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Leaving Las Vegas

Thursday, May 26th – Las Vegas, Nevada to Death Valley National Park, California – Day 105 

At 7am, two men were talking for 10 minutes directly outside our campsite (in fairness, directly in front of the washroom) while their trucks ran. At 8am, the camp workers started power washing the concrete pads. Who washes concrete in the desert? Other than that, I slept well. The kids had a late night the night before, we decided to let them sleep in. Ramen noodles for breakfast; the packs wrapped in plastic (minus most of the flavouring) with additional vegetables thrown in. We slowly got everything cleaned up and put away. They had a drinking water spigot, we filled up all our water bottles. 

 Camping allowed free access to the Red Rocks National Conservation Area. We headed to the visitor center to get the usual things. The center had a volunteer explaining the difference between turtles and tortoises; one lives in water while the other one sinks and drowns. We received the very fancy junior ranger booklets printed on glossy paper so you couldn’t use a pencil. They also had an outdoor tortoise habitat but it was 40 degrees Celsius outside so the tortoises were wisely in their burrows. 


 We took the scenic drive around the conservation area. It was beautiful but sights with multiple stops isn’t our thing. The kids didn’t get out; we could have made them, but they were working on their ranger booklets, so we let them be. Every once and a while I’d tell the kids “Everyone, look out to your right, what a beautiful mountain”. We stopped at four places to take pictures and take in the scenery. The rock structures are cool; some mountains have horizontal layers, but other mountains have been pushed around so their layers are on an angle or are wavy. The cracks above the fault line push various pieces of land around changing the patterns. I found it interesting and very beautiful. 


 We decided to go back into Vegas because I had a 10th wedding anniversary gift to pick up. On the way we stopped at Krazy Buffet ($12.99 adults and $6.99 kids 4 and up). It was delicious. We parked in the Bellagio Casino driveway while I ran in to get a surprise for Gen (it wasn’t that much of a surprise, but Gen says she will be surprised). We had to run to another location because the one in Bellagio was out. One final trip to Dollar Tree and we were on our way out of Las Vegas. Gen is in love with Las Vegas and we will probably be back. 

 Next stop, California, and Death Valley. Gen found an abandoned campsite near Death Valley junction (which has an Opera House and a bunch of run-down buildings, it does not look like anyone lives there). A two-hour drive led us to a beautiful campsite with concrete pads nestled in the mountains and near, if not in, Death Valley. The plan is to wake up and get out early to try to avoid some of the heat. The girls wanted to set-up their tent and sleep outside since it was so warm. After setting up the tent and getting all their stuff in, we found a scorpion crawling around the outside of the tent. We were looking at it when it started running towards us and Charlotte freaked out a little bit. Everyone ended up sleeping in the trailer.

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