No breakfast at the hotel today - we're having it an hour down the road.We pull oput of the hotel, gas up at the Mobil station across the road (CC friendly) and hit the road.
Above: Westside Lilo's Café Below: Trike and HD complete with dog basket leaving just after we arrive
above L-R: Table of four breakfasts, My spicy omlette, Route 66 Special - enoughto fill two plates.
We settle our restaurant checks and have until 11.00 to browse around the town. Mrs. K and I viist a few local stores and generally have a look around this quaint little town. We buy some T-shirts, a nice route 66 cap and a R66 fridge magnet which I attach to the inside of Demo's windscreen.
The 11.00 rendezvous is at the Snow Cap drive in. Needless to say,11.00 comes and goes and we're still hanging around.
There is no lunch stop today, as such, but we do make a rest stop at Hackberry, at the Hackberry Stores.
At the town of Kingman, we stop to gas up again, and ride just a few miles down the road, still in Kingman, to make a stop at Mother Road Harley-Davidson dealership. Mrs. K and I, and a few others take the opportunity to buy ourselves some 'coolvests' here, which we immediately plunge into cold water tank on the van, leaving to soak for 10 or 15 minutes before putting them on over out long sleeve white T-Shirts. I worked it out that the pair of vests cost us about £50. Mines a normal one, Mrs K's is a deluxe one (i.e. it has two zip pockets). Info on what a coolvest is.
We cross from Arizona to Nevada, already feeling the benefit of our new vests, and ride through towards the Hoover Dam. On the way we pull off the interstate and stop under it in an underpass (the only shade around) to rest a while and drink water, then we continue up to the Hoover Dam. There's a security checkpoint that we have to pass through, and shortly after that we're riding over the dam from the Nevada side to the Arizona side, where we park up and take a few photos, but it's so hot and there's no shade, most people don't really want to hang around too long - my new thermometer has nearly gone off the scale! The truck's not with us because it's not allowed to drive across the dam - only because it's got a motorcycle on board and that's not allowed - before riding back across to the Nevada side.
We meet back up with the truck at a viewpoint over the lake formed by the dam - the truck has got here via the new Hoover Dam by-pass. We rest a while here in the shade of the truck, partly because Gary doesn't want us to arrive in Vegas when the roads are at their busiest.
From here we ride for about 45 mins, keeping a tight group, using the interstate into 'Vegas, and to our hotel, the Monte Carlo Casino, which, being Vegas, is absolutely huge.
The Hotel has it's own multi-story 'self-parking' car park and we park the bikes up on level 2 and walk down to the hotel entrance. Todays milage 244, trip total 2420
Our truck is waiting there and we unload our luggage, and we're all glad to get into the cool hotel lobby, to wait for our room keys keys. We wait about 15 mins before Gary gets the room keys and hands them
out. Mrs K and I are on floor 14 315 (the hotel has about 30 floors!)
Mrs. K and I get freshened up, and prepare to brave 'the strip'.
As times getting on, we decide just to have a slice of Pizza each at the food court (still within this massive hotel, then, to get to the strip we have to walk out via the casino area of the hotel. It stinks of stale cigarettes (because smoking is allowed in there) and eventually we find our way outside. It's well past 9 in the evening but its still really warm - like somebody's blowing a hot hairdryer over you - and there's thousands of people milling about and 5 or 6 lanes of traffic running on each side of the strip.
We have a brief wander, cross to the other side of the strip and back but Mrs. K and I decide that it's all too much and retreat to the sanctuary of our hotel room. On the way back we meet a few others from our group who have similar thoughts. And did I mention how expensive everything is here compared to everywhere we've been before. We didn't come on this trip to do Vegas (particularly as Mrs. K and I spend 3 days here 10 years ago and said then that we had no desire to return). Anyway, It's only for one night,but I do think it's good for everyone to visit Vegas at least once, just to appreciate what it's like.
jump to: Day 14 Day 12
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