Adventures of SanTony: LAS VEGAS & LAUGHLIN BUT AFTER DEATH VALLEY

After leaving Lake Tahoe we starting to head south to Las Vegas and Laughlin through Nevada ... but... talked to our nephew Mike on the way and found out about a great BBQ restaurant that wouldn't be that far out of our way...and would be very worth our while. So we started traveling south through California to the nice little town of Bishop on hwy 395 and shore enough the Holy Smoke Texas Style BBQ was well worth our while.

We then had to chose a route to Vegas...through mountains and desert after staying over night at still another casino but this one charged $15 with no hookups but we singed up for the usual players club and broke even lol.

We again called or nephew about which route would be best...and after learning from him that the way he took was not recommended for us we decided to go right through the middle of Death Valley on the most developed road.

The most developed maybe...but still quite a challenging drive with lots of tight curves with 400 and 500 foot drop offs with very few guard rails. We don't have any pictures of those sharp curves because our shotgun photographer had her eyes closed half the time.

Our journey through the valley was enjoyable once we dropped from over 6,000 feet to minus 275 feet in about 35 interesting minutes.

The route we took out of Death Valley was a lot less stressful as we traveled into Nevada were we were greeted with more beautiful scenery, both looking back over the valley and the fall colors.

After staying a night at the Pahrump Nevada Elks #2796 and finding out that the towns claim to fame was they had legal brothels we ventured farther south for a drive through Las Vegas.

It's been a while since Sandy has been there but she just wanted to drive through and see the buildings so we did which was a good idea because it was very busy and we had no interest in getting into crowed area.

We then traveled a couple more hours south to Laughlin, another large gambling town, not near as large as Vegas but more to our likening. We stayed right in town and could walk to seven large casinos with some right on the Colorado River.

They all were beautiful inside like this typical entrance and one had over 200 classic cars on display. Just had to put these two in to go along with the history of this casino town.