Thanks for joining me again as I share our adventure of eating our way gluten & dairy-free through California and Nevada!
After our 3 days in Yosemite, we were back in the car and heading west. It’s amazing how in just a couple of hours you can go from the lush, green redwood forests to desert!
We decided to stop in the town of Lone Pine for the night on our way to Vegas, not realising its significance at the time.
It turns out that it’s the base camp for people who are climbing Mount Whitney – the tallest contiguous mountain in the United States. It sat stately in the mountain range just behind the town. On top of that, just a few miles out of town is where all the western movies were filmed with all the greats like John Wayne, Charles Bronson and the Lone Ranger!
It was late afternoon when we pulled into the motel, and so I hit Trip Advisor on my phone to check out the menus of the eateries in town, trying to find our best option that could cater to gluten & dairy-free. To be honest, I was a bit worried, that all the way out there, in the middle of the dessert, we could run into trouble. I had managed to pick up some beef jerky from a servo along the way, and had some cookies and bliss balls still from Wholefoods before we left, but I was hoping we’d be able to keep them for in the car.
We decided that we’d try out the Mt Whitney Cafe who proclaimed they had “the best burgers in town”. It was only about a 2 minute walk from the motel, so it seemed as good an option as any.
When we opened the door and stepped inside, we couldn’t believe our eyes! It was just like in the movies! It was everything you’d expect it to be – and more! There were booths as well as tables, friendly waitresses, an enormous menu, and more movie memorabilia than you could poke a stick at! There were signed photos all over the walls of all the western greats. We ordered burgers for dinner (after all, they had promised they were the best in town), and we were not disappointed. In fact, they were so good, we decided we had to come back for breakfast the next morning before heading off.
Breakfast.
Oh my goodness!
We were not going to go hungry on the car trip!
Eggs any way you like them, home made hash browns the size of a dinner plate, chorizo, biscuits and gravy (okay, so they weren’t gluten & dairy-free), and so on! It was a food extravaganza!
After our ginormous breakfast, with bottomless cups of coffee (yep, they came around and refilled them just like on tv!), we waddled back down the road, hopped in the car and set of the the next leg of our adventure – Death Valley!
Needless to say, we didn’t stop and eat in Death Valley, because there wasn’t anywhere to stop other than a service station, but I’ll share some photos of the scenery for you in case you’re interested.
On the other side of Death Valley, we arrived in Vegas.
Holy Moly!
It’s a world unto its own!
Anything goes!
Literally!
I thought being such a big, exciting city, it would be really easy to find places to eat in Vegas, especially as we were staying at the Hard Rock Hotel which was close to the strip, but it turned out to not be quite so easy.
We had been told of a few places, but they were either too far from where we were staying, or didn’t look suitable to take our kids into. Literally every building seemed to be a casino! I’ve never seen anything like it!
We only had 2 days there, and one was spent shopping at the factory outlets. The other day, we walked along the strip and went to Madam Tussaud’s wax museum which was awesome. After that, we wandered into the Venetian because I wanted to see the famous indoor canals. Oh my goodness! They didn’t disappoint – they even had singing gondolas! Inside!
By the time we were hungry, we stumbled upon the Royal Brittania Gastropub. It seemed a bit surreal – to be Aussies, eating in an English Pub, in a fake Venice, in Las Vegas!
Regardless, it was a great feed! Madeleine chowed down on their gluten-free vegan burger which looked ah-maze-ing! And judging by the big grin on her face, it must have tasted pretty good too! Make sure you come back next week, when we head off to Hollywood and discover the ultimate choc-chip dairy-free milkshake that made one little girl very happy!!
