Las Vegas and Truck Woes

Today marks our fifth day here in Vegas and we certainly are having a good time, however we are having more truck issues that I will go into later in the blog.

Saturday, we ventured out to the Las Vegas Gold & Silver Pawn Shop as seen on the History Channel. We didn't see Rick, Corey, Chumlee or the Old man but did get to go inside the pawn shop, and sure nuff, it looks pretty much as it does on TV. There was a line of folks waiting to get in as they will only admit so many at a time, but the line moved fast and we were able to get in and check out the inside. We did recognize some of their employees that we have seen on TV. An employee, who works outside offered to take us behind the building to show us a painting of the show characters on a garage door, and took our picture in front of the painting. From there, we went to the old section of Vegas to check out the Freemont Street Experience. Freemont St is in the old section of Vegas and is totally different from the better known strip with a personality all its' own with casinos, shops, and unique entertainment. Freemont is closed to traffic and has an overhead canopy that provides welcome shade during the day, but also serves as a light show after dark called Viva Vision Light Show, that is absolutely wonderful. The canopy is over 1500 ft. long with over 12.5 million LED lights that are computer controlled to provide an amazing animated display of different themes. The program is accompanied by high quality sound as well. My favorite theme  was a patriotic program with eagles flying the entire length of the canopy as well as the Thunderbirds flying in formation with a lot of flags and nationally known scenes. The theme was accompanied by Lee Greenwoods version of  God Bless the USA. The main program was a Haloween theme that was cute. There is also a newly added zip line called Slotzilla where you can ride a zip line overhead under the canopy from one end of Freemont St to the other end. Pretty cool, but none of our group chose to ride! We saw several stages at different parts of the street that have lively bands. In addition, there any many street entertainers, and even a living statue that will suddenly come to life when you leave a tip in his bucket. It's impossible to describe the mixture of "characters" seen on this street, but was very entertaining to people watch. I think the best entertainment one could find here would be to find a comfortable seat and watch the show go by! After leaving Freemont we rode the strip to see the beautiful lights in downtown at night. The fountain show in front of the Bellagio  was particularly impressive.  Sunday, we headed back out to explore the sights in the downtown strip. We parked in the Bellagio parking deck (free) and went into their beautiful lobby and conservatory that is decorated in a fall theme. We spent a little time in their casino and went from there across the street to  Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino  where there are many specialty shops we enjoyed seeing and buying a few trinkets before trying our luck in their casino. By the way, we had no luck at all at any of the casinos we visited. We ventured on down Las Vegas Blvd. and back across the street to the fabulous Caesar's Palace Hotel and Casino.  This hotel and casino is very luxurious, expensive and one of the largest and better known casinos in Vegas. By this time our group was pretty much pooped, so we decided to look for dinner somewhere and call it a day.


Sometime over the weekend,  a check engine light popped up on our truck. I had Onstar query our computer for the cause, who said it was a P-140A code which means the EGR cooler bypass  position exceeded learning limits. (whatever that means!) On Monday I took the truck into Findlay Chevrolet here in Las Vegas to have it checked. They called later and said they had good news and bad news. The bad news was the EGR issue had to have some components replaced that  are on top of the transmission, and the transmission has to be pulled. They said the procedure would take several days and could be as long as next Tuesday before getting the truck back. They said they had several jobs ahead of ours, but promised they would get us fixed as soon as they could. The good news was it is covered by the 5 year, 100K mile warranty and would furnish us a free vehicle to drive until we get ours back. Al drove me to the dealership yesterday to pick up the free rental, which turned out to be a very nice new 2014 Chevrolet Silverado pickup. I must say, Findlay Chevrolet has been very accommodating so far.  Hey, there could be worse places to be stranded!  Just another little bump in the road on our journey!

Our plans when we leave here are pretty much in limbo until we get our truck back. Al & Pat have already seen the areas we hope to visit in Utah and Arizona, so they have moved to destinations further east. We're hopeful to catch up with them further down the road. In the mean time, Meemee and I will be checking out more sights here in Vegas.

Gold & Silver Pawn Shop.

You had to wait in line as they would only admit so many at one time.

Seen this scene on TV many times.

Crickett and Rick.

Championship Rings.

Coins for sale.

Our group in front of painting in back of building.

Slotzila Zip Line. There are actually 2 different rides. One goes about half way down Freemont, and the othe goes the full length.

Looks like fun to me!

Entrance to Freemont St. Pretty cool place.

This guy was a hoot!  He was hitting on Crickett!

One of many casinos.

Living statue. You couldn't tell he was alive until someone left him a tip, and then he would tip his hat, or draw his gun, or something else.

KISS wannabees!  If they saw you taking a picture, they would turn their back. They would pose for a tip.

Ok.

This was pretty cool. Not sure how he suspended himself, but I'm sure it wasn't his arm holding him up.

Zip Liners coming in for a landing!

Light show under canopy after dark.

Car shot of New York New York

Conservatory at the Beliago.

The arches you see are actually streams of water

Their theme was the fall season.

Talking Tree in the conservatory.

Looking across the pool at the Beliago with the Eiffel Tower.

Planet Hollywood

Caesar's Palace

Trip to Vegas and Hoover Dam

Hello from Las Vegas!  We arrived here Friday after a long 2 day trip from Lake Tahoe, Ca.  The first day we traveled  about 250 miles due south through Nevada on some of the most dry and barren land we've seen so far on our journey. We found a RV Park in Tonopah, Nv that was basically a parking lot with hook ups, but was happy to find it because there are few parks in the area. We did stumble across two interesting discoveries on Nevada 95 we weren't expecting. The first was a  US Army ammunition depot in Hawthorne, Nevada. This facility stores reserve ammunitions to be used after the first 30 days of a major conflict. It's only partially staffed during peacetime, but provision has been made to rapidly expand staffing as necessary. The depot is run by an independent contractor under an agreement with the government. There are over 2500 bunkers spread over an area of over 100 square miles to make this facility one of the largest of its' type in the world. The other  item we weren't expecting to find was the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. This project is very different in that it has over 17,000 mirrors placed in a circular pattern around a 500 ft tall concrete tower with  mirrors placed in such a way that all the energy reflected from the mirrors is focused on the tower for the purpose of heating salt to a molten state that is used to produce steam that in turn is used to make electricity. I don't think the project is on line yet, but is close to being operational according to local sources. The second leg of our trip was about 260 miles on Nevada 95 across more dry and barren dessert that actually passed through part of Death Valley. The park we're staying at here in Las Vegas is named Duck Creek RV Park and is near Henderson. This park is pretty nice and is quite reasonable with rates of $25/night with the Passport America discount. It's about 6 miles from the strip in downtown Vegas. The cheapest we've seen diesel here in Vegas is $3.59 gallon.

Yesterday (Saturday) we headed out to explore Hoover Dam, which impounds Lake Mead. Upon seeing the dam for the first time, my first reaction was it's smaller than I had always thought it to be. It is in fact a huge structure, but I had always pictured it to be larger than it is. Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the US by volume but has seen a significant decline in level in recent years due to drought and increased usage. The lake is at over 100 feet below full pond and is declining at the average of one inch per week. When first viewing the lake, it's very obvious where the former water level was as the once water covered rocks are now dry and have turned much lighter and is called the "bathtub ring" by locals. We had heard for years that the road across the dam had been closed due to increased 9/11 security, but we learned the road across the dam has never closed, although there is a security checkpoint you have to go through before crossing the dam. We were one of the lucky ones to be pulled for inspection. There are parking lots on both sides of the dam that charge $10 to park, however we learned you can cross the dam and go to the Arizona side past the dam and park free and walk back across the dam. There is a $10 fee to go into the Visitor's Center, which we chose to forgo as well as the costly tours in and around the dam area. The new Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Bridge just below the dam has been open for about 4 years and is an engineering marvel. All the Highway 93 traffic that used to cross the dam now crosses the new bridge. One side note, the temperature was in the low 90's while there but an employee we spoke to told us it had been 127 there two weeks ago!

Hawthorne Ammunition Depot

500 ft concrete tower at Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project

First sign we saw leaving Tonapah

Miles of straight roads through desert.

About the only living thing we saw was sagebrush and an occasional cactus.

Pit stop in the desert.

Approaching Lake Mead.

Security sign on walkway to dam.

Dam showing the 4 water intakes. The 2 on the far side are on the Nevada side and the 2 on the closer side are on the Arizona side.

You can see the "bathtub ring" where the water level used to be. Over 100 ft drop in level.

Water from the Colorado River is very clear.

Back side of the dam. The dam is about the same thickness at the base as it is high!

Spillway with view of new bridge.

Monument honoring workers that built the dam.

Impressive floor in front of monument.

Visitor's Center.

There was a dog who was a mascot of the construction crew at the dam who was accidentally killed and is buried and memorialized at the dam.

Shot of dam taken from new bridge.

Sidewalk on new bridge.

I thought the shadow of the bridge was kind of neat. Guess you can tell it's pretty high.

Picture of a boat pier when lake was full that dramatically shows how much the lake has gone down.