Our Trip to Hell (Or Was It Laughlin?)

We just got back from a few days in Hell....or was it Laughlin, NV? There are so many ways to confuse both of them. It was not our favorite trip ever but it wasn't completely horrible.

One of my coworkers turned 50 last week and wanted to celebrate by taking a girls' trip to Laughlin, NV. There were 5 of us that went. Now, we are not gamblers and when we decided to go along, we found there was a great state park nearby that looked interesting. We figured while the gamblers were gambling, we would explore the park and the Colorado River. We aren't a close bunch of friends, just work friends. 

There was lots of drama leading up to the trip but I won't bore you with all those ugly details. There were many times I wished we weren't going. The one thing that made it bearable was we were able to drive ourselves there so we could sight see along the way. That was a really big area of contention among the group. The birthday girl wanted to do everything together all the time.

Scenic stop on the road.

We decided to take a longer route that took us past the London Bridge. It was on my bucket list of things to see in Arizona. 

 There it is in all its glory.

Some shops in the area.

The bad news was it was at least 113 degrees outside. It was so hot it felt like our shoes were melting to the pavement. So we took some quick photos, walked a few feet then got back into the air conditioned car. Now we are used to 107 degrees but once you hit 110, its a totally different ballgame. It was oppressive to say the least.

Laughlin was just as hot so any outdoor activities were out of the question.

Views from our hotel room.

We were right on the Colorado River. The views were stunning.

We spent the first evening hitting up the casino. We had a good time without spending lots of money. We didn't hit it big, but we played all evening with our original money. There was one machine that really seemed to like me. It was called Hot Flash. Go figure! It treated me very well.

The next morning, the group got up and had breakfast. Then we decided to walk the river walk before it got too hot. It was horrible. We would go in to the various casinos to cool off then head out again. Once we got to the end, we took the river taxi back to our hotel. 

We spent the rest of the day holed up in our room recovering from the walk. After 9 pm, the pool at the hotel is adults only a few of us decided to go check it out. It was a good time to go. The water was warm but enjoyable. There was no way it would be fun to be there during the day. It was just too hot.

Brenda and I got up Wednesday morning at had no idea what we were going to do. The original plan was to stay until Thursday. Since we don't really get into gambling for hours on end and it was too hot for outdoor activities, we decided to tell the group we were going to head home a day early.

So that's what we did. I was so glad we bucked the group and went with what we wanted to do. When we got back home to Tucson, the temps had really dropped. We were so glad to be home. I would love to go back another time just to check out the state park and play in the river. 

As the plans are for now, this was our last road trip without the RV. We will be spending our time and resources getting it ready for the big move. We still want to get it ready with enough time to take some smaller trips with it to get more comfortable driving it and learning about it.