It is hard not to be impressed when you wake up in Lone Pine and look west toward the High Sierra. Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in contiguous US dominates the view and rises some 11 thousand feet above the valley floor. I will go up there one day. But I was here with the kids on a family trip. So we instead turned east to Death Valley. We stopped in Stovepipe Wells to play a bit in the sand dunes and continued to Zabriskie Point. Later we arrived in Las Vegas and spent the New Year's Eve evening on the Strip. At midnight everyone, us including, rushed out of the casinos to watch the fireworks. Since the streets were mostly fenced away, this created a lot of possibly dangerous overcrowding. We did not get trampled to death so it was alright. The fireworks were a bit disappointing, at least from our spot as they were fired from several different places along the Strip. On top of that, for the first time, they were fired from parking lots behind the casinos rather than from their rooftops due to fire concerns...
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