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Las Vegas and the
South Rim
3:09 AM is a
horrible time to get up, any way you cut it, even though I tried to
go to bed early the evening before. However, things were pretty well
organized, and Kathy and I were on the road for Detroit Metro by
3:20. We arrived at Metro plenty early; it was still dark, although
there was a noticeable lightening to the overcast in the east.
It was the first time I'd been near the new Northwest terminal
there, and it took some figuring out how to even get to the
passenger dropoff. There's a lot more hiking around in the terminal
than there was in the old one, but I finally found the departure
gate only to find that they moved it halfway up the terminal, so
more hiking was involved. It was light by the time I got on the
plane, and we blasted off though the broken overcast and got on top
quickly, to where the sun was shining. Through breaks in the
overcast I could see Chicago and the Mississippi River, but we were
near the Kansas-Colorado line before it cleared off and stayed that
way for real. From the sky it looked like there was some pretty
country down there although from the years I'd spent there before, I
knew that it was an arid semi-desert. We went right over Denver, and
we must have gone pretty much over Leadville, where I was a flight
instructor thirty years before; I could pick out Fairplay and Twin
Lakes off to the left of the plane. From there on west it was arid
country, most of which I had explored but little, even when I was
there before, although some of it was quite rugged and pretty. From
the air I could pick out the La Sil and Henry Mountains, still
showing snow, roughly near Moab in eastern Utah, and could pick out
Desolation Canyon -- a possible place to go sometime -- and could
just make out Lake Powell well to the south. I got a good view of
the chaotic country of Grand Staircase-Escalante before we turned
slightly to the southwest and headed for Las Vegas. Off to the east,
I could see the Grand Wash Cliffs, the end of the Canyon, and then
we were flying into Las Vegas, laying flat and dusty in a wide, dry
valley.
You easily know you're in Las Vegas -- the moment you walk off the
jetway and into the terminal there's a row of slot machines. The
terminal was not terribly busy, and I managed to find my way to the
Payless Car Rental counter without too much difficulty. I had
already reserved a rental car; it took a few minutes to get the
paperwork arranged, and then I caught a shuttle bus out to the
rental car parking area. There, waiting for me, was a bright red Kia
Rio, the keys already in it. It took a few minutes to check it out,
and soon I was on my way to the Hawthorne Suites, near the Strip.
It's a very nice hotel, a little pricy, perhaps, for what I needed
it for, but I've spent much more money for worse motel rooms. I
checked in, picked up the gear box that I'd sent by UPS a couple
weeks earlier, took it around to my room and dumped it on a table,
along with the carry-on daypack I'd brought on the plane. I broke it
open, got out a couple rolls of film and a couple other things I'd
need, then left the rest of the stuff sit while I went out, got in
the Kia, and headed out. The best route out to the four-lane took me
down the south part of the Strip, and I caught a glimpse of some of
the storied casinos I'd often heard about, impressive and overstated
to the point of being obnoxious, although I didn't slow down much
and gave much of my attention to the map.
On my way out of town, I confirmed my initial impression that Las
Vegas is a town best seen in the rear view mirror. It has a distinct
boom-town atmosphere; on the strip rather gaudy and garish and
overdone, but rather nondescript and dusty in the suburbs, which
seem to consist of a lot of new housing developments with houses
jammed in on top of each other, with lots of bare dirt and rock in
between. It's a real good example of why I don't like cities.
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Hoover Dam. The
level of
Lake
Mead
is way
down, as can
be seen by the
"bathtub ring" to
the right of the towers. |
The traffic was heavy out US-93 over Railroad Pass to the southeast;
I ran through Henderson and Boulder City, and out toward Hoover Dam
and Lake Mead. The road gets to be 2-lane here, and there are plenty
of signs that trucks and buses can't cross the dam for security
reasons. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction in the area --
some people have to take a break from the slot machines -- and the
place was crowded. I had to make a brief stop at a security
checkpoint, and after crossing over the dam made a brief stop at an
overlook and snapped one frame, the first of the trip.
It's probably only ten or fifteen miles of two-lane out to where
US-93 becomes four-lane, but it was a slow period, caught in a long
line of cars following a motor home towing a big boat, seldom over
20 MPH. It was good to get out on the four lane and blast south
though a wide, dry valley, with some nice hills on each side, but
mostly filled with Sonoran Desert vegetation like barrel cactus,
prickly pear, the occasional Joshua tree, sagebrush, and the like.
As I headed on to the southeast, I could see off in the distance
various housing developments, mostly mobile homes or other small,
cheap housing out in the middle of this nondescript desert. It was
most of an hour before I got to Kingman. By now, I'd been going for
about ten hours my time and I hadn't even had breakfast yet, so I
pulled into a Wendy's, got a triple, noticed that the gas price was
$1.49 -- not bad -- and got on Interstate 40 heading east.
The country from Kingman east is a little different, mostly running
through pinion pine country, and a couple times raising up to the
ponderosa pine country. I knew from my time in Colorado decades ago
that elevation has a lot to do with ground cover -- the higher, the
cooler, and plant coverage is different -- and I like the pinion and
ponderosa country. There were some very nice views to be had,
especially at a place called Fort Rock Road, about 40 miles east of
Kingman, where the road was littered on both sides with jumbles of
smooth rock.
Traffic wasn't real heavy along I-40, but again there were plenty of
signs selling 5 to 40 acre "ranches", although I didn't see much
sign of actual development. Now, this was a little different from
the Sonoran Desert between Lake Mead and Kingman -- I could see
having a little country house out in this country, which is very
empty. Not far east of Kingman there's a sign, "No services for the
next 55 miles" which proved to be at a place called Siegelman, and
they were right, there's nothing much out there. I was pretty
impressed; this was nice country, although I'll bet it gets colder
than the lower Sonoran Desert country.
I got the impression that the Kia didn't have a big gas tank and the
needle was sagging pretty low by the time I got to Williams. I
pulled off at the first gas station I came to -- a Shell station,
and found that gas was $2.18 per gallon -- highway robbery after the
$1.49 at Kingman. But I wasn't in the mood to look farther for the
sake of a few bucks, so filled the tank and hit the road, heading up
Arizona 64 and later US-180 toward the airport at the south rim of
the Grand Canyon. This started out in ponderosa around Williams,
descended into pinion forest, and climbed up into ponderosa again as
we neared the Canyon. Off to the east, the San Francisco Range stood
high, with snowcapped peaks stark against the sky, which was filled
with mare's tails and high overcast, making the day seem a little
gray.
I had already made a reservation for a
3:30 PM flight
with Air Grand Canyon for a flight over the Canyon. It was now only
2:30, and since I wanted to get back at a reasonable hour I checked
with the woman behind the counter. She remembered me calling her a
couple weeks before, and my comment that I planned to drive out and
back from
Las Vegas
for the flight. Back then, she'd warned me that it was a five-hour
drive, about 265 miles. Now, I told her that it was more like a four
hour and 20 minute drive, assuming you drove 85 and 90 all the way.
I asked if there were any possibility that I could get on an earlier
flight, and sure enough, there was, so in not more than 15 minutes I
was in the air in a Cessna 207, the first time I'd been in a single
engine plane in 20 years. It seemed pretty familiar, not terribly
different from the Cessna 182 I used to fly out of Leadville in a
past lifetime. The pilot, whose name I didn't catch, said we'd be in
for a bumpy ride, considering the wind, which was strong.
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Flying out over
the
south rim of
the
Grand Canyon in
an
Air Grand
Canyon Cessna 207.
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Also on the
flight was a family from Japan, that didn't have much English,
except for one woman who had a few words, so mostly I talked
aviation with the pilot as we headed out over the ponderosa forest,
avoiding the heavily visited areas for the sake of noise, before
turning north and flying out over the rim and seeing the Canyon open
wide before us. There was a little bump as we came out over the rim,
but finally it opened wide and deep and spectacular, with the river
a narrow thread a mile below, nearly lost in the chaos of rock. From
this altitude, it didn't seem like much of a river. By now it was
pretty overcast but parts of it were sunlit and spectacular. We
followed the Canyon eastward to where the Little Colorado joined,
its turquoise color standing out in contrast to the green of the
river.
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Checking out
the rapids, roughly above the Little Colorado.
I'll be down
there soon!
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I was particularly impressed by the way that the back side
of the south rim slopes sharply away from the Canyon. Geologically
speaking, the river is much older than the Canyon -- the Canyon
exists because a huge dome was thrust up from below in the fairly
recent geological past, say four million years ago, about the time
Lucy was walking the earth in Ethopia. The upthrust was to the north
of the river, the center being up around Jacobs Lake on the Kaibab
Plateau, and the canyon goes through the side of it, with the north
rim, where I had been in 1998, a thousand feet or more higher than
the south. Though we were well above the south rim, we were below
the north rim, and you could see snow on the ground up in the
Ponderosa there.
We flew back and landed -- it had been an interesting flight, and I
was looking forward to seeing this country at ground level. Within
minutes, I was back in the Kia and twisting its tail to the south.
Remembering the small gas tank and the fact that I'd already put on
a hundred miles since fueling, I stopped at a gas station north of
Williams and topped off, this time at only $1.81 per gallon, then
got back on the Interstate and headed west toward Kingman. Traffic
was light and I moved right along, occasionally being blown around a
little in the gusty southwest wind.
Since I was running ahead of schedule and didn't want to deal with
the slow, dull trip up US-93 again, after a stop at Kingman to pick
up a 12-pack of Miller Genuine Draft and a couple snack items, I
turned west on Arizona 68 through Golden Valley -- another huge
dusty trailer-packed development, this time pretty obviously
something of a retirement community. The road wound up over a ridge,
and down into the valley of the Colorado just south of Davis Dam,
and entered Nevada again at Laughlin, a "mini Las Vegas" that's been
filled with casinos in recent years, but the light was green and I
didn't stop. I headed on up the other side of the valley on Nevada
168, and in a few miles reached US-95. Here, I did something a
little special -- although I'd been in California before, I'd never
driven there, so now I did -- south a couple miles to the California
border sign, where I made a U-turn and headed back north.
By
now, it was getting overcast, and the light was failing, so I headed
north up US-95 at a pretty good clip. I came to one tiny town, Cal-nev-ari,
which consisted of one moderate sized casino surrounded by mobile
homes and RV parks. Oh, well, the more people pulling the handles on
slot machines, the fewer crowding the natural wonders . . . on up to
Searchlight, a little desert mining town, a bit grubby, and the only
place that looked like a restaurant was also a casino -- this is
Nevada, after all. Being a casino, the food was fast, if not
particularly good; I called home briefly, ate quickly, and was back
on the road again in the gathering evening. About 35 dull miles
through a wide, dusty valley with low ranges on either side brought
me back to US-93 at Henderson, and from there on it was fight the
traffic back to Lost Wages.
I was a little surprised to manage to drive right to the car rental
lot -- things were signed better than I expected -- and by now, it
was getting dark. I left the Kia there, with a lot attendant that
didn't speak English. The little car had done good service, 550
miles in 11 hours. It wasn't a car I particularly would have liked
to have owned, but it did the job -- and at a daily rental of $16.75
plus gas, I couldn't complain about the cost. It was an interesting
half day, time well spent.
I caught a ride back to the terminal on the Payless shuttle bus,
where I got a taxi over to the Hawthorne. That was ten bucks by
itself; guess we're back in Las Vegas, folks. I headed back to my
room, reshuffled my gear into stuff I'd want on the river and stuff
I'd want camping, and tried to organize things a bit. I was still
wound up fairly tight after being up for something like 22 hours, so
I got an expensive Coke from the machine, and went out by the pool
in the dark, where I let the cool breeze wash over me while I could
see the reflections of the gaudy lights of the Strip, unwound for a
while, and headed in to bed.
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