Mt. Charleston

Yesterday, since Karen was feeling a bit better and wanted to get out of the house, we decided to go for a ride to Pahrump. For those of you that do not know, Pahrump is where much of the legal prositution is in Nevada. The Hollywood Madam(Heidi Fleiss) resides there. She had plans to open several bothels, but due to her legal problems, those plans are on hold. She is now planning on opening a laundry mat called "Dirty Laundy". Being that we ended up on 95 instead of 160, we opted to go to Mt Charleston instead. The picture on the right shows a BLM Fire Truck, apparently broken down on the side of the road.

Mt Charleston is about 45 mins N/W of Vegas. As we ascended to an elevation of about 8,000 ft, the temperature dropped about 35 degrees from 104F to 69F which was quite nice. There are many many areas to camp/picnic there. There is a large grass meadow there also. We only got to explore a small part of Mt Charleston. We will be taking the dogs there before too long.

In this picture you can see, or not see, the Nevada Test Site where early testing of the Atomic Bomb took place. According to the markers there, Mt Charleston was a favored spot for civilians to come and watch the detonations and the resulting mushroom clouds. I guess they didn't care/understand the fallout issues involved.

This is yours truely at the Desert Overlook in Mt Charleston.

This is, ofcourse, Karen at the same spot. It was very windy out there as it seems to be everywhere in Nevada.

This is one of the BLM Fire Stations located on Mt Charleston. I forget the name of it, but it nice to see them NOT fighting fires!

This is the Las Vegas Ski area that is part of the BLM. This whole area is very nice and very much reminded me of being in the Blue Ridge/Smokey Mountains. If the urge to see snow ever overcomes me, and I don't know why it would, I know where to go now.