Saturday 28th March

Around this point we realised that we had pretty much abandoned L.A. and the Quantum Leap convention, but we were both perfectly happy with that decision. We were glad to be inland seeing some great sights unlike anything else so far. We got up and went for breakfast burritos at a café called The Indian Trading Post, great way to start the day. We had heard that the road east towards Mount Whitney was a good place to go, so we went for a quick look before heading to Death Valley. The road takes you into the Alabama Hills, which is basically a landscape of boulders nestling up to the base of the mountains. A lot of Westerns have been filmed here and you can see why, it’s really cool terrain, very Wild West indeed.
We then took the 190 east into Death Valley National Park, and hit some classic dried mud and brush desert landscape. It streched out for miles away from the road in all directions, against a mountainous backdrop. There are tons of different sights to see in Death Valley, so we had to be selective. It almost seems as if it has been designed as a progression of different sights as you drive on through, like a natural theme park. Still on the trail of the ghost towns, we took a dirt road off the 190 to a place called Skidoo. We had to take the road very slowly, would have been better suited to a 4 wheel-drive really. After a few very slow miles, we got to the site and found that there were no buildngs left there! A bit disappointing, but we saw some of the old entrances to the gold mine which was pretty interesting. It was quite a strange feeling of really being in the middle of nowhere, although there were a few other people coming and going.
It was now pretty hot, the temperature gauge in the car was reading around 80 degrees F. We had seen it ascending quite rapidly as we had headed down into the heart of the valley. We stopped for coffee in Stovepipe Wells village, pretty much just a rest point for tourists. As we left the village we saw some big sand dunes a little way away from the road. I was tempted to go closer to have a look, but we had already chosen a few other things to look at, sacrifices had to be made as time was pushing on. We went to the Devil’s Golf Course next, an expanse of crystallized salt. Some very strange terrain, it looks like a carpet of jagged rocks covered in frost. Next was Badwater, salt flats that are at the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, 282 feet below sea level. You can walk right out onto the flats, and there are areas of it that have a few inches of salt water.
The last sight before leaving the valley was Artist Drive, a winding scenic loop through volcanic foothills. And then we were back on the 190 and heading out towards Las Vegas. When we reached the end of the 190, we saw a sign for the State Line Road, a direct route to Vegas that wasn’t on our map for some reason, it didn’t seem particularly new. It was now completely dark, so it was quite something seeing the glare of Las Vegas appearing out of the desert night. We headed straight to the strip for a cruise, the traffic was pretty terrible as it was a Saturday night, but that worked in our favour as we were able to take in the sights. The place was really crowded, and the casinos were huge and elaborate as expected. Greg had heard about a rock bar that sounded really good but couldn’t remember the name, so we stopped to use the wi-fi in Mcdonalds, and had our one meal of the trip beneath the cursed yellow arches. We located the bar and found a motel nearby, not terrible but probably the worst place that we had stayed in so far, very dingy and depressing, perfect for the Las Vegas losers I suppose. They didn’t have any twin rooms, but we got two singles for $70 total so we weren’t complaining. We headed out to the bar, it was now about midnight so it was a good job that they were open until 4am. It was a real bikers bar, hard blues music, plenty of raucous beer-swilling and barmaids that shouted around the place with megaphones and danced upon the bar. Not the typical Vegas night, but one suited to us.