06/22/13 – Hanging Outside of Las Vegas
We spent Saturday and Sunday hanging out around Las Vegas. We figured it would be too much work to try and go to a different park (like Zion in Utah), only to have to come back after two days. I didn’t think that would give us enough time to experience it, so we are going to put that off until later in the trip.
Molly and I slept in a group campground at Mount Charleston – about 20 miles outside of Vegas. It’s about 8,000 feet above sea level, so it gets pretty cold at night. I love the change in weather! Molly woke up around 4am to chanting or fighting..we couldn’t really tell which. I woke up at 8:30am to the same thing. It sounded like a Spanish man and woman yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. We kept hearing the same snippets of words, with the same tone and everything – which made us think it could be a recording. We wanted to go and tell them to shut the hell up, but I guess they had equal rights as us to be there. I don’t know if that constitutes noise pollution or not, but it was terrible. We just got up, got ready, showered, and left as soon as possible.
After the campsite incident, we headed into north Las Vegas to hang out at Starbucks for awhile and charge our electronics and update the blog. We both tried a breakfast wrap, which was well worth the $3.51. Mine had spinach, egg whites, and feta cheese I believe. After we charged the blog, we decided to go see WORLD WAR Z!! I had been wanting to see that movie since I first saw the trailer for it in the movie theater. I thought it was an excellent movie, and so did Molly. I’m not going to go into any details, in case any of you want to go see it. I recommend seeing it as soon as possible, especially if you are zombie fans.
After World War Z, we drove up the Las Vegas strip – bad idea at 5pm on a Saturday. We were in stop-and-go traffic for about 45 minutes, I would guess. The strip is huge, and beautiful – I’m sure it looks even better at night. Tomorrow we will get to see that first-hand! My A/C started acting funny about halfway through the strip, so we had to roll down the windows and go old-school, to give the A/C a break. After about 15 minutes of that, my A/C started working again. Weird. I guess it’s just getting tired..might need to refresh that when I get back home!
We decided to check out Lake Mead – the giant lake that was formed by the creation of Hoover Dam. We went to a swimming area called “Boulder Beach”, and I was surprised at how warm the water was. It was like being in a lukewarm bathtub, but the ground is all rocks..mostly sharp ones that aren’t too fun to walk over in bare feet. We found a place at the lake to fill the solar shower, and headed out towards our campsite for the night. We stopped at a restaurant called In-and-Out Burger, which I may have mentioned earlier on in the trip. It’s got the same style decorations as a Steak n Shake, but it’s much MUCH better quality – the fries are made in-house, the lettuce is pulled from the head daily, and they use cholesterol-free oil. But most importantly, it tastes great. Here’s a little secret: they have a “secret menu” online, where you can order things like the Animal Burger (which I did). It has their secret sauce, which is just thousand island dressing, then fried onions, and I can’t remember if there are tomatoes on it or not. It was good, though. We headed back to the same group site that we were at the night before, but this is where things got interesting…
We pulled into our group site and noticed there were about a half dozen cars parked side-by-side, as if they’d already claimed their little group spot. A guy appeared out of the woods and walked up to our car. He was barefoot, wearing a robe that stretched all the way to the floor, and had on a silver headband, which looked like a headlight without the light. He asked us if we were here for the “Temple of the [I didn’t hear the rest, because I was still processing what I was seeing exactly]”. We said no, but we were just looking for a normal campsite. We headed to a different campsite, within the same general area. After we set up the tent, we heard the chanting. Couldn’t exactly tell what they were saying, but they were definitely worshipping SOMETHING, and it wasn’t God. Molly thinks they were worshipping Transformers, and I have no clue what they were worshipping. They didn’t bother us, though, and the guy that we talked to originally was super nice!