Today began with a cold swim at 7:30 am. Are you impressed? Si wasn’t!
After that we headed off to Vegas by driving through Death Valley. Some Death Valley trivia for you; it is America’s largest national park (except Alaska), and covers more than 3.3 million acres! The Badwater Basin salt pan is 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America (quite staggering when you think we were at 9000 feet yesterday on the Tioga pass). But enough guidebook speil, the only thing I will remember is that it is hot! Hotter than hot. As we first drove in we had the top down on the car but we quickly put it up and turned the air conditioning on. The temperature then crept up from 85 ish to 109!! Needless to say we didn’t get out the car much, when we did it felt like hairdryers blowing at you from all directions, we certainly weren’t going to be doing any hiking today!
In the end we decided to head off early to maximise the Vegas fun, and fun it is! The whole place is like one giant theme park for adults, starting off with a map of the hotel attractions when you check in! Every hotel has a large portion of the ground floor set aside for gambling, surprisingly mostly slot machines, with some as low as 1c bets. There are other things to see, like the lions in the MGM Grand, and the Coyote Ugly bar – barmaids on the bar pouring drinks into people’s mouths (literally). Plenty more to explore tomorrow!