There's a lot to tell in this post, so I'm going to post this in a couple parts....it's less boring this way.
Part 1 Las Vegas and the trip to Tucson:
Wow...June has been an exciting month for us so far. On our ever-expanding quest to find the perfect place to live...we decided to rent a home in Tucson up in the high desert, to check out the climate, the architecture and the town in general. On the way there, we stopped in Las Vegas so I could attend the "Mecum Las Vegas Vintage Motorcycle" auction and shop for my next project (I didn't see Elvis...although he was rumored to be in the building).
On the way to Vegas, we drove by the world's largest ammunition depot and right next to it, the top-secret Air Force base, called Area 51, located in the dried up Groom Lake bed (To this day the government will not disclose what goes on there). I'm not kidding...Google Area 51. I can tell you this....the place is freakin' HUGE and has a very high creepy factor. Since we saw very little activity on the surface, I definitely believe the stories that most of the facility is underground. We saw no aliens, but several of the locals in the Area 51 Alien diner (a picture will be added soon) definitely showed signs of having parents who were from "somewhere else". From there, we headed to Prescott, AZ to get a feel for a smaller mountain desert town and last, but definitely not least, we ended up in the climbing and hiking mecca of Bishop, CA to begin our drive home through the beautiful Owens Valley and the Sierra Nevada mountains surrounding us all the way home. And oh yes, we walked through the most well-preserved ghost town in America....Bodie, CA. All total, we drove about 2,700 miles, almost as much as our trip out here from Florida. Whoa....it's vast out here!
The Las Vegas Vintage Bike Auction and a trip to Tucson: I recently sold my BMW R-26 to a collector in Reno, NV, so I thought this auction might be a good place to shop for a new project. And boy was I right. Since Las Vegas was on the way to our rental home in Tucson, it was a great way to combine a personal trip with business. We loaded up the truck, put our buddy Tuck in his back seat condo and headed out from Grass Valley. The drive to Las Vegas went through some of the most desolate country we've ever driven...and we've driven in a lot of places. I've mentioned the "pioneers" before (those unbelievable souls who settled this country) and this drive just underscored my admiration of them. We drove for six hours with nothing but desert on either side...at 75mph. It was 100 degrees. Then up to 105 and climbing. Imagine doing this in a horse-drawn wagon...with your family? And then suddenly, you see a massive ammunition depot.....the Hawthorne Army Depot. Big?....uh, that would be correct. It's the largest in the world...147,000 acres and contains 2,500 underground bunkers. Need some WWI mortar shells? They've got 'em. And right after you pass that strange place, you arrive at....Area 51. Look it up...it's a fascinating place and very real. And very secret. One quick fact...you can't fly over Area 51. No one can. The airspace above it is classified...all the way into deep space. Hmmm.....I'm betting Agents Mulder and Scully are still trying to find a way in there. I sure miss that show.
The motorcycle auction was a hoot. The Mecum Company stages these auctions around the country and one just happened to be going on June 1-3 in Vegas. I took an Uber ride to the casino, bought my ticket to the auction and walked through a giant room with maybe 1,000 slot machines, roulette tables, craps tables, blackjack tables and maybe 100 bar girls dressed in....not much. Nudity is cool in Vegas. No one seems to care. I didn't. There were about 750 motorcycles being auctioned. Amazingly, some very rare bikes were auctioned with a "no reserve" clause, meaning the bike had to sell, no matter what the winning bid ended up. And some ended up selling way lower than what they were worth. I will be buying my next bike at one of these auctions.
From Vegas, we headed to Tucson, where we rented a cool house on the outskirts of town in the high desert. We'd heard a lot about Tucson....great adobe-style architecture, an active food scene with brew pubs and food trucks, views of the mountains from every direction, over 300 clear sun days a year, lots of affordable housing, low utilities, an international airport, lots of gated communities with low HOA fees and lots more. Definitely a place we needed to check out. I won't go into a lot of detail of the trip, as there's too much to tell and most of it isn't anything anyone other than Claudia and I would want to read, so here's a summary: Most of the good things we'd heard about the area were true. What we didn't like was the town itself....or should I say the "sprawl" of the town. It's spread out over a huge area and the roads into and out of the town are too few and too crowded. Traffic might have been fine on these roads back in the 60's...but now, forget about it. It's 30-40 minutes to get anywhere. The last comment I have on Tucson is that it's located in a very, very dry area of the Sonoran Desert. It's dry folks...arid. Nothing green but the cactus. And...it was not for us. We stayed three days, visited the local restaurants and the surrounding Sonoran mountains (which are beautiful) and headed out to Prescott, AZ...a very popular retirement town.
Part II - Prescott, Sedona, Bishop and the Owens Valley. Coming soon.....