Death Valley and Las Vegas - A contrast in experiences!

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Death Valley and the surrounding areas – beautiful in an eerie sort of way. You wonder who would choose to live/work there! We spoke to a family yesterday at Yosemite who had just come from Death Valley the day before and it was 131-deg! The record is only 134-deg! They said it was like literally being in an oven. Unfortunately, we missed the heat by a day. It is only a bit over 104-deg today – practically chilly for the area! OK, not exactly chilly.Even the breeze was hot! It was actually hotter in Sacramento at 105-deg. We reached 230 ft below sea level – not many places where you can do that without getting wet! Really hard to believe that people and animals live here.



We really just drove through, stopping for a few pictures and headed out to Las Vegas. We were supposed to drive through and move on to the Hoover Dam, but it took us longer than expected to get this far, and it was very close to dusk when the lights come on, so we decided to find a place to stop and stay for the night. We found a place called the Desert Rose which was a block or two off the strip and rated good for families (didn’t have a casino in it!) It was a great suite with a separate bedroom, small balcony, kitchen and bath. Very nice – the kids loved it! And it had a pool! As we drove down the strip, of course the first thing besides the signs we saw were some show girls walking around in full costume including feather headdresses! The kids were definitely in awe. When we walked back down to see the lights it was a surreal experience! We might have to debrief Freddy after the sights we saw! Walked around a bit, grabbed a quick bite, went to the giant M&M store then back to the pool. Super night.

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