with the winds... "Starry Night" is one of Mario's favorites, and though we've seen the really painting up close, this gives it a whole other feel. My only comment is that the space is a little dull. Perhaps that is only because the first Immersive experience we had was in an old Bank building, and so the architecture of the venue was as interesting as the projections, and added so much more depth to the show.

Insert here an intermission where we buy a duffle bag at the "World's Largest Gift Shop", and return to the hotel to waste away the rest of the afternoon. There is a little bit of blogging, a whole lot of "American Pickers" watched, and a final shower before departing for the airport.

Turns out that not a lot of flights leave Las Vegas at midnight, so we breeze through check-in and security at the airport. I snack on a jar of salad from one of the shops, and we both yawn our heads off, this being the latest either one of us had stayed up for weeks. Eventually, we board, watch movies, drink free wine, and try to get some sleep. 

Flying out over Las Vegas

Love how the lights of the city just abruptly end.

And so that is where this adventure ends: an early morning arrival, rush hour traffic, two very inquisitive cats and one extremely comfortable bed. And just like that, we are thrown back into the whirlwind that is the post-trip clean-up, with all the laundry to do, things to put away, floors to wash and layer of cat litter to dust off EVERYTHING. And yet, as I pull things from my bag - a painted cactus tile from Phoenix, a pinecone from the giant Sequoias, a hair elastic given to me by Lesley - I take a moment to think of the memory attached, and the adventures tied to that small moment, and then the bigger adventures that made up another incredible trip. And I count myself lucky that I could go out on these adventures, and then, in this very small way, share them with you. So...where to next?

Thanks for coming along for the ride. Until next time.

Back to Vegas

Good morning fluffy birds outside the van doorway. It was such a great idea spending our last night in the desert and not in the truck stop parking lot. That humongous full moon is still sitting on the horizon, greeting the sun rising over the mountains. So this morning, its breakfast, and packing, van clean-up and more packing, a stop at Love's to empty the tanks, and more packing. Clearly we bought too much stuff this time trip! Looks like we are going to need another bag to cart all of this stuff home!

We say goodbye to our cozy little red camper van, who drove like a dream most of the time, and only really had one or two small electronic glitches. I call that a win. Funny enough, the agent checking us in remembers our last return, when our vehicle had a miscommunication with the key fob, and would not turn off. We had to enter the van's menu, and would get three levels of warnings that if we turned it off, it might not turn back on again! It was stressful, but ultimately didn't pose any more problems. This time around, the return is smooth and easy, and soon we are in the back of an uber, on our way to our hotel. 

We are staying at the Strat Hotel and Casino, at the northern end of the Las Vegas Strip. This means it's a little more removed from the crowds, so feels a little less...crazy? We try our luck checking in, since it's only noon, and...SUCCESS! Our room is available! I might help that today is Tuesday. It could also be a reason why Vegas in general feels a little more quiet than our last time here, three weeks ago.

After chilling and unpacking a little, we head back out, to a place called Area 15. It's a curious entertainment centre who's motto is "Area 15 does not exist," because it really is an experience that does not exist elsewhere. Outside the complex, strange space-theme sculpture fill the courtyard, while nearby, a spaceship transports passengers up into the air - I think there may have been a bar in the centre of it.

A giant robot lays strewn on the ground

Welcome to Area 15 - it does not exist.

Our reason for coming here is our continued search to try all the quirky, fun things to do in Las Vegas, that are not gambling. Here in Area 15 is Meow Wolf. I'll try to explain what that is, but unless you've experience it, it's hard to really know what Meow Wolf is. Meow Wolf is part art installment, part curiosity, part interactive mystery, part exploration experience, all weird, all senses engaged. There are installments all over the United States, and the one is Vegas is called "Omega Mart". The front is that of a grocery store, where nothing is as it seems. Reading the product labels is a hoot, and there are lots of hidden gems and inside jokes everywhere.

We can explore freely(which we do!), but we can also acquire an employee card, and "boop" on several training stations around the store, learning about the workings of the Omega Mart, and start to  discover information about the mysteries behind the place. There are layers upon layers upon layers of things here - we could spend hours, maybe days delving into every tiny detail hidden in this place. Obviously, there is so much more to it, but I could spend an eternity trying to explain it all, and I wouldn't want to spoil the fun, either. Suffice it to say, Meow Wolf is awesome, and everyone should go. 

Open the fridge, find a secret tunnel!	The dairy fridge glitching out.
The "Infinitizer" room. Things are weird.

We got pretty hungry solving - or trying to solve - the mysteries of the Omega Mart, so we found the only open restaurant in Area 15 (it's Tuesday, remember?), and took a chance. The Beast is a pizza and burger bar, but a little more gourmet. So we give it a shot.

Turns out, the food is really good AND reasonably-priced. It's a nice surprise. I get a chicken sandwich with smashed avocado, and a side of honey-balsamic Brussel sprouts, which are very much the star of the meal. Mario gets a cheeseburger, which is equally delicious. It helps that the burgers are the recommendation of our waiter, and that he believes the sprouts are the winner of this newest menu, too. He also believes they are almost a dessert, which he is not wrong about. My only regret is that I am so full by the end of the meal, I cannot finish the bowl. 

We make a quick pit-stop back at the hotel before setting out into the city again. We are walking along the strip, enjoying the lights of the Casinos, on our way to the Monorail. Yes, Las Vegas has a Monorail. No, it's not very well used, which is sad, but honestly, it's so well hidden at the back of the big hotels, and so poorly advertised, it's not even surprising that no one uses it. We are almost sad for the lonely little Monorail, but it is so inaccessible, tucked far, FAR in the backs of the hotels and casinos, it's almost NOT convenient for people to use. But we are far up the north end of the strip, and 4 miles is a lot to walk when you are being detoured through every maze-of-a-casino along the way. So we ride the sad little Monorail all the way to the LINQ hotel, and the Promenade found there.

We decide to take a tour on the High Roller Observation Wheel, high above Las Vegas. It seems like a fun thing to do when all the lights are bright and flashing and lighting up the Nevada desert. The views are great - I'm just a little sad that the windows are so dirty and smeared, both from the desert dust on the outside, and cleaning with a dirty rag on the inside. It makes all my photos look a little blurry, a little smudgy. But the views are worth it. 

Inside the capsule of the High Roller	View from the very top of the wheel
The Sphere lit up with a Tiffany lamp design	Looking towards the south end of the Strip
Great views above AND below

We stay up entirely too late, only because we have to check in for tomorrow's flight, but sleep is pure bliss when we collapse into a super-soft bed bigger than our whole van!
 

Bonus Day the second!

Joshua trees! Cholla cactuses! Waking up on BLM land in the middle of Lovell Canyon is nice, but made even nice by the fact that today is a BONUS DAY! So, in my grand plan of our vacation days, I wrote down the general location for each of those days. During the last week, something wasn't computing between where we were and when we needed to be back in Las Vegas. Yesterday, I took a closer look at the plan, and realized that I had set aside an entire day for the drive from Sequoia N.P. to Ballarat. In the end, the park didn't offer as much in the way of activities to fill our day, and Mario was feeling good, so we drove to Ballarat in the dark, effectively removing the need for the extra travel day. When I realized that, I also found out that we were gaining an extra day for visiting. Now, that might have been a bad thing so late in the trip, but I had also looked at a location west of Las Vegas that was good for hiking, back when I was researching for this trip, and thought it would be a good place to visit IF we somehow found an extra day with nothing to do. Lo and behold, today is that day! This morning's oatmeal, with apple and cinnamon, tasted just a little bit sweeter.

So we drove 30 minutes from our camp site in the middle of the Mojave desert, to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, so enjoy some of the most beautiful and colourful rocks around. I can see why this place is a draw to the nature lovers visiting Las Vegas: it's close but also far out of the city, and offers a whole range of hikes and walks. There's even a one-way scenic drive through the park, mostly to manage traffic flow, but you could even really just visit the park by driving through it in your car, if you wanted. We wanted hiking.

A quick stop at the Calico Canyon lookout to see what "calico" rocks look like. Think a mix of all the colours, like a calico cat, but more striate in pattern, given the nature of the rocks. I would almost say that the rocks are peppermint candy-striped, and look pink from a distance. 

A little research at the Visitor's Center resulted in Mario choosing the Calico Tanks hike for us today. Not too long, but offering a good amount of everything we like: views, interesting geology, varied flora and challenging sections like rock-scrambling. The first bit wound through a canyon wash, amongst holly trees and desert oak, and past a rock mound dubbed the "turtle head". 

After that, it climbed into the canyon, first on a bed of soft sand, eroded from the fragile rock walls around us. Had it been warmer, or even just warm, this would have been a good section to complete barefoot. The temperature today, however, is as cold as we've felt all trip, with the windows of the camper coated in frost this morning, so I think we'll be keeping our shoes on. 

We climb from the "grey" layer(the wash), up through the "yellow" layer to the "red" one, starting to navigate large rock stairs and small climbing sections. We are heading high up the canyon walls, so every stop requires lots of photos of the surrounding area. The more we climb, the better it gets. 

We pause for a snack about halfway up, and while I sit on a rock munching on dates, Mario climbs the surrounding red "domes".

The trail is relatively easy to find, especially if you look for the worn areas in the rock where people have treaded before. There are, however, trail markers to guide us, but sometimes they are not so obvious to spot in the landscape.

We climb higher still, past the red layer, via rock "stairs" and not stairs, and sometimes just piles. We scramble up walls that have a handful of divots for our feet, and ridges for handholds. Mario spots places for me to put my feet, and it bears mentioning that I put away my camera for this part, so I can have 4 free limbs with which to climb. Just before the top, we come to a flat section, a "tank" for which the trail is named. During rains, this area floods and becomes a pool, and evidence of marsh grasses remain. A small group of quails runs out from under them, and so I run around, trying to capture their movements. They're so cute, and they cheep quietly as they peck at the ground...Mario has to come back to get me.

One last challenging 4-limbed climb and we reach the top of the canyon, circle around to a ledge on the front of one of the now white domes, and settle in for some smushed PB&J sandwiches in the sun. From here, we can see all the way to Las Vegas and beyond, including the Strat, the hotel where we will be staying tomorrow night. For now, we just relax on our perch and enjoy the peace and tranquility of the moment, and the awesome feeling of a bonus day.

Though there were a few other trails we had marked as possible follow-ups for the Calico Tanks trail, Mario and I both feel content with our hike for the day, and calculating about 100 km of hiking total for the trip, we are leaving satisfied. We follow the rest of the Scenic Driving Route out of the park and down into Las Vegas.

What comes next is a stop at the Love's Travel Centre and one of the THE BEST SHOWERS EVER, probably because it has been about a week since the last one, and before you ask, YES, we've been "showering" other ways. I've learned that when you are camping off-grid, baby wipes become your best friend. Also, it's a good thing we like each other! We also make the best decision of the trip, and decide NOT to stay in the parking lot of the gas station. We are so close to Valley of Fire, and the BLM we stayed at on out first night of the trip, and after a quick calculation, we are well within our mileage limit, so we leave and park in the desert for one last night. I think the giant Wolf Full Moon agrees, as it guides us back to the same BLM site. Our evening is a combination of eating all the snacks left in the campervan, trying to cram entirely too much stuff into our bags for the transit to the hotel tomorrow, and just relaxing after another day filled with hiking. I don't think we even make it 10 pm tonight before falling asleep, but I know that it will be a much more relaxing sleep that at the truck stop!

 

In the Middle of Nowhere

Good morning from a campsite in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere. It's a good place to wake up super early and greet the sun as it rises over the surrounding mountains. It's also a good place to have pancakes for breakfast! Oh, the fun you can have when you travel in a van! This campsite in Ballarat is actually pretty amazing. Sure, it's  just a big gravel patch in the middle of a ghost town, but so is the rest of the desert. But there are fully functioning washrooms, and a shower, which we only discovered this morning! Had we known, I think it would have been our first stop before even parking the van last night, but alas, we have places to be this morning. The camp host(and maybe the entire town's host, I'm not sure) has drawn up a crude map of the town, with explanations of the buildings/ruins scattered about, so we take a walk with our cameras and our morning apple juice, taking in the "sights"! Then we roll REALLY SLOWLY down that awful stretch of washboard gravel road(only negative about this whole place), back to the pavement, and towards Death Valley.

Mario checking out the truck

View from the Block House / Store

Hello from the tip-top of one of the steepest climbs I think we've done in the van this trip. Ballarat is in the valley next to Death Valley, and we climbed from below sea level up the Towne Pass, at 4,956 feet in elevation, to then descend back into Stovepipe Wells, one of the towns in the National Park. Again, it amazes me how life can be sustained so comfortably out here. We stop for gas, we browse the giftshop that has all sorts of Star Wars-themed paraphernalia. We learn that parts of Star Wars IV : A New Hope, was filmed in various location in the valley, and unbeknownst to us, we'll be visiting some of them! 

The steep climb UP

The descent DOWN into Death Valley

Down the road, we greet the giant sand dunes in Mesquite Flats. Here, you can explore the entire area, and so we pick a dune, and begin to walk the spine of the great mound of sand. From one to the next, and the next, we walk, getting further and further into the sandy area. Our footprints are the only ones we see, besides those of a desert fox, or maybe a cat. We lie down on the soft, warm sand. We scour the skyline for lost droids, or maybe some Tuscan Raiders off in the distance. No luck.

Mario walking along the dunes

Cathy posing in the dunes

Next up, we head over to the Golden Canyon trail for a visit. This trail winds through the most geologically crazy mountains I think I have ever seen. Rocks layers run at a bizarre 45-degree upwards, the layers are rainbow-coloured in some places, or deep red, or sage green, and the rock is incredibly crumbly. I'm talking erosion EVERYWHERE. We walk to the end of the trail where we stop in from of the Red Cathedral rock formation for PB&J, then turn around to come back. Along the way, there is a turnoff for the Gower Gulch loop, which would ALSO take us back to the parking lot. Now, we've been somewhat offline recently, which means we have no idea what this trail looks like. We take a guess that, since we've done nothing but climb into the canyon thus far, the rest must be all downhill, right? Okay, off we go. 

Heading towards the Red Cathedral formation

Pausing for lunch in the shade

Around the next bend, a steep climb up a crumbly limestone mountain. Surprise! I have serious regrets at this point, and despite Mario's insistance that we can just turn around, I press on. Oh, how glad I am that I did. What views! What a trail! It winds around the middle of the mountain, not 2 feet wide, steep slope going all the way down to the bottom of the gulch. It's crazy that this even exists, and yet it does, and I am walking along it, maybe leaning a little bit to the inside because, well, that's a steep slope. But those views. Wow.

The trail eventually DOES start descending, into the bottom of the wide gulch, and we follow the flow of the dry river bed all the down to its exit from the area. We walk through wide stony sections where the presence of a river erode deep grooves in the valley floor. We scramble through tight section, barely wide enough to fit through, and I can only imagine how intense the water flow must be when the valley floods. The colours of the rocks continue to amaze me. Finally, we find the sun again, and hug the outer edge of the mountains all the way back to the parking.

We rush down the road to get to Badwater Wash before sunset, so we can say goodbye to the sun and the park. Badwater Wash is a giant salt flat in the middle of the park, and it honesty looks and sounds like a giant field full of crunchy snow. At least it's not as cold! We walk out a ways just as the sun dips behind the mountains, casting an orange glow over the canyon walls. Here, we are at 282 feet BELOW sea level, and that is a pretty cool thing to think about, standing in the middle of a sea of white, while saluting the end of another beautiful day. Not only that, we turn around to be greeted by the glow of a big round full moon. It lights out way back to the van, and all the way out the park. 

Up close with the crystals

Shadows on the salt in the sunset

Another night, another BLM site for us - we're hidden up in the mountains above Las Vegas, along Lovell Canyon road. We're surrounded by lots of desert scrubs and scruffy-looking trees, and there is an abandoned ATV in the bush behind our van - we are in good company.