NPS Unit Count: 72
Hey there Adventurers! To cap off the trip the Sidekick and I took to Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks, we stopped at Lake Mead National Recreation Area to check out the Hoover Dam along with a stop in Sin City!
We flew into Palm Springs, CA via a handy, free Southwest flight and flew out on another free Southwest flight from Vegas. I had driven out of Vegas once to go to Zion, but never spent time in Vegas proper. To end this trip we spent an evening in Vegas, but first we went to the Hoover Dam to sightsee!
Having seen the dam in books for decades, seeing it in person was pretty cool! Despite my nerditude of national parks, I actually didn’t realize the dam was part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We “did” the dam two different ways. We first stopped to walk on the Pat Tillman Bridge which gives a great overlook of the dam from not too far away. Then, we drove down to, and over, the damn itself and then checked it out from the AZ side. The water level at the time of this trip was alarmingly low!
Afterward, we remembered that amazing interactive #USBarkRangers map we have created and thought to check where we were and discovered that Lake Mead has a Bark Ranger program with a cool tag! So, of course we had to stop at the visitor center and talk to the rangers about Bark Ranger stuff!
Afterward it was off to Vegas! I am not going to go on a long while about – this just some quick thoughts! It is very, very smoky there. The strip is not at all easily walkable. Apparently, it used to be, but now the city has basically prevented people from walking across intersections and built pedestrians bridges over them instead. This sounds like a good idea, but the problem is that many of those bridges do not go back down to street level on the other side, but force you across the street and/or lead you directly into a casino whether you wanted to go in or not. Annoying. We stayed at the Rio, and stopped at the Bellagio, had dinner directly across from the Bellagio fountains at a place called Mon Ami Gabi (it wasn’t cheap, but also didn’t break the bank, plus, we didn’t have to make reservations AND got an outdoor balcony seat to see the Bellagio fountain show!) and then checked out The Venetian, which was a really cool place in terms of architecture and design! Later in the evening, we cabbed up to Fremont Street and the downtown Vegas area. That was easily my favorite part of Vegas! There is a big section of that street entirely covered by a roof with lcd screens, there are zip lines hanging from that roof, tons of cool neon lights, and really, much more of what I was looking for my Vegas experience to be!
And with that it was back home, and another big trip down. All in all, this trip hit two National Parks, 2 additional NPS sites, the Hoover dam, a ghost town, wild burros, a cool aerial tram, and my first Vegas experience. It was a great trip!
The Parks Adventurer 
We were recently in Vegas… stayed at Bellagio and spent a day at Freemont… two different world connected by one common thread…. Sin
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Haha yup. I took 200 bucks in cash with me. I spent about 60 in mere minutes and said that was enough. But I’m not idiot, so we settled down at our hotel chilled at the slots and put a couple ones in here and there for free drinks haha!:)
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