Day 12...Heading to Pendleton, Oregon.

We've had coffee makers in our rooms so if we pick up a muffin, Danish or fruit we can have a more relaxing breakfast than going to the café and we make enough stops during the day, that we don't need that much to eat...works well...at least for us!

Day 11...Jackpot Here We Come!

Baggage pull at 7am so we had something to eat in our room.  Long drive today.  Today we saw the biggest solar farm!  As we drove past it you could see the panels were set on metal frameworks and apparently they rotated to follow the sun.

Most of the country was pretty desolate.  

We saw these hills with snow on them and the moon in the sky.

 We stopped at a Sinclair service station for our lunch stop today.

Tonight we're staying at Cactus Pete's in Jackpot, Nevada.  Most of Nevada is on Pacific Time but here in Jackpot they're on Mountain Time, so they're 1 hour ahead.

Day 8,9 & 10...Laughlin

Saturday was a free day so we enjoyed walking along the boardwalk and visiting a couple of the casinos and little shops along the way.

Sunday there was an optional tour going to Lake Havasu and to Oatman.  Hubby didn't feel like going, but he knew how much I wanted to go so told me to go on the bus and enjoy, so I did.

In the 1960's they were tearing down the London Bridge in London so a fellow from the USA  decided to buy the bridge, dismantle it and rebuild it in Lake Havasu and develop the property around it to attract snowbirds  (people who leave colder climates to spend the winter in the warmer climate).  It was neat to see, of course very "British".  There is a casino in the area, but you have to take a boat to get there.  Lake Havasu is in California, which doesn't have gambling but the first nations people can have a casino on their land...the same as in the state of Washington.

 I put $5 into a slot machine and doubled my money...yeah!!

 

It was a very pleasant boat ride there and back, then we boarded the bus and proceeded onto Oatman, which is an old mining town on the old Route 66.  The buildings are old, dirt road with boardwalk sidewalks...something out of an old Western movie.  There are also a lot of wild burros in the area and of course they think they own the town! 

Today is Monday and our last day in Laughlin, so we went down to the buffet for brunch.  With brunch you can get either champagne, champagne and orange juice or champagne and cranberry juice, which is called a Poinsettia...I've never had one so thought I'd try it...yummy!!!  The buffet was great and later we had a chance to go on the bus to the Avi Casino for a couple of hours so we both went. Quite a large casino complex right on the banks of the Colorado River. Hubby put $5 into a machine and low and behold if he didn't hit the free game feature and ended up cashing out $156.00.  He wasn't going to take a chance on losing it so cashed out and we went outside to see what the grounds were like....beautiful and right on the river.

Day 7...Heading to Laughlin

Easy morning this morning...baggage pull wasn't until 11:30am, then at 1:00 we boarded the bus and headed to Laughlin.

Bart suggested we had enough time so we should go to an outlook to see the new bridge (opened in the fall of 2010) spanning the Colorado River and diverting the traffic off the Hover Dam, but we had to go through a security check before we could get there.  The officer rejected us going because he "didn't like the looks of all the suitcases in the bus hold"!  Tell me....what the heck were we supposed to do with our suitcases???  I think he was just trying to show off his "power"!!!  Really disappointed because we were in that area in the spring of 2010 and actually drove across the dam...it would have been nice to see the finished bridge!

We were too early to check into the Aguarius Casino Resort so we went across the bridge to Bullhead City, Arizona and stopped at a Wal-Mart.  That was good because someone had a cold on the bus and now several people, including myself got the cold, so I got some more cough candies and some cough syrup.

The hotel was really nice and Laughlin is such a pretty place...it has a boardwalk along the river or you can take a River Taxi from one end of the town to the other.

 The picture is taken from the Laughlin, Nevada side looking at Bullhead City Arizona, across the River.

Day 6...Valley of Fire

We're going on a 5 hour tour to the Valley of Fire today, so had a Danish and a muffin in our room this morning.  The Valley of Fire is Nevada's oldest and largest State Park.  The rock formations and colours are amazing and so, so beautiful!

 At the Visitor's Center I managed to get pictures of some of the plants and of this family of mountain sheep on the hillside...it's amazing how they can climb up there.  When we first saw them, they were laying down but then stood up.  AMAZING!!!!

This place is massive and every time you turn around there's another picture opportunity.  They say when the sun is setting, the rocks look like they're on fire!  We didn't see that, we only saw it in daylight, but I can only imagine!!!

When we got back to the hotel we had a few hours then went on a bus tour of the Las Vegas Strip at night.  Lots and lots of lights.  The casinos are huge complexes with waterfalls, lagoons, pirate ships, roller coasters, you name it!  They even have flat bed trucks driving up and down the strip with basically, big screen TVs mounted on the back advertising all the things going on in Vegas. Both sides of the "TV" and the back end all had pictures playing, and to think this is all in the middle of a desert!!  I found it to be too claustrophobic, everything is so crowded, big and busy! I'm really looking forward to Laughlin...hopefully it'll be more peaceful and calm, being right on the river!

Day 5...On to Las Vegas

Baggage pull, 7:00am, on the bus by 8:00 am. Our drive today was through the desert.  Saw a tower that generates solar power.

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project

Power Project

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a 110 megawatt net solar thermal power project with 1.1 gigawatt-hours of energy storage, located near Tonopah, about 190 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It is the first utility-scale concentrating solar power plant with a central receiver tower and advanced molten salt energy storage technology from SolarReserve. The project, developed by SolarReserve and owned by Tonopah Solar Energy, LLC. was anticipated to cost less than $1 billion. EPC Contractor was ACS Cobra, which carried out the engineering design, procured the equipment and materials necessary, and then constructed and delivered the facility to Tonopah Solar Energy. Planned energy output was up to 500 GW·h annually but real data place generation at about 200 GW·h/year, less than half.


Throughout  our travels through Nevada we saw many solar "farms", different from the Dunes Project. There were masses of solar panels, from a distance they would look like a lake but they were hundreds of solar panels hooked up to transmission wires.  At one point the highway went very close to the "farm" and we could see the solar panels mounted on frameworks and apparently the panels could "follow the sun".  I was wondering how they could service the panels if needed but on these frameworks it would be simple to walk between the panels.  From the panels they had all these transmission wires and towers to add the power to the grid.  Very interesting!!!

We went past an ammunitions storage area, some old towns and the turnoff to the infamous Death Valley.

On our way to Las Vegas we passed an ammunitions storage area, some old towns and the turnoff to the infamous Death Valley. 

On our way to Las Vegas we passed an ammunitions storage area, some old towns and the turnoff to the infamous Death Valley. 

Went through lots of desert today and passed some old towns and an ammunitions storage area.  Apparently we were very close to the turn off to Death Valley, but didn't go there. 

We went past an ammunitions storage area , some old towns and the turnoff to the infamous Death Valley.

We got to Las Vegas and the Golden Nugget will be our home for the next three nights. We're on Freemont Street and above the street is a domed ceiling/screen where they have a show every night. We found Vegas to be very busy and crowded...and it's not even the weekend!