Tuesday 3rd March
Tonight we're staying in a real little western town called Lonepine, it looked very authentic and the first thing we noticed was a piece of tumble weed blowing across the road - we half expected to see some cowboys galloping across the desert! Alot of western films have been filmed here and its easy to see why when you take a look at the buildings along the main street. We stayed in a great motel with amazing vistas of the snow capped mountains.

Next morning we drove into the Death Valley National Park, which has amazing landscapes and rock formations. We had planned on spending a full day here, however the brakes on the car decided to play up so we had to cut our trip short and head straight for our accommodation in Beatty.We stopped in Rhyolite on the way - a cool little derelict ghost town abandoned 100years ago. We arrived at Beatty a short drive later, what a wierd little place!! We stopped at the gas station to get some petrol and food supplies and the first thing we noticed was a WANTED poster on the door "have you seen this man? wanted for robbery and murder!!!" ahhh quick get back in th car, then we saw a man walk in with a gun on his belt!! Why you need to go to the local shop in the quietest village in the world in the middle of the nevada desert i do not know! Lets get to our motel.......this didnt look much better, it was a scary looking place and looked just like the motel we had seen in a horror movie, but after we got the telly and the heater on our old fashioned room wasn't so bad.

Thursday we left for the bright lights of Las Vegas. WOW......what a place! We were staying at Bills Gambling Hall and Saloon which was great! Smack bang in the middle of the strip and cheap for vegas. We went straight out to look at the casinos, our favourite being 'The Venetian' you walk inside and it's like you've arrived in Venice!! the shops and restraunts are in venetian style buildings and there's even a waterway with gondola rides. Even the ceiling is painted like a real sky. Second favourite was Paris Las Vegas -parisian interior with an mini immotation of the Eiffel Tower, 11 storeys high. We got some tickets to go up the tower in the evening and got some great view over the city. All the casinos put on hourly shows in the evening trying to outdo each other. We watched a volcanic eruption fire show at the Mirage and a dancing fountain show at the Bellagio (which is the casino used in Oceans 11). The strip is lined with casino after casino you can see where all the $ is, mainly catering to hundreds of tourists so can be hard trying to get around in all the crowds and the mexican guys who hand out the call girl cards are very annoying, you get 20 of them in a row and they all flick these cards in your face which gets extremely irritating!! All in all we had a great time, its a great place, but such crazy place!! 3days were enough, any longer we would be bankrupt, everything costs money here and alot of it!........ Viva Las Vegas!! =)