Las Vegas, Baby!

Isn't the desert supposed to be dry?
Yeah, I know, it's the total rainfall that determines what's desert and what ain't, but does the total annual rainfall in Northwestern Arizona have to fall on the night we're driving to Las Vegas?
Man, it poured!

We left Phoenix at 8 P.M., dropped Desi the Dachshund off at his dog-sitter's, and hit the road. It's a benefit to leave at that hour, 'cause traffic has diminished considerably. We encountered one accident that backed traffic up for 10 minutes or so, and then we were freewheelin' it outta town. Although it was dark outside, initially the clouds were broken and we could see hills in the distance... beautiful. I had forgotten what it's like to drive across the desert at night. It's sobering to drive for over an hour at 70 miles per hour and not see a town, no streetlight, no artificial lights at all... just open desert. We shared the road the entire trip with other vehicles, so Sara Jean never felt the onset of a panic attack, but my Chicago girl once again had her eyes opened about places she's never been.

I love the roads out here. Even the two-laners are well kept, and don't suffer the freeze/thaw cycles we experience back East, so they're mostly smooth to traverse. They seem to have done a better job of marking them so you know well ahead of time what lane to be in for a change of highway. Kudos Arizona!

Since 9-11 they have a security checkpoint you must pass through in order to drive across Hoover Dam. No commercial vehicles are allowed... I guess they have to cross the Colorado downriver and come up on the West side to approach Las Vegas. Anyway, we stopped and had to open the tonneau on Big Bubba's truck for the Federal Security guard to do a cursory inspection and tell us we were okay to get on our way. There were still showers in the area as we approached the Dam, so we didn't get a good chance to look around... it was dark anyway. But the showers stopped just before crossing the Dam and we had our breath taken away when we snaked our way down the hill to drive across. We stopped at one of the viewing areas and Big Bubba got a nice shot of the Lake/Dam at night. I'll try to post that for ya when we get back to Phoenix.

We gained an hour crossing the State Line into Nevada. The first real view of Las Vegas coming down out of the hills was awe inspiring. It's a bigger town than I expected... LOTS of lights in this valley! There was one cloud over the downtown area and the light on top of the Luxor hotel was illuminating the bottom of that cloud. It looked like a scene out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"... we joked that the Luxor probably paid a fortune to have the cloud moved there!

We rolled through the gate at Nellis Air Force Base at 1 A.M. local time and were in bed asleep by 2. Big Bubba snores worse than I do, but that didn't stop all of us from getting a decent night's sleep. We are headed out the door to drive the strip when I push the "Publish Post" button at the bottom of this page.

Stay tuned, more later!