The Wonderful Las Vegas [Day 9]

We made it! What a mission...

Before I start telling you all about our wonderful journey, I need to fill you in on a few details about our rental car... its been making this really strange noise. It only makes it when you go above ~50mph - so really only on the freeway. We first noticed it travelling to San Fran and decided it must be coming from the tyres. We didn't have much time to do anything about it because we were so busy! But yesterday afternoon I took a closer look - to find that yes the tyres were completely bald and that we did not have a full sized spare. AWESOME! I called the rental company and they gave me the name of a place to go to and get them replaced early the next morning.

This brings you up to speed. So we get there bright and early at 8:30am and are told that we would have to pay (rather than the rental company) as they do not accept credit card payment over the phone - alright I guess, we can handle that. We are told it will take about an hour. THREE hours later at just after 11am we are finally ready to go. Keeping in mind that we have almost 600 miles to drive.

Annnyway, we finally get on the road... and the noise starts up again. We decide it is not too bad and keep our fingers crossed that nothing major happens. Thank god it didn't!

The trip was amazing! From wide open deserts to snow capped mountains to the bright lights of Vegas. Just outside San Fran it is so flat you can see for miles in almost every direction. The highways strech out forever. The only bad thing is there are so many big trucks on the road. Thankfully they learnt to drive unlike alot of the truck drivers in NZ.
(You'll need to click on these pics to enlarge them as you cant see the detail when they are so small!)


We then headed up, climbing to about 4000 feet. It was icy cold and there was even snow right on the road-side. The hills looked amazing all white, and most were covered in huge wind turbines.


Then we hit Nevada. There is only one word for it - crazy! The bright lights start basically as soon as you hit the boarder. Even these small towns have huge billboards and bright lights you can see for miles. We didnt get any pictures as the camera is not too good at night, and by this stage we were pretty keen to get into bed! They got brighter and bigger the closer we got to Vegas. In Vegas they are just unbelievable. We were both blown away. I cant wait to go out tomorrow night and have a better look!

This brings us up to about 9pm and the end of our journey. 580 miles in 10 hours. We also hit a milestone of 1000 miles on our trip so far. By the time we got to Vegas I think we had clocked up about 1200 miles (1931kms - about 100kms short of the length of NZ). So we found our motel, walked up to the door, and the receptionist (a guy) was making out with some girl on the couch! Only in Vegas eh? We check in, get our keys... lug our packs up to our room - not expecting alot after the last place we stayed in... but WOW! The room is HUGE! Has a king bed, heating, TV, bathroom... it is heaven. And we are paying HALF what we were in San Fran... I LOVE VEGAS!

With the car trouble we have decided to put our whole trip back one day and have it repaired. Its not worth the risk breaking down or even worse, causing an accident. It means we 'loose' a day which is a bit disappointing, but we will adjust by traveling into LA Monday morning rather than Sunday afternoon.

I have made a little map to show you all our journey so far and what we have planned.



We are currently at point C.
Point D is the Grand Canyon.
Point E back to Vegas
Point F is San Diego
Point G is back to LA

So as you can see - today's drive (point B to C) is definitely the longest. I feel good knowing the worst is behind me =) Just a bit more useless information - we plan on traveling approx 2400 miles, or approx 3800kms. That's almost the length of NZ twice! =/

Next Post - 'Vegas & The Grand Canyon'