From Sea to Sand

To our dismay, we had to leave Los Angeles (okay, Pasadena, actually).  We had a decent hotel located less than 1/2 hour from downtown Hollywood, and we really enjoyed ourselves there!  We also decided to skip San Diego when we found out that Comic Con was starting the day we would be there....way too many nerds all in one spot, we'd be sure to get lost in the crowds.  Instead, we headed to Laguna Beach, to check out the Pacific Ocean.  What a beautiful spot!

Then, we headed to Riverside, to find the church used as a location in a campaign in the computer game Left 4 Dead.  Interestingly enough, our dear Navi took us to a "churk", as she pronounced it.  In fact, it was the First Christian Church of Christ Scientist, which was pronounced as the "First Christian Churk of Christ Scienti" - a tongue-twister indeed!!

From Riverside, we headed to Las Vegas.  It was quite the dramatic change in the landscape.  In the morning, we left the Pacific Ocean, and then we drove into the desert.

Las Vegas was its usual colourful and entertaining self, a surprise of colour and lights after the drab sameness of the desert sands.  It was incredibly hot, something like 108 degrees, but the humidity was a whopping 2% - something virtually unheard of back in Winnipeg.

From Vegas, the next morning we headed to the Hoover Dam, which was quite a spectacular sight.

Surprisingly, equally as spectacular was the bridge that was built over the dam.  At first, I missed the turnoff to the dam itself & we had to drive a couple of miles before we could turn around, which resulted in me crossing the bridge twice.  I can tell you, if I had seen beforehand what type of bridge I was actually crossing, you wouldn't have gotten me across it even once!  Here is a look from below:

After that, desert, desert and more desert.  I guess the only thing that will grow down here is the electrical transmission tower, we did see a big field of those.  Other than that, not much vegetation was apparent.

 

We spent our afternoon in Oatman, Arizona, a lovely little spot in the midst of some rather unfriendly looking mountains.  I heard about this little town from Pat, where the wild burros roamed the town freely, so we just had to see it.  Indeed, they do have the run of the town, and you really have to watch out when you are driving down the main street - they go where they want.  They are pretty smart, too, as soon as they hear your car door, they head over in your direction, to see if you have any food for them.

By the way, for a good part of our trip today, we followed the historic Route 66 (anyone remember the show)?  At one point, we stopped for gas and we were trying to decide whether to have lunch.  But, when we saw the name of the nearest restaurant, we decided we would just wait until the next town!