Between the Saguaro and the Ocotillo

We left Tucson early in the morning and headed towards Old Tucson Studios, again, many Western movies were shot and to this day functions as a movie set. Basically, it's a "fake" town straight from the days of the Wild West, where you can walk around and see gun fights reenactments of Billy The Kid, ride a miniature train around the town (we did that!), go horseback riding, pan for golf, see some Can-Can dancers and more. It was all very touristy, of course, but nevertheless we had fun! Check out flickr for the visuals.




Very close by we stopped at the Sonora Desert Museum...amazing! What a wonderful place...it had a 2 mile trail going around an enclosed part of the desert with different exhibitions, animals, habitats, etc. We saw tons of different Cacti, snakes, raccoons, a live show of flying hawks, mountain cats...it was just beautiful to see this wealth of life in the desert.




When we got out of the museum it was already somewhere around 3 pm and our original plan was to start driving towards San Diego and pass through Gila Bend/River and Yuma. However, in a moment of pure spontaneity we decided to skip San Diego and drive up to Las Vegas. We weren't exactly sure if that was possible given the time but we decided to take a chance. We asked Debbie (our faithful GPS) to set a course for Las Vegas, Nevada and headed out. It was obvious that we weren't going to make it all the way but we had hoped that there was a place to stop on the way. Debbie took us through some peculiar roads that night but around 9 pm we pulled into Kingman which is a small town that sits on the famous Route 66. You could say that we caught a break, making it that far and also seeing Route 66 on the way...pretty cool. This morning we left the hotel and kept driving towards Las Vegas, stopping at Hoover Dam on the way. We took the short tour through the Dam which included some history and explanation about why and how it was built, a visit to the generator room and the most magnificent view from the upper deck's observatory. The Hoover Dam was designed to control the Colorado River as it was causing too many problems for the newly established and growing Western communities...after the snow on the mountains would melt, the river would overflow and flood the new towns. The dam itself is without a doubt an engineering marvel...it took five years to construct (2 years ahead of schedule) and six different companies joined forces to make it happen, working 363 days (workers got 2 days of holiday per year), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They poured an enormous amount of concrete to build the dam and each generator weighs about 600 tons...pretty amazing.

We left Hoover Dam and continued driving towards Las Vegas. We checked into the Excalibur hotel and then went to the Luxor hotel and casino for lunch. Las Vegas is a pretty sad place, if you're not here to gamble then it's also quite boring. All you see around you are slot machines and neon lights, and people sitting in front of a slot machine all day pressing a button and waiting for their luck to change. The casino is intentionally disorienting in order to discourage any desire or attempt to leave or step outside...once you're in, that's it, they've got you, and an army of salesmen tries to lure you to go to this or that show...promising that it's free if you'll only buy this or go see that, or whatever. Bottom line, nothing is as good as it sounds or looks in Vegas...it's all fake, but it must be working cause people keep coming back for more. Anyway, we're really excited to be here cause we managed to get tickets to Cirque Du Soleil tonight to see Mystere...it's going to amazing! We'll report back with more tomorrow. In the meantime, check out our pics at flickr.