Sonya's Blog - Day 270 - Traveling to Las Vegas

Sonya's Blog - Day 270 - March 18th - Traveling to Las Vegas

I wanted to get on the road at a decent hour, as it is a five and a half hour drive. We have reservations at Mon Ami Gabi, in the Paris hotel, tonight for 6:30. We don't want to miss that, so that means we need to get on the road. I got everyone up and we got moving and we were ready to hook up the truck before 9 AM. That is when things started to go downhill, as we had another flat tire. Three moves, three flat tires. This time, the tire had a nail in it. Blake had spent over 1/2 hour, while we were packing up, putting the spare tire back on and putting all the equipment away. It all had to come back out and we got all set up to change another tire. There were two lug nuts that would not come loose and the tire iron started to slip on them and strip the nuts. Not good. We have roadside assistance with Good Sam (a service organaization for RVer's), so we gave them a call. The service was not going to come out for another 2 hours, by this time it was close to 10. Awesome!

We waited for the tire service people and a tow truck showed up. All he had was a tire iron, just like us. So, and this is a huge shocker, he couldn't get them off either. Wow, did that ever put me in a great mood. What a waste of our time. I looked up the nearest tire store and it was 1.5 KM away. We put everything away and towed our trailer over their at a super slow speed. They changed it, in under a 1/2 hour and repaired the hole in the flat tire. Guess we should have done that in the first place.

We finally got on the road at about 1 PM, so I called and canceled our reservations, since there was not way we were making that. We had to go all the way back through Phoenix to get on the highway to Las Vegas. That took the longest time, it was painfully slow. There was lots of traffic backed up and then the highway to Vegas was super slow for the first little bit as there were lights every kilometre or so. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, but we were not too impressed with the highway. We finally got closer to Nevada and the highway got better and was divided. We passed Hoover Dam over the spectacular bridge that was built in 2010. Natasha would like to go to Hoover Dam. It is only 40 minutes from our campsite, so we will trek out their tomorrow.

Joshua Tree and the large cactus:

Lake Mead, made when they constructed Hoover Dam:

Las Vegas City Lights:

We got to our campground after 7 and set up properly and then ran out to get some supper and drive up and down the strip. We were going to go to Chili's, but there was a 1/2 hour line up. Well, Chili's is fine for a quick supper, but not worth lining up for. There was smoothie shop 2 doors, we all decided that was good enough for us. They were massive smoothies and we were all thirsty and tired, so it did the trick. We then drove along the strip and the kids looked at the mayhem of the Las Vegas strip on a Friday night. We did see Frankenstein, so that was a huge bonus.

Once we were done our little tour, we headed back to the RV and flopped into bed. It was a stressful day and we were done with it.

Sonya