Las Vegas, June 2017
It’s been a bit since my last post. We got back home and it has been busy, with the 4th of July and then a lot of work stuff. I’m going to try to get caught up in the next couple of posts.
Our stay in Vegas went by in a fast blur as usual. We spent a lot of time playing poker and sightseeing.
As has become one of our things, I decide to take a day off from the madding crowd occasionally and leave E on the strip for some down time of my own. She enjoys the crowds more than I do so I take off on my own and get chores done or visit places she doesn’t want to spend the day visiting.
On this trip I was fortunate enough to have authorization to take my new work drone along. It is a DJI Inspire 1 with all the bells and whistles. On a Hot Tuesday I headed out into the desert south of town to the “Seven Magical Mountains”. This is a man made “art object” that consists of stacked stones painted in garish colors that were erected just of I-15. My plan was to fly the area and get some testing and practice flights done. The drone performed flawlessly in the 100 plus degree weather and I got some good filming evaluation footage (I need good filters for the bright daylight). I answered many questions about the quadcopter and talked to a lot of people who had braved the heat to see this sight.
Back in town, I did some Piper maintenance then caught up with E to head out to dinner. During our stay, we ate out at some of our favorite restaurants…There was the Eiffel tower restaurant for beef Wellington and souffle’s, Oscars for steak and also out to Summerlin to Echo and Rigg for steaks. We hit Fat Choy for the pork belly bao and of course went a couple times to our new favorite at Roma Deli. We hit a tiki lounge for some relief from the heat one afternoon.
Speaking of heat, on Tuesday of our stay the mercury went north of 100 degrees and stayed there. Our average daily temp was around 106. The highest I saw was 112 and the lowest was about 95 at 4 in the morning. We were good with our air conditioning but discovered that the heat (after 9 days) overwhelmed the refrigerator in Piper. The freezer stayed frozen but the main fridge went to about 70 degrees and stayed there.
I discovered, on one of my solo forays, that the way to beat the heat is to head up to Mount Charleston. This National Forest area is an hours drive north on highway 395 and is a stunning area to visit. There are no passes needed to visit the area and there was still snow on the top of the mountain. As I climbed the flanks of the mountain, the temperature steadily decreased until I was at a comfortable 75 degrees. The folks at the forest and visitor center were helpful and well versed on the use of drones within the national forest area. I headed out to the desert overlook area and deployed the Inspire for some aerial shots of the desert. From this vantage point, you look out across the desert floor toward the famed “area 51”. I didn’t see any UFO”s but the history of the area is well documented at the overlook and you can see some of the old nuclear weapon testing sites from here. The whole area is rife with both ancient (native american) history and modern. I never get bored learning about the ways the desert has been used by humans. In the canyons, desert and hills surrounding Las Vegas there are pictographs, petroglyphs, graffiti from the first settlers to come in the area, lost mines, forgotten homes and stories of human struggle throughout the ages. I often wonder, as we drive through the southwest, at the abandoned homes. Whose life was spent here? Whose dreams died in the desert? Why is it empty and lifeless with just ghosts of the occupants left behind? I talk to a lot of people who say, “I don’t like Vegas because I don’t gamble”. There is so much more here than gambling that I am torn between telling them about how much there is to see and keeping it a secret for myself to enjoy. Only about half my time in Vegas is spent in the casinos. The rest of my time is spent visiting these areas hidden (sometimes in plain sight) amongst and around the hubbub of the desert metropolis (visit the Springs Preserve in town).
It is always with a sense of not having spent enough time that we leave Vegas each time. We packed up Piper and headed north on U.S. 395 out of town. We drive along the military property through the desert, climbing out of the Vegas basin toward our next destination at the Sparks Marina in Sparks, Nevada. We climb through the mountains and stop in Tonopah for lunch. This is another area that I want to spend a lot of time exploring in but that’s not on the agenda for this trip. Full from AYCE pizza, we head out, fuel in Hawthorne (more interesting history here) and make our way through Fallon and into Sparks.
Gentle reader, I shall leave you here with us setting Piper up in the Sparks Marina. There are burgers to cook and sights to see here too and they will be in my next installment.
until next time,
remember that all who wander are not lost and all who wonder find a destination.
See ya out there,
BFD
