Three States in a day? It's like being back East...

Thursday, July 24, 2008

We lied. For brunch, and to satisfy Neil's movie-associated cravings, we paid $10 for french fries, 2 veggie burgers (ie. bun with no burger), 2 chocolate milks, and two lemonades at In-N-Out Burger. Our grand total in Las Vegas was $86.

60th anniversary! Great meal and quality even - they chop the potatoes in front of you! This place was packed at 10:30 AM...it looked like the night shift workers of Las Vegas had just gotten off work.

We're leaving Las Vegas...

More suburbia surrounding Las Vegas...Why do I keep taking photos of this?

Boulder City was created in 1931 to house the Lake Mead & Hoover Dam workers. We loved driving through this town - it was full of 1940s-50s style motels. Another sign, "Friendliest motel by a Dam site"

Lake Mead is completely man-made
And, Hoover Dam. It's quite something. It took four years to build (1931-5) and I've read different accounts from 28-112 deaths associated with the building of this. 

More suburbia on route.  Where is the water coming from?  A new ghost town in 20 years time?

Random RV town in Arizona (we think? it was on route - so it could have been Nevada, Arizona, or Utah. I didn't write the name down). One Church surrounded by these RVs. 

We stopped in a town after this that had a Dunkin Donuts?!  Good to fill up on familiar coffee, but be warned, regular gas in Utah is 85 octane, and that ain't good for the car...

I-15 North took us through this gorge! Very dramatic - and, as ever, the scenery continued to surprise and astonish us around every bend. 

9 East from Hurricane, Utah and past La Verkin. La Verkin has signs posted bragging "United Nations Free Zone Ordinance. " Yes, they repealed the UN Charter back in 2001. It's a good read - you can google it.

We were a bit concerned as we drove through some of these towns - signs on stores said, "closed on July 24." And, now we know, July 24th is Pioneer Day. After trekking over 1,000 miles across the USA from Illinois, Brigham Young and his Mormon followers arrived in Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Luckily not everything was closed, so that when we followed this road (still on 9 East), we found a hotel in Springdale (just next to Zion). 

Just before our hotel, we passed the small town of Rockville, founded in 1862, and now complete with a population of 247. Is this what R.E.M. was singing about?

This was the view from our motel.

And here we are eating our dinner outside (Alex is using a cheese-stick as his microphone here...). Bats were flying above us, and we watched the sun set on the rocks across the way. 

And, good night.