Overnighting at Barstow – in the middle of the desert! Barstow is named in the ‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66′ song, so that was a fun fact for us.

And thankfully there’s always the pool. (This is all family, btw. I’m not in the habit of taking pictures of random people from my window!)  Where possible, a trip to the motel pool was generally part our our day.

Next stop, an overnight in Las Vegas on the way to the Grand Canyon. We were keeping our road trip days short in an attempt to not overtax the little ones with long days in the car. The California/Nevada border appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, and had a casino, motels and a rollercoaster. As you do.

We stayed in a motel on the outskirts of town, as we weren’t really there for the nightlife. We did, however, take a cruise of the strip to see what it was like. We’d seen it movies and shows so many times; it was such fun to see it in real life.

While all the lights and familiar spots were interesting, the reality is that Las Vegas is actually really, really seedy. We found ourselves without any desire to spend an extended amount time there.

I did like the Bellagio, though. It’s an Oceans 11 thing – and I’d always wanted to see the Bellagio fountains, especially after seeing a documentary about how the jets were maintained and choreographed.

On our visit, the fountains danced to The Pink Panther.  It was really quite spectacular.

Erin and I took this pic of the sign around midnight, while the lads all stayed in the car. There were still a fair few people milling there at that time of night, and they were an education in themselves. 🙂 People are so interesting, albeit a little scary sometimes.