October 29: Viva Las Vegas

Inside rugby world cup joke...

Well, the object of the exercise was to get somewhere to store the Whale for Thanksgiving through to the New Year while I went home, so on Monday I rented a car to go have a look at a few places.  Found one in North west Vegas - not too bad and cheaper than what I paid over the summer in Phoenix.  With all that sorted out before lunch, I drove up to mount Charleston just west of town.  Beautiful drive - but most of it was still closed due to the rains from Hillary in the summer.  I basically drove from 2000ft above sea level to over 6000 ft in 20 minutes, and I could feel it in the drop in temperature...

Wild horses at Mount Charleston

Las Vegas in the distance

Crazy rocks

30 minutes from Vegas

and back on the strip

Drove over to the Red Rock canyon - which is really less than 30 minutes from the strip.  Crazy rock formations and according to the locals the mountains constantly have snow on them during the winter - weird to think that while you are standing in the desert.

Spent the rest of the week fixing/resealing the roof of the Whale + taking off the black dome for the satellite dish and the TV antenna which is never used.  Took a while, but the results look good.  Funny part of the RV park was that just before I arrived on Sunday, someone drove their car through the laundry and took out the bathrooms as well.  He then tried to drive away, but a number of park residents got enough photos and he was caught by the local police shortly after.  Did not help that we did not have a laundry or external bathrooms...

No more satellite dish or TV arial

Smash burgers with a water view...

On Saturday I Uber'ed into the strip to go find a pub that would show the Rugby world cup final.  Finally found Ri Ra in Mandalay Bay.  Naturally there were a few South African's there in full spirit - they were from Cape Town and in Las Vegas for a drag racing convention - had no idea drag racing was even a thing in South Africa, and naturally there were a few disheartened Irish supporters as well.

The Indian restaurant with a difference - a robot waiter/waitress??  Unfortunately I think the Biryani  tasted as if it was made by a robot as well...

No comment

Only in Vegas on the street

Them South Africans are everywhere

Irish lassie doing the Guinness thing (funny thing is the blog spellchecker insists that Guinness is spelt with a capital C)

End of the story was South Africa scrapped through 12-11 against New Zealand (who had their captain sent off half way through the game) - but the Springbok defence was exceptional. 

Go Bokke.

October 22: Vegas

So managed to book 2 days at the Sand Hollow State Park in Saint George, Utah - exactly at the same time as the gathering of off-road enthusiasts (the side-by-side Mad Max sds people) - so it was pretty noisy, but the surroundings were great.  This is the south-west corner of Utah and as a few people told me, one of the strongholds of the polygamist section of the mormons.  They were quite noticeable in Walmart. 

Clear clear water.  Swam to the island on the far side.  Water was the perfect temperature

Lots of money needed to get everyone to heaven

Next was Virgin River Canyon just outside Saint George.  Went up an old abandoned dirt road to some abandoned uranium mines.  Found a Honda CRV randomly parked on the side of the road with a woman inside and all her hair cut off and outside the car, together with a few pots and pans.  Seriously weird...

Next was 2 nights at the CasaBlanca casino in Mesquite, Nevada.  Great swim every day at 4 with a mojito (or 2).  Wanted to do the casino buffet on Friday night, but by 6pm the queue to get into the buffet room was over a 100 people, so I opted for the chicken fried rice instead... did not help my gambling luck, but so be it.

Casino RV park - see Flim looking out the window

Caribbean music, mojito - the life

Found a last minute campsite at Valley of Fire state park about 50 miles outside of Las Vegas for one night.  Beautiful park with electricity and water hookups.  Lots of Big horn sheep wandering through the campsite.

The profile shot

Crazy patterns in the rocks - all from very very old sand dunes

Amazingly pitted

The RV park between the rocks

Give way to them with the bigger horns - specially if you are on a bicycle

Petrified tree

The atlatl rock

Not sure how they got up to this level to make the drawings

More sheep posing - not sure why they are called sheep as they have no wool

My campsite

Sunday afternoon checked in at the King's Row RV park - just east of the strip.  $130/week which is the cheapest I have paid so far, but figured out why - east of the strip is pretty rough with a huge homeless population.  Was actually quite crazy - 2 blocks from the glitz of the strip you get utter poverty.  I actually felt quite unsafe cycling around there.

October 15: The eclipse

So after not finding place to camp for Sunday night at Dead Horse Point, I headed on and found a KOA campground in Green River, Utah.  Small insignificant forgotten town on the (surprise) Green river in Utah.

The beach on the Green river

Crazy erosion

Arbitrary installation art in Green river

ditto

Two notable things though - a geyser next to the river that spouts sulfurous smelling water at random times - naturally did nothing for the 10 minutes I waited there after a 20 mile cycle along really bad dirt road to get there and the other thing was an old abandoned ICBM silos - cold war relic - an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile site. In the middle of nowhere. Everything was stripped.  One of the few derelict places that I was glad to see as abandoned.  Slept over at a Pilot gas station in Green river again.

What is left of the 70's missile infrastructure - no cellphones..

Now the silo's are just death traps for the few animals that fall down them

Crazy that corrugated iron sheets were used to cover what must have been communication or electricity lines between the silo's

The non-geysering geyser

From there I decided to take the road less traveled and veered off I70 onto SR24 to Goblin Valley State Park.  The idea was to stay over a night at one of the many BLM camp areas around the park.  I have however come to realize that the Whale is not made for BLM campsites - not because it is not setup, but the $30 you save every night by staying wild you lose because to get to a site you need to travel on a road that damages the Whale so badly it takes lots more than 30$$ to fix.

Goblins

The valley of Goblins

Drove on through to Capitol Reef National Park - beautiful drive following the Fremont river valley and stayed over at another BLM spot.

Sundowner at another BLM site

BLM site

Capitol Reef National Park

The dome

Beautiful drive up the Fremont River

Eons of erosion

By some luck I managed to book two nights just before the eclipse at the Fremont Indian National Park - which was smack in the middle of the path of the eclipse.  However, had to spent Wednesday night in the Home Depot parking area in a town called Richfield.

My view from the Home Depot car park...  that is snow of them mountains

Thursday I pulled into the Sam Sawyer campground in the Fremont Indian National Park - totally serendipitous find.  Every time you turn around there is a rock painting of some type - ranging from 5000 years BC to the 1800's.  The Clear Creek canyon has evidently been habituated for centuries by mainly the Paiute Indians - who were very good in documenting their history on the rocks.

Dramatic rock faces covered in art

100 hands cave

mini Bryce canyon in the campground

Idyllic

Newspaper rock - zoom in

A beautiful trout river

Indian Blanket - mother who lost her baby in the canyon painted the blanket for the baby to keep warm - per local legend

Saturday morning arrived, and at 10:26am the full annular solar eclipse started.  It was spectacular - as good was the people watching.  The warnings beforehand about major traffic jams, and crowds were slightly exaggerated, but there were a lot of people.  The crowd was made up of the normal enthusiasts that could tell you everything about the next eclipse and give you the 'real' glasses you must use all the way to the groups that were in-place at 8:00am playing 'Dark side of the Moon' and my favorite - right at 10:26 - 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' by Bonnie Tyler.

The full monty - taken with my phone through my 'special' glasses.

Half-way

The gear was there

The start

The strange thing about being here was that suddenly I was at 7000+ft and mornings were down to 28F (-3C).  It was cold after traveling in 80F. 

Fall in the valley

Cycled up to some old railroad tunnel - crazy construction

One of the few bugs (very dead bug) I saw

In any case, managed to stay at the campsite for Saturday as well and left on Sunday morning towards Las Vegas.  Change of plan was that I was going to abandon the idea to get to the west coast before Thanksgiving - mainly due to the fact that there are some major mountain ranges between me and the sea, and those mountain ranges just had some big snow falls which I was not going to drive through.  So, took scenic route 89 south and by total accident passed Bryce Canyon - or rather turned in at Bryce Canyon.  We had been here in 2008 with our American circumnavigation, and to be honest (probably due to me being saturated at the time), I remember it as being 'great, but no big deal'.  However, I am re-evaluating my opinion - it is amazing; unbelievably amazing.  I did not walk down into the canyon this time, but...  

See the hole?

Did not stay over at Bryce canyon - should have, but got as far Saint George, Utah and managed to book into a the Sand Hollow state park for the night.

The Red canyon tunnels on the way out of Bryce

Sandy Hollow State park

The next few weeks are going to be spent resealing the roof of the whales (in preparation for wet Oregon) and finding a place to store it for Thanksgiving and Christmas.