After hiking through the pine forests of Yosemite we set off towards Las Vegas. The high roads crossing the Sierra Nevada were still closed due to snow so we skirted round the bottom and up the eastern sides. As soon as we rounded the mountains the scenery suddenly changed to dry, arid desert and we stopped for the night in Mojave.
Mojave was a somewhat strange, bleak town surrounded on all sides by desert and blowing an absolute gale. We have since come to the conclusion that the desert environment either attracts strange people or people go a bit strange from living there.....John went into a gas station to fill up the car when he was accosted by a gentleman who demanded a lift to a town further down the road. When he said no and that we were staying in Mojave for the night, the man mimicked his English accent and then proceeded to abuse a couple in a van waiting on the forecourt before swaggering away. The only consolation was that the locals in the garage also thought he was very weird. The motel we stayed in was delightful.....apart from being right on the railroad tracks so we spent the night listening to the huge trains honking as they passed through!
We hastily left Mojave the next day and drove to Death Valley which holds the triple accolade of being the hottest, driest, lowest place in the USA. As we arrived the car temperature gauge was showing 84 (the country which describes itself as a world leader still uses the imperial system so we have no idea what this means.....but Sarah was happy so it must've been warm). Death Valley lies across the states of California and Nevada and experienced a gold rush just as the rest of California did in the 1800s. However no significant gold was found so the boom towns were soon abandoned leaving ghost towns standing in the middle of the desert. We visited Rhyolite and the only building still mostly standing was the casino...... However, the slightly less valuable borax was found in large quantities and this was carried across the desert on huge 20-mule trains to the railroad at Mojave.
After a night in Beatty we headed across Death Valley taking in some of the sights including the remains of a borax works, a hike up Cathedral Canyon and a vast area of salt crystal left by a dried out lake and looking a little bit like coral reef. We also stopped at Badwater basin....so called because one of the early explorers could not get his mule to drink from the water there and labelled it "bad water" on the maps. Turns out the mule had the right idea as the water is incredibly salty and forms one of the largest salt flats in Death Valley. It is also the lowest point in the USA, at -85m below sea level. Despite these pretty unpleasant conditions, life does exist in the salt water....well at least a tiny snail calls it home.
As we left Death Valley, we were lucky enough to see a coyote padding across the desert in the evening sun. We crossed the border into Nevada and stopped at a casino town called Pahrump. It seems that in this area if you want somewhere to stay, you're staying in a casino. After the usual huge American buffet in the hotel restaurant we decided to save our gambling for Las Vegas.
The next day we drove the last leg to Vegas through yet more desert. As we entered Las Vegas, we could see it was everything you would expect....big, brash and busy and of course we had not realised it was a Saturday. This meant hotel prices were pretty high however we eventually found ourselves booked into the Treasure Island casino. Many floors up we were lucky enough to have a huge corner room with panoramic views of the Vegas skyline. We spent three nights in a city that only the Americans could have built, it's extravagant, overindulgent and in poor taste.....in fact it possibly represents everything that is wrong with Western culture! However, to fit in, we indulged with the best of them and although we didn't leave as millionaires we enjoyed ourselves! By avoiding too much gambling and taking advantage of the free drinks and cheap food that the casinos offer, you can have a pretty good time without spending too much.
Each hotel/casino has its own theme and we wandered through most of the famous ones. We saw the fountain show set to music outside the Bellagio and the mock-Roman Caesar's Palace, the pyramid-shaped Luxor and several others. Our hotel had a wild west saloon and a bar on a pirate ship, and every night fireworks would be set off from one of the lower rooves, which was quite a sight from our hotel room.
After 3 days of this madness we were ready to move on and head towards the south east of the states. We booked the cheapest flight we could, which happened to be to Knoxville. Our only information about this destination was that it was in Tennessee, and that was where we wanted to be. The next day, via a very ricketty old Delta plane, we flew from Las Vegas to Knoxville.
