Barstow – Las Vegas – Hoover Dam – Grand Canyon – Flagstaff, now at 4230 km

by bretzelitos

We restarted our trip in the morning after having had a good breakfast in the Holiday Inn Express near the newly built Outlet center west of the actual city.

Following I-15 northbound via Baker and the Mojave desert, we reached the Nevada state line after a two hours drive and Las Vegas another 30 minutes later. For sure, a ride on the Las Vegas Boulevard, also called “The Strip” is absolutely obligatory. In comparison with my earlier visits in town, I have to say that a lot of renovation has been done – and most of the casino hotels were transformed into expensive holiday resorts. Even so, loads of people were there ready to spend all their money… I met several German, French and Spanish families.

After riding several times on the New York New York roller coaster and having lunch in an “all american Hot Dog restaurant”, we continued our trip southeast-bound. Hoover dam is now closed to pass over by car, a bypass bridge has been built, so we actually did not see the dam, but Lake Mead very well before. The bridge is also the border between Nevada and Arizona. So, for the first time we passed through three states of the US in one day.

The weather started to get windy, cold and rainy in heavy showers – unfortunately it stayed as such until Flagstaff.

In Kingman, we joined I-40 eastbound, exiting it again after 1.5 hours in Wheeler. It is quite interesting that we climbed from 3000 feet altitude in Kingman to nearly 7000 feet on this path.

Facing Northbound, we joined the Grand Canyon National Park an hour later. 12 degrees C, heavy rain showers – but luckily we got enough time to take some photos without getting wet.

To finalize our day, we decided to go to Flagstaff to spend the night there. Bad decision money-wise as it has been the weekend of the students moving in for University – prices in the motels were astronomically.