Dam, red rocks and flags

Just 20 miles out of the bright neon and over the top nature of Vegas is Red Rock Canyon. It is, as it says, red. You can see it from quite a way off and it's certainly striking. Considering how close it is to Vegas it's actually a fairly quiet place and a great escape from the madness. A 13 mile scenic drive takes you around with the option of a few walking trails.

We were tired from Vegas and had already walked miles from casino to casino so weren't up to any more.
Still the landscape looks tremendous with it's visible layers of bright red rock and bizarre formations.


Even though it's the end of February it's warm enough to decide to camp. That evening we camp on the national park with a red rock backdrop and a clear sky, with a slight glow to one side.
Once that sun goes you soon remember it's still February. It's difficult to remember that we're still in the desert with Vegas being so close. It's an awful nights sleep as the hard gravel floor is a bit of a comedown to a king size motel bed.
In the morning we have breakfast in the baking sun under clear blue skies and everything is good.
On the way out of the park a few cyclists dot the scenic road, some of only very few we've seen in America so far. Probably due to American roads being not conducive to cycling and even national parks seem to have little or no provisions for cyclists of any type.
Only a few days in Nevada and already we're over the border and into Arizona. Crossing the border itself is the Hoover Dam.
We have to pass through a car checkpoint to drive across it and as we do so do many others in a long line of traffic that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the desert. The place is packed. We park up and walk back across to have a nosey.
To be honest, although the dam is a great engineering achievement, it felt a bit like making a tourist attraction out of a power station. A bit dull.
Lake Mead, which has been created by the dam, is a large blue mass that looks much better than the large grey concrete mass of the dam. I'd heard that the dam produces all of the power for Vegas and even some for California but the truth is only 7% of Vegas' power is generated from the dam. But as we've seen on the Strip that's still a hell of a lot of power.
Onwards we go onto the famous Route 66 into Flagstaff, so named due to a tree made into a flag pole by a group from Boston on a scouting mission celebrating the centennial year of America.


There's not a great deal to Flagstaff, it's a decent enough looking place in which we manage to walk the main streets in less than 20 minutes, and that includes buying some guitar strings.
A nearby University make the town a bit more lively than it otherwise would be. Downtown is fairly dead but many evenings the handful of bars hosts live music and a small theatre draws in some of the best bands in the world. I wonder quite how they manage it but it seems Flagstaff is a town that is placed well enough to be near enough to other major locations. A hub of sorts with the added bonus of a student populous.
It's certainly a transport hub, as well as a freight train thoroughfare, around 100 trains pass through town every day, partly splitting a main road in the process.
For some reason, as we've learned in a lot of towns in America, the train drivers will sound their horns at all times of day and night, great.
We need a break from crap fast food and spend 4 times as much to eat at another great Mexican place. We didn't come here for the food or music though. There's a certain world famous canyon up the road that we can not miss.

White hills and blue lakes

Higher and higher we drive up from the warmth of Sacramento and snow begins to appear beside the road. As we drive more and more snow build up until we reach South Lake Tahoe and it's higher than the car. It's also getting dark and difficult to find where the hell we're going as road entrances have now become channels cut into the snow. In a couple of hours driving we've gone from arms out of the window and t-shirts on to fully wrapped up in hats and scarves. All this and we're still in California, just.
Lake Tahoe is a huge expanse of blue water that has the border of California and Nevada running down the middle. The buildings on the California side have a bit of the alpine look about them and typically on the Nevada side, where gambling is legal, they have plonked a couple of large unsightly casinos. We stop on Stateline Road which is exactly what it says it is, crossing it takes you into Nevada to do some gambling, if you're into that type of thing.


Along the California side of the lake the road curves its way until we get to a ski resort that's literally just next to the road. Right, time to try out the snowboards. Oh, I forgot I'm crap! Getting the chairlift up the mountain is hard enough but it rewards you with the sight of the clear blue lake glinting in the the sun surrounded by the mountainous snowy landscape. Not bad. Falling on my face, sliding along on my bum and doing all kinds of rolls becomes the norm. I can manage bursts of boarding but mainly it's just pain. The next couple of days we can barely move as our muscles have tightened up and I'm bruised all over.


Lake Tahoe is the home of Californian snow action and the lake is surrounded by a concentrated group of ski resorts giving you a choice of 5 or so within a short distance.
No matter how many times I smacked down on compact snow the scenery was amazing and it wasn't that busy. One guy was skiing dressed as a clown for some reason but that's America for ya.
We carry on towards Yosemite National Park and stop over in a decent American West type of town called Sonara.
It's a nice enough looking one-road small town. We find out later that Sonara has 5 Mexican restaurants! 5! I think there were 10 restaurants in town and 5 were Mexican.
Thankfully I love Mexican food but this is were America is poorly represented to the outside world. On tv and films you get plenty of your standard white and black folk being typical Americans but one of the biggest surprises to me was how many Americans are in fact from Mexico. The Mexican population is massive and they don't just live in the southern states near the Mexican border. They live way up into the north as well. For all the complaining we've heard from African Americans on tv and sometimes on the street we've seen or heard nothing from the ignored Latino population. Most motels we've stopped in have at least one channel in Spanish and usually the cleaners of that motel are Latino. It's strange that in all the things I've seen about America throughout my life that very little Mexican-Americans were included, other than being drug dealers in gangster films as bit part players to the leading African or white Americans. After going to Mexico and South America I like the Mexican people and I just don't understand what's going on here. I wonder if they think themselves lucky to be here and that life could be worse, after all they could be native Americans.