It rained overnight - in Death Valley! Steve keeps calling global warming.
We slept ok but Julian got up at 5:50am to go to the toilet
and then soon after Rohan woke. So we
were all out of bed, dressed and eating breakfast by 7am. This was good as it allowed us to get away
just after 8am.
On the road out was Zabriskie point and we had to pass the
road to Badwater. Because of the rain,
the Badwater road was closed – we were so happy we went there yesterday!. The view from Zabriskie point was wonderful
in the morning light as the background mountains were bathed in sunlight. Julian and Rohan enjoyed the steep climb up
to the viewing area but I didn’t as there was a dropoff on either side of the
path! The mountains on the other side
were cloaked in black rainclouds, looking very ominous.
We set off down the road and suddenly came up to flooding
across the road – without signage, so fun times in an RV! After about the 10th flood/ford,
we realised that they must have run out of signs! There were rivers running beside the road as
well as across the road. Julian was LOVING
it! Rohan looked a bit nervous. As we drove, we could see storm clouds moving
away from us up the valley.
We followed Jane’s directions up a couple of reasonable
roads and eventually got onto the main road to Las Vegas. We bypassed Las Vegas and Boulder City
completely and went to the Hoover Dam, arriving at 11:30am.
We had some lunch in the RV and then walked down to the
Dam. There were lots of people and once
again, Julian wasn’t being cooperative.
He was bribed with an ice cream and an orange juice but even then it
wasn’t possible for us to do the Powerplant tour. We could have pushed him a bit more but it
just wouldn’t have been a good experience.
Back at the RV, I plugged in our destination and Jane chose
a route through a national park - $10 thank you very much – before she took us
out of there again. Jane redeemed
herself when she took us past Nelis Airforce base and we saw about 10 Black
Hawk helicopters and a Hercules on the apron.
We got onto the Interstate and cruised happily until a
MASSIVE electrical/rain storm hit. Far
out it was impressive – more water over the road, fork lightening everywhere
and loud thunder!
We stopped in Mesquite Nevada to go to Walmart for some
grocery shopping and also to ARCO to get some petrol. No Wal-martians again :)
From Mesquite it was only 70km to St George where we were
going to stop for the night. It was
already 4:30pm, so we were doing ok, but that was until we hit roadworks. 5km in 30mins and then another storm hit us
along with crazy crosswinds. Darkness
arrived early, so it was stress city!
Thankfully we got to the campground and we just caught the guy before he
left for the night. We got a full hook
up for $38 – a bargain.
I quickly whipped up an Apricot chicken dish with rice for
dinner and we had strawberries that tasted like strawberries for desert. The
boys had a shower (with lots of complaining) and were asleep within minutes of
getting into bed around 8:15pm.
As I type, the rain is pummeling the RV, lightening is
flashing all around and thunder is clapping near us. I am so pleased we aren’t in a tent!
Today was full on and we went from California to Nevada to
Arizona to Nevada to Arizona to Utah – four states in one day!
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