Tucson, AZ to Boulder City, NV

Greetings Mellow Humans.  I write to you from beautiful downtown Boulder City, NV where it is currently 116F (46.6C).  The last summer we were in Tucson, we had 110 degrees, this is noticeably worse.  The air on my face feels like a blow dryer.  The plan had been to drive over to Albertson's and get a rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad for dinner, but we have a parking spot in the shade, so we're ordering pizza.  There is a case of whiskey in the car and we're hoping for it not to get cooked in the heat.

Today's route was up through Phoenix, then on to US60 to US93 to Kingman.  We departed the carport at 0800 hours, which for us is an early start.  Traffic through Phoenix, Wickenburg and Kingman was very light in our direction.  The portion of US60 from Surprise to just south of Wickenburg had an abysmal road surface.  Once again, we did not take US93 after Kingman, we crossed over to US95 which is a better road surface and less traffic.

There is a road project planned for Kingman which you can read about here.  Some projects are just stupid, they make a person want to pull their hair out and rend their clothing.  This is a good project.  Currently when exiting I40, you have to get on surface streets to get to US93.  This is the route from Las Vegas to Phoenix.  There is a stop light at Beale Street involved in this path, and this is what it does to traffic, especially on a Sunday afternoon when people have to go home so they can get up and go to work on Monday.  This went on for miles.  I feel so bad for those people, especially if they were low on gas, or needed to pee.

I drove a bunch today, so there are not a lot of photos, and most of them weren't great because of the dead bugs on the wind shield.

This is heading toward Laughlin.  One climbs up and over the pass way out there.  It's not bad in a car.

This is the fan I used for rowing and general cooling.  It's from Target, it's a great little fan.  It ran non-stop while we were in the park model packing up.  Now it's sitting on the bed advancing cool air from the air conditioning unit in the wall to the back of the room.  Good fan.

At about 4:45 pm, this tour bus rolled in and discharged its passengers.  This bus is full, it's a double decker and every seat was full.  I think it was a nature break, they were not here long.  One wonders if they knew it was going to be this hot.

We were in Boulder City in October 2018.  It was an excellent visit, with one caveat.  The day we wanted to walk around Boulder City and enjoy its cuteness there was an Art in the Park event.  There was not one single empty parking place available.  Today, of course, it's too stinking hot.  

We're in an old Best Western Hotel.  It has the doors that open directly on to the outside, and not onto a hall.  I like that kind of room because it shortens your exposure to other people.  It's ok, they've done some updating, the floors appear to be some sort of vinyl plank, the lighting is good, pillows are ok, my mattress is a little on the firm side, but tolerable.  The bathroom has adequate counter space for all of our stuff.   Just took a shower, getting the water temperature set was difficult; too hot, or too cold.  It's sweltering in the bathroom, the A/C unit which is not great, and which is very noisy, is not cooling the bathroom or that side of the room.  It's too hot to blow dry my hair, it can just do what it wants.  I would give this hotel a definite maybe on returning.  Update to post:  Nope!  Never coming back here.  There is no thermostat on the A/C, it appears to run forever, even after it reaches a temperature lower than what was set.  Fan speed settings make no difference to the fan speed.  Bathroom is still an inferno.  There are not enough outlets in the room.

It's 116 here, and 122 in Needles, CA.  I'm glad we're here and not there.  Here is hot enough.

Tomorrow we are up and out to Provo.  From here to Spokane, it's an all freeway drive, so we should make better time than we did today.