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RAIL EXPLORERS
We have been to Las Vegas many times and have been able to stay in many of the upscale hotels for business. One hotel we wanted to try but never did was The Wynn. The rates were low due to COVID and also the end of a holiday weekend so the rates were so affordable we decided that we would take the opportunity to stay there. It was a beautiful hotel and we enjoyed our stay but our favorite hotel is still the Venetian.
We both like to ride bikes and have always wanted to try out bicycling on the railroads and we knew that one of the three places you could do that was in Boulder City just outside Las Vegas. We had tried to do this on another occasion but the rail riding is seasonal, we even tried to ride a rail trail in Rhode Island last September when we visited the New England states. Unfortunately, we had just missed the season by days so we did not get to ride. The company operates three rides Las Vegas, Rhode Island, and the Catskills of New York. The Las Vegas ride operates year round now and the other two are seasonal.
We put together a picnic dinner and headed off for our sunset tour on Rail Explorers. When we arrived we saw how they had adapted the bicycle concept to the rails. A rail explorer is a pedal powered vehicle that rides on railroad tracks. They have 4 steel wheels, hydraulic disc brakes, pedals for each seat, and are comfortable, fun and easy to ride. Although the rail explorers require pedaling, the magic of steel wheels on steel rails makes the experience very different from riding a regular bicycle.
We took the sunset ride at 6:30 pm. The sunset ride is a romantic four mile ride from the Nevada State Railroad Museum to Railroad Pass. Where we coasted downhill with little pedaling effort under the vast desert sky in the cool of the evening as the sun set behind the River Mountains. The last 1/8th mile is a little more challenging because you go uphill to a rail-side picnic area that is lit by lanterns with clusters of seating and table seating where we ate our picnic dinner and listened to the wildlife settling in for the evening.
Twenty minutes later, a train shows up and we board for a ride back to the top of the hill in one of the Museum's historic trains. We spoke with the manager and he said that they are in the process of obtaining another 4 miles of railway to add to the tour. The tracks we rode were originally part of the rail lines that were used to transport construction material for Boulder Dam when it was constructed in 1931. We really enjoyed our adventure and would sometime like to ride the rails in the Catskills or Rhode Island to enjoy the forest scenery.