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
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