so off to rhyolite today. and fyi i’m not sure it could be any LESS commercial considering not a single thing was there! i guess unless you consider a sometimes manned chair with info on the town as commercial hahaha.
anyway. the drive wasn’t too bad, scenery much like the drive to cabazon. desert and mountains and sparse vegetation. we passed an exit for Mercury, which i thought was interesting, since Mercury is also the name of one of the base towns on the Nevada Test Site. driving through these “towns,” if you could call them that, was unbelievable. why does any one live out there?!?! and what on earth do you do?!
we kept seeing signs about yucca mountain…which is the federal government’s target for storing vitirified nuclear waste. of course there’s all kinds of opposition, GOD KNOWS WHY considering there is NOTHING out there. but it was odd cuz i had no idea yucca mountain was in the area…i definitely needed to see a map haha.
yeah. when we got there there was no “guide” or any other people to speak of. it had started raining shortly before we had gotten there. started looking at the bottle house and the other ruins and a few other cars with people showed up. no one else was at all interested in entering any of the structures, wimps haha. i really wanted to go in a mine but i am a bit too scared to die in one. checked out all the structures and the “open air art museum” much like that place down in west valley that i can’t think of the name of right now haha. a few random structures including a lego girl. pics of everything to come. for there not being ALL that much to see, i somehow took 3 rolls of film and some digital.
headed back towards LV and we passed an Historic Nevada Marker, and driving by we notice it said Nevada Test Site. um WHAT? ok now i FOR SURE needed to see a map because i always thought the NTS was north east of vegas and we were going north west. but sure enough, we turned around to see the marker and it was about NTS and there we were. so Mercury really was THE Mercury base camp on NTS. of course now we had to take that exit and see what could be seen. which was not much BUT I WAS ON THE NEVADA TEST SITE!!!!!!!!! i was so excited. took a few pictures of signs, some were about needing a docimeter and all that. drove up to the gate and turned back around. god i’m such a dork hahah. looooved it. back home looking at the map we basically drove the complete west side perimeter of the base. cool! next time i plan to come back to vegas it MUST be when i can take a tour of the complex. no ifs ands or buts.
so back in vegas we got dinner at buca since i can’t anymore, and waited to hear about the show we were supposed to go to tonight. turned out there weren’t enough tickets for all of us so adr and i just drove around. went to wynn…and while i think it’s rather unimpressive on the outside, it is pretty inside. well, the non gaming floor is pretty. the rest is just…a casino. went to circus circus and wow it is so awful. and it’s borderline awful-to-the-point-of-not-even-being-fabulous. reno was much better haha. stopped at sahara and it is totally cheese fabulous. LOVE IT! drove around some more waiting for the others to get out of the show but by that time i really didn’t feel like doing anything. tired from the day in the desert. tony didn’t arrive until after midnight, and they were all checking out other strip places before going back downtown to find him. tomorrow going to atomic testing museum to be a geek after adr gets home from school. i figure i won’t be up til then anyway haha. dunno what’s going on at night but group dinner had been tossed around and i’d like to hang with tony before leaving. not gambling anymore tho, i’ve lost my share already.