After our beautiful adventures in the lush forests of Yosemite and Sequoia, we saw the landscape change dramatically as we took highway 58 through the mountains. Near Sequioa, it was raining heavily, and Yosemite park actually flooded that day. But we drove towards the desert, and all rainclouds disappeared.  Here came the sun!
Our first desert :D So gorgeous! And very hot! A lot of Hollywood movies were filmed here. One of them being Star Wars! Can you spot the differences? (hint: suns) Even though a desert sounds like it’s all dry sand, I tell you it’s not! :D There was actually a lot of variation in landscapes! There were dunes: But there were also huge saltflats! This was actually the lowest point in America (that and Trumps presidency)! Can you see the sign all the way up there?? ” Sea Level”  (Ofcourse we Dutch are pretty used to that, but still!)And there is a surprising amount of different colors in the rocks! We drove throught the ” artist drive ” amazed by all the oranges, turquoises and yellows. And then there was “Golden Canyon”  which was actually pretty golden!And last but not least, there were the ghost towns! During the goldrush, whole villages would pop up around a gold find, only to discover that there wasn’t that much gold anyway, and abandoned after a couple of years. Rhyolite was one of them. Founded in 1905, it was already abandoned by 1920. We spent one night in the middle of the desert, in a tiny village with one store, a gasstation and a motel, called Stovepipe Wells, after the well that was found here in 1906 and was marked with a stovepipe (true story). I have to say that this definitely was one of the highlights of our journey!And then, we made our way to LAS VEGAAAAS!!!O my god what a crazy city Pop music everywhere, the smell of weed and alcohol, people begging for money to pay for their way back home, endless endless mazelike halls full of slot machines …. holy shit.A gamble palace/hotel built in the shape of a pyramid, why not.
We did go all out and even won some money! :pBut one of the weirdest things here was the burlesque show we went to, which was basically a bunch of naked people doing circus acts (only in Vegas :p)Las Vegas is by far the weirdest city I’ve ever been to, and you have to be there to experience it! The mixture of party and sadness is pretty unique :p But, we had to move on, and we decided to go to the Hoover Dam! This beautiful structure is really impressive, also artistically. It is said that touching this guy’s foot brings good luck :-)These were our adventures in the desert! After this, we went to the canyonlands which is a whoooole different world, and definitely a lot colder :-P