Day trips around Las Vegas, Part 2

While we continue to wait for our motorhome to be repaired, we spent some more time exploring in and around Las Vegas.

We spent one afternoon and evening exploring the old downtown area which is on Fremont Street.  

The area leading to Fremont street has become old and rundown looking with homeless people everywhere but when you get right down to the "Fremont Street Experience", you see that things are cleaned up and policed to a point where you feel safe and interested in parking the car and exploring on foot.

There are numerous "Old" Las Vegas landmark signs and neon displays that have been refurbished and installed on the street.  They really brighten up the atmosphere.






















Fremont street used to be open to traffic and was the main gambling center of Las Vegas.  It was known as "Glitter Gulch" because of the way that it sparkled at night from all of the neon and incandescent lights that lit up the night.

Here is an internet photo of how it looked in the daytime before the transformation to the "Fremont Street Experience:.



In 1994, because of diminished gambling traffic due to the surge in casinos being built on "The Strip", it was decided to close off Fremont Street to vehicle traffic and make it into a pedestrian mall.  

The design called for a lighted canopy to be constructed over several blocks of Fremont Street.  

Here is an internet photo of the canopy under construction.




Every day after dark, spectacular light and sound shows are displayed on the canopy.  The shows are free and draw large crowds.  It is a friendly crowd that is fun to watch.

This is a picture showing what the Golden Nugget looks like now, under the canopy.













An interesting thing at one end of Fremont Street is an entire shopping mall made of Tractor Trailer Containers stacked up and made into shops.  Out in front of the shops is a giant metal Praying Mantis that is mounted on a truck chassis.  Every once in a while, it shot a giant flame out of it's antennas and is really worth waiting to see.




Another thing that was very interesting to see was all of the various street art and artists. 

This bronze statue was quite interesting.  It must have taken quite a bit of work because of all of the fine detail.






Then . . . . . . . . . . .  it moved!!!!



As we drove around town, there were other amazing things to see.

As you know, it gets very hot in Las Vegas in the summer.  You probably didn't know that it gets soooo hot that it can melt things.



It even looks like it melted this building.





This building was another interesting find from Roadside America.

It was designed to look like it had melted and is currently the home of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.

A really nice all day trip will take you southeast of Las Vegas about one hour to the ghost town of Nelson, Nevada.

It is an abandoned mining town that has been beautifully restored and is open to the public for free with additional fees for a tour of an old mine.  When we visited, we had just missed the last tour of the day into the mine but we still got a chance to look around.









This is the inside of the general store.  There was a lot of stuff to look at!!!



These guys were hanging out in one of the old hotel rooms.



Another fun place to visit on an all day driving trip is Valley of Fire. 

It is located North of Las Vegas.

It is another very beautiful, rocky State Park.  It also has more petroglyphs.



These were located on a sheer rock wall and we had to climb a very tall, steep stairway to a platform that the Park Service had erected next to the petroglyphs to be right next to them.

It was not clear how the original artists were able to make this artwork on the sheer face of this rock wall.



There is also an interesting visitors center.  One of the displays was of a Big Horn Sheep.  We have seen these Big Horn Sheep in the vicinity of Hoover Dam but never in Valley of Fire so it was fun to see one up close.




We saw a tortoise off in the distance as we were driving through the park but could not get up close.

They had a nice display in the visitor center.

 

As we were driving out of the park, we came across this.



They were very hard to see because they blend in so well with the surrounding terrain.  There must have been 15-20 spread over the hillside and fairly close to the road.



There are too many interesting places to write about to include them all in this blog but I do need to tell you about one DON'T MISS place to visit.

You have to go to Hoover Dam and the nearby bridge while you are in Las Vegas.



You can take guided tours inside the dam and the tour is well worth it if you have never been.  Since we had been before, we just walked across the dam and also across the new bridge that spans the Colorado River.  

This is the parking area for access to the new bridge walkway.  You walk to the top of the stairs or ramp and then all the way across the bridge.



The bridge allows traffic to bypass driving across the bridge on the highway that travels from Interstate 40  at Kingman, Arizona to Las Vegas.  

After September 11, 2001, trucks were no longer allowed to drive over the dam for fear that they might be carrying explosives that would damage or destroy the dam.  They had to take a long, alternate route to get to Las Vegas and that may have prompted the construction of the bridge.

This is the walkway that sits beside the freeway side roadway that crosses the bridge.


This is an internet picture showing the relationship of the bridge to the dam.


After over a month of living out of hotels while our motorhome was being repaired, we finally got it back.  It seems to be fixed but we won't really know until we bounce down the road for a while and see if there are any undetected shorts in the wiring that suddenly becomes detected.

We were finally able to get back into the motorhome and get back to our old routine . . . . . . . . . well, sort of.

We can't wait to tell you about what happened next.

We will let you know when the next chapter is posted to the blog.

We hope you can get out there and see things and make every day a good one.

Tom & Suzie

Day Trips Around Las Vegas, Part 1

Hello again,

Once we arrived back in Las Vegas, we went to the RV repair facility and found out that they were done with phase one of our repairs.

Phase one consisted of trying to figure out what was actually damaged and what parts and labor were going to be needed to make the repairs.

While price and availability of the parts was being determined, they told us we could have our motorhome back to live in.  We were happy to move back into our home after we moved it back to Arizona Charlie's RV Park.

When we checked back with the RV repair facility in a couple of days, we found out something interesting.  Our motorhome is a 2009 model, and that is considered old in motorhome years and because of that, they were finding that some of the needed parts were either very hard to find or no longer available at all.

That information made it impossible for them to give us any type of a timeline on when the repairs might be completed.

Believing that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, we started visiting the service counter every day.

After a few days, it was determined that all of the parts except one were available.  The manufacturer of the motorhome, Fleetwood, said that the wiring harness that we need is no longer available but the shop will be able to build us a new one by replacing each damaged wire, one at a time.

All of the price and labor cost information was then sent to the insurance adjuster for his review.  The adjuster called us a couple of days later and said he was so busy that he hasn't had time to review the information and approve payment for the repairs yet.

We assured him that we would be checking back every day to keep the project moving forward and he promised us that that would not be necessary because he would get on it in the next few days.  We will see.

In the meantime, we continued to explore the Las Vegas area.  That is the reason that we came here in the first place.  There is so much to see and do here.

One nice day trip is to Red Rock Canyon.  It is about a 45 minute drive from our RV park and is well worth the drive.



The red rocks just jut up out of the desert.  You can't really get a feel of just how big these rocks are until you get a little closer.

We were there on a Saturday and the rocks were crawling with climbers.  The white arrow points to some climbers. 

These people are NUTS!





There were an amazing variety of rocks.







Everywhere we go in the desert, we find more evidence of people who came before us.  



These day trips have taken us over an area that covers thousands of square miles by car and these people did it on foot in a very harsh environment.  

Many of the petroglyphs continue to depict aerodynamically shaped objects ?????



Closer to Las Vegas, we again used Roadside America to find interesting things that you would never expect to see.

One of those interesting things is a home owned by Lonnie Hammargren.

The home is located in a nice residential neighborhood and you would never expect to see it in such a neighborhood.

We were unable to go into the residence because it is a private residence but it was so interesting from the outside that we did some on line investigation and came up with some amazing information.

The home is owned and occupied by retired neurosurgeon and former Nevada Lt. Governor Lonnie Hammargren and his wife Sandy.

Mr. Hammargren is now around 80 years old and is a huge memorabilia collector.  On the state’s annual Nevada Day, which celebrates the state’s admission to statehood in 1864, he opens his Las Vegas abode to visitors for an open house.  This happens in October and we missed it.

Our research on line describes some of his collections that include an indoor barbershop brothel, an underground mine, a mini Taj Mahal, a T-rex replica, and an animatronic tiger, to name just a few things you might find. 

Though most of his collection has been built on donations, Hammargren has also spent $10 million out of his own pocket on purchases, construction, and maintenance.

He built his home museum in 1969, has lived there since 1971, and has no intentions of ever leaving. 

In the basement beneath the garage, Hammargren has created an Egyptian burial chamber, fully outfitted with a golden sarcophagus, where Hammargren has instructed that he be buried.

Lonnie Hammargren’s Egyptian burial chamber and sarcophagus. He says he’ll be preserved in “absolute alcohol.” Or “Absolut alcohol.” Either way, we love this guy.

Hammargren has an interest in space travel and briefly worked with NASA, and there’s a half-scale model of the space shuttle Columbia. He also has items from daredevil Evel Knievel’s jumps because he treated him after failed stunts.












The collection started in a regular home on a regular residential street.  As time passed, they purchased several adjoining homes and expanded the collection.  The fronts of the houses look almost normal from the front street side.





The front of one of the houses has a roof that looks like a Mayan Temple.



They have completely enclosed and connected the back yards to house larger displays.

The wall that encloses the back yard is very tall but many of the displays are so tall that they are visible from the street that runs along the back of the homes and that is what we were able to see and that is what grabbed our attention and showed us just how gigantic this collection really is.

There is even a Bat Mobile parked in the driveway.



More back yard art.








Here is a video that is worth watching about the house and the man who dreamed it.   VIDEO

If that isn't enough information for you, click HERE  for a link to even more!!  

We are continuing to explore while we wait for our motorhome and we will keep you posted.

Get out there and see something as soon as you can!!!!

Tom & Suzie