Sunday, September 23, 2007

California Dreamin

We arrived in South Lake Tahoe after dark last night and all I have had time to do so far is dream. We just about froze to death as we are high up into the mountains, and we really are not set up for cold weather. We are having a day off driving today to sight see, but its a miserable day, so it will be indoor sightseeing.
We have seen some beautiful scenery in the last few days. With those last few photos I had previously posted, they were just the tip of the iceberg. It becomes sensory overload after a while.

The photo of me out on the rock was real, i had to climb down..fairly easy if a bit slippery...and then just walk out onto a rock that had at least a 1000 ft drop on 3 sides, then climb back up...quite difficult due to it being slippery. Grant elected to be the photographer and stay WAY back.


In this photo he got me to wriggle backwards and then lean back.. I told him to make sure I wasn't too close....good thing he likes having me around.

After we left the Grand Canyon we decided to drive to Las Vegas for the night as it would keep us ahead of schedule....To get to Vegas we wanted to drive Highway 93 and we kept seeing signs that no trucks or commercial vehicles were to take that Route as Hoover Dam is Under Construction. We just kept hoping that it wouldn't mean us and of course it didn't.

That's where the Homeland Security was there to inspect vehicles. We had to open the outside storage and allow them to inspect inside the van too.
The Dam is a Huge Tourist attraction in itself and they are creating it in a way that it looks like it belongs there and is not some crass eyesore. We were really impressed.
While I was in the gift shop buying a magnet the guy who owns it is a Queenland boy and he slipped quickly in to his Aussie accent while talking to me.

We then headed through Boulder, the only Nevada City that has a No Gambling Law and on to Vegas......the KOA we were planning to stay at was no longer there.. so we were right in the middle of The Strip and in our big rig looking for an RV Park...Thank God for Percy...that's the name of our GPS, he found us a very nice place close by called the Oasis RV Resort.




Next morning we started out on a sunny day and went into the desert, dressed for a hot day...well it rained all the way and got colder and colder.

We both agreed that if there was one state that we would NOT want to live in over here it would be Nevada... And seeing nothing but desert and desert mountains for hours on end gets very boring.



We did see a huge area that was owned by the US Military and Grant said that it would be ammunition dumps...I went for miles.


The divide between the Poor and the Middle Class is huge and the poor really are poor, we have seen nothing like it in Oz.



We still had to get the obligatory photos in the desert but they were really quick stops as I was freezing.





We then drove up over the mountains to get to Lake Tahoe and the road way is cut into the side of the mountain and the drop over the side would not be one you would want to take.


We did find a place to stop halfway up to let the cars behind us pass, and see a beautiful river that was heading down.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! You have truly gone Coast to Coast now! Congrats!

Hope the remainder of your trip is magical!

Lots of Love

Melissa

Anonymous said...

What an amazing adventure you have had! Jan, I can't believe that you wiggled your way to the edge of Grand Canyon. That gives me vertigo just looking at the photos.
Looks ike the ponchos you purchased in Virginia are getting some use. Maybe the weather will improve once you're on the coast.
As a side note: Maggie I is being replaced by Maggie II (due to arrive sometime this week). "Old" Maggie sends her regards to Percy.
Safe travels.
Jan

Anonymous said...

Great photo!
With love
Laura