So after the rush and buzz of the last three days (in fact, the whole trip had so far felt like it had gone at 100mph!), it was time to ease off the gas a little and head out in to the desert during the day for our last few hours in Vegas before our night flight to New York.
We had as long a lay in as our check out time would allow us then, before heading down to the car park, once again firing up the awesome Mustang and pointing it’s hood towards the sandy waste. As it was, we hadn’t really formulated a plan for this last day whilst arranging the trip, knowing that we’d likely just want to take a short break after the madness of PSW… but to heck with that! Now we were here, we didn’t want to miss amount of it and so acting on a tip off from Kubeisy, we decided on heading out to another old ghost town, turned film set, to see what we could capture.
After a quick coffee stop (Dave needs his caffeine in the mornings!) we were en route West, deep in to the Nevada desert. Despite having a drop top though, with the temperature reaching intolerable levels again, we plumped for keeping it up and fully employing the modern wonder of air conditioning.
Arriving in El Dorado Canyon was a little surreal, as it looked like any other abandoned Wild West mining town, but it was strewn with old, battered and rusty cars, vans and trucks that looked to have been placed there a little more recently than the time of its demise! It quickly became clear that they were all leftover props from films recorded at the site previously, which was confirmed when we headed in to the small shop and found it full of photos, autographs and items from the various movies.
Having wandered off from Dave and Meredith for a short while, I began to wonder where they’d got to but having turned back on to the main part of the site, I saw they were using the opportunity to conduct a modelling shoot with each other! Well, photographers gonna photograph!
Having had enough of the heat here, we jumped back in to the oven like car (but not before leaving it running with the A/C on inside for a few minutes) and headed out to see what else we could find. Having consulted the map (and Meredith) briefly then, we decided to get at least one more state under out belts before leaving the West and so set a route for the Nevada/Arizona state line and, more specifically, the Hoover Dam.
After a brief stop off there, we made our way up to the lookout point over Lake Mead to finish off the views of Arizona. What a view that was and the final one of any sort of wilderness before the end of the trip!
We then took a slow drive back in to Vegas to drop Meredith at the airport for her flight home to Colorado, but realising we had a good hour or so to kill, Meredith directed us to a small bar in Paradise (yes, you read that right non-American folk… the town was called Paradise) where we consumed our final Nevada beer and had an impromptu game of shuffle board! Who knew such a game even existed!
We then headed back to the hotel for our bags before dropping the car off and making our way back to the airport for our own flight to New York. That was a mission in itself!
So all told, our planned day of relaxing turned out to be anything but. Still, it had been another cracking experience and now we couldn’t wait to see what the contrast of the fast paced, hustle and bustle of the Big Apple would be like….
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