7 Friday
Today, having decided to stay in Boulder City for 2 nights gave us an opportunity to have a more relaxing in and around Las Vegas.  So the day was spent visiting the city and the Red Rock Canyon Park to the north. After much study of the available maps we set off for the Las Vegas Blvd (otherwise known as The Strip) which, surprisingly, we found without getting lost.  After yesterday's experience on the freeways I was prepared to expect hours of wasted time trying to find our way around, so the day started off on a high.

To prove we have been there

We drove south to north along The Strip taking pictures from the car at every traffic light and then turned left into Charleston Blvd (159) and drove out to the outskirts of Las Vegas untill we came to the Red Rock Canyon Park ($5). It was very hot by this time with a strong hot wind blowing straight in off the desert. Had a look around the visitors center which, like the Death Valley center had excellent displays and was very interesting and showed various displays of the flora and forna and geological structure of the canyon.

The Red Rock Candy Mountain

A 13 mile loop road led us around the main canyon floor and led to many lookout points, trail heads and parking areas where the canyon features could be viewed and of course we took many pictures.

A spring at one of the trail heads in the canyon

Back out to the main road and we continued to the junction with highway 160 where we had travelled the day before and then back to the south of Las Vegas using yesterday's route and so back to the motel for a rest and cuppa. For tomorrow's adventure we decided to travel east as far as Williams on Route 66 (actually Intersate 40) so using the cell phone we booked a room at one of the Super 8 motel chains in Williams.  We were starting to choose the Super 8 motels, not because they were super comfortable, but because we had a book of all their motels in the US and it included a small map of their location in each town so they were relatively easy to locate.  This factor seemed very important after you had travelled all day. were entering a strange town and just wanted to get to the motel you had picked out with the minimum of fuss.  And of course the budget priced chain also was good on our pocket.

107 degrees in Boulder City today. It has been very hazy all day and the TV news reported Californian fires burning near Los Angeles was responsible for the smoke haze over the desert.