8th – 11th Jan
We left the Grand Canyon on a lovely sunny day and headed south. Our destination was Kingman, just a place for an overnight stop in moderate civilisation. A camp with wifi to the van and a laundry. We have simple needs! On the way there we drove a teeny tiny section of Historic Route 66 to see what all the fuss was about. This was another private road that we didn’t have to share and it took us to the small drive-through town of Seligman. Seligman rests on its Route 66 laurels in a big way, with numerous curio and gift shops, diners and bars, all paying homage to the great road. We had a very satisfactory lunch in one of the diners and continued on our way, on the Interstate. Kingman was warm and snowless and it was as if the previous 3 weeks of sub-freezing temperatures had all been a dream. We could have the doors and windows open, sleep without the heating on, and go about in shirt sleeves. Oh, and our park had its very own mini-golf course right next to our site. AND it was free. All this was too good to be true so stayed for two nights.
From here we were heading towards Death Valley and we identified the town of Pahrump (pardon me!) for our next stop. Our route took us around the southern side of Las Vegas and past the Hoover Dam. The road used to go over the dam until they built a massive span bridge for the highway, so now it is a short detour off the main road to have a gander. There is quite tight security to get close to the dam, then you can follow the old road across it to some parking on the other side and then walk back to it. Again, this is a place that can get seriously busy in peak season with reports of 2 hour queues to get through the security checks, but we sailed through and easily found a Big D/TC sized parking space.
Despite the lack of people it still seemed a bit congested on the walkways, and I can’t imagine how they cope with the throngs. Now the dam itself is very impressive, but somehow I expected it to be bigger. Is that unfair to one of the engineering marvels of the 20th century? Probably, but was well worth the stop and I was very impressed by the span bridge.
We ate sandwiches on a carpark wall looking at the back of the dam and Lake Mead and then headed off. The road to Pahrump (pardon me!) skirted around south Vegas and we had our first glimpse of the skyline of the strip through the smog. We would be back soon to experience the craziness of Sin City. Pahrump (!) is in the next valley over from Vegas and Big D did a great job of grinding up and over the hill to get there. I randomly selected and booked an RV park as we approached and soon we were pulling into a large park full of long term ‘snowbirds’, taking the last available site. This park was co-located with a vineyard and once set up we decided to head over to the tasting room to buy a couple of glasses of wine and watch the sunset. Now at this time of year, having lost a hour as we passed into the Pacific Time Zone, in a place surrounded by mountains, the sun sets pretty early. So despite it being closer to afternoon tea time than evening drinking time we found ourselves having done a full wine tasting and seeing off a bottle of wine at about 4.30pm. Accidental drunkeness.
In the morning we rinsed the salt and dirt off BD & TC at the park’s own RV jet wash station, stopped at the supermarket for supplies, filled with fuel and headed for Death Valley.