Las Vegas, Devil’s Hole National Monument, Death Valley,
Mammoth Lakes
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At midnight last night, Les decided to go downstairs and play blackjack. I had a better idea, which was to go to sleep. He rolled in about 4 am. I got up at 7 and decided to try my hand. No one was playing blackjack so I tried the quarter slots. I should have known better. I never win at gambling except when Marion is with me. And today was no exception. I dropped $10 in about 7 minutes and only managed to salvage $2.50 in winnings.
I got Les out of bed and we headed downstairs for the $1.29 breakfast. The friendly staff was ever so happy to see us. (Not!) And even happier when we spent a grand total of $3.40 on breakfast. Les tried his hand at Keno during breakfast and managed to break even a couple of times (play again) but finally lost. The odds are so bad at Keno, that even Les “Instant Winner” Hemmingson couldn’t beat it.
In the process of turning in his cards and waiting for his replays, I managed to lose him and later found him at the blackjack table. After watching him for 10 minutes or so, I finally put up $5.00 so I could play. I lasted about 15 minutes before losing it. Why do I do it? Les of course came away about $32 ahead as usual. I hate gambling with him.
We hit the road and headed for Las Vegas. You crest a hill and there it is below you. It’s an ugly sight after what we’ve seen. A huge town in the middle of the desert, no water, no industry other than gambling. Total decadence. We decided to drive down the strip and check it out. We saw the new MGM (complete with giant lion), the new Lexor (the big black pyramid), Treasure Island (and the daily pirate battle), neon signs everywhere, people everywhere, 3 lanes of traffic on both sides. Ugh. God will surely punish us for this.
We finally got out of town and headed for Death Valley. We found a side road that headed the right way, then found a dirt road cutoff. The road headed to Crystal, Nevada, a town that was not on our map. The central attraction of Crystal turns out to be Madame Butterfly’s massage and bath salon. We managed to pass by, even though it promised “adult entertainment”. We had followed a van from Lloyd’s Refrigeration that pulled into the parking lot, but there were no other cars. Maybe the air conditioning wasn’t working.
About 5 miles down the road into the middle of nowhere, we passed a camper with a guy in a lawn chair sitting in front of it. He waved as we went past. We have no idea what he was doing out there. He was just parked off the side of a gravel road in the middle of a desert with maybe 4 dead sage brush bushes and mountains about 50 miles in the distance. No clue.
We saw a van up ahead of us but other than that, no other cars. We passed a sign for Devil’s Hole National Monument. That sounded interesting so we pulled in. It turned out to be a little hole in the ground filled with water which contains the entire population of some variety of desert pupfish. The sign claims it may be the smallest ecosystem in the world. Totally out in the middle of nowhere in the desert. As we were looking at it, a van pulled up, and sure enough, it had 3 German tourists in it. What is it with the German tourists?
We continued on, beginning to wonder if we were headed in the right direction. We passed a sign for the Ash Lake Wildlife Refuge Ranger Station so we pulled in for directions. It was closed of course. It turns out it’s a refuge under construction. They’re trying to buy up the land to create one. I left a note (“stopped by to say hi”) on the board by the door and we headed off the way we thought was right. It turned out we were right.
We headed down the highway to Death Valley. I’m not sure what we were expecting but what we saw wasn’t it. I had visions of fire and brimstone or something I think. Maybe catching it in October you lose some of that. It’s clearly a dry valley. There are no signs of water anywhere and the hillsides and what not are clearly well baked. There was one point where there was something like an oasis. There were a bunch of date trees and bushes and stuff right in the middle of all this dried mud. Kind of weird.
We took one side road, a one lane gravel path through 20 Mule Team Canyon. It wandered through a little canyon of baked mud hills in a variety of colors. Then back to the highway. We passed through about 180 feet below sea level, the lowest point on the trip, before heading out of the valley. The road was about 15 miles up out of the valley. Every few miles were signs for radiator water in case you were overheating. It’s probably a fun road in the summer when it’s 120 degrees. Especially when you’re pulling a camper or something.
The road traveled up and down over mountain ranges for awhile. First we’re at 6000 feet, then at 1000 feet going through a salt flat, then 6000 feet again. Finally we hit the Owens Valley which runs north/south along the Sierra Nevada mountains. They were tipped with snow and looked a little like the Tetons as we headed north.
Looking at the map and the calendar, it was clear if we wanted to have more than 15 minutes in Yosemite, we were going to have to get there early in the morning. So, we decided to drive to the Motel 6 in Mammoth Lakes rather than stopping to camp. Now in my day, a Motel 6 cost $20 or less. These days, they cost $45. At least in ski areas that happened to open the season early.
Les cooked up tortellini and hot dogs in the bathroom, we watched a little HBO, and hit the sack.
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