Around the States in Ninety Days: Day 22 - Bakersfield to Las Vegas

I killed something today

I'm not sure what it was, it ran out in front of my car and I squished it. I've run over countless squirrels or chipmunks or whatever it is that grows around here but those have all been pre-squished. This little guy I actually saw hopping. I felt really bad so I turned around (this was in the dark in the middle of the desert) and went back to make sure he was dead. It was quite sad. Maybe I'll get used to it.

Mojave Desert

I left the trucker stop that is Bakersfield early this morning, not before making myself a waffle though! In the breakfast room they had the usual milk, juice, coffee dispensers but then one that gave out batter. Then they had a waffle iron and you cooked your own waffle. Cool huh?

Anyway, I was supposed to be driving straight to Death Valley but decided on a little detour through the Mojave Desert (the beauty of travelling alone) I went to the big (huge, look like mountains) sand dunes and heard them "sing" - when the sand slides off them in a certain way it makes a noise like a low flying aircraft. Pretty cool.

On the way out of Mojave I was in a race against the sun- I wanted to get to Dante's View in Death Valley to see the sunset. It's the one place you can see both the lowest and highest points in the contiguous USA (plain English: big mountain, deep valley) In my rush to get there I did something a bit stupid which was to drive a little bit too fast for a little bit too long on a really terrible road. As a result when I finally stopped my car stank of burnt rubber and I'd managed to reduce my excellent record of 42 miles per gallon down to a shocking 24. I think this is actually an average over my 2000+ miles so far so that's really pretty bad...

Vegas baby!

I changed my mind again after the sunset and decided I'd seen enough deserts and enough of Death Valley to just skip to Vegas.

Last time I was here I loved it but I was in a big group which is obviously quite different to travelling alone. I'm not sure how I'm going to like it this time but so far I'm really happy to be here. I'm looking forward to going for a walk down the strip tomorrow in the daytime (right now I'm in a diner 300 yards from my hostel and I had to drive here!)

There's a drunk homeless guy sitting across from me which makes me feel right at home- tonight I was supposed to be doing an overnight ambulance shift in London with my friend Daniel and he's exactly the kind of person we'd have been hanging out with. The nice thing here is that he doesn't appear to be bleeding nor is he spitting at me. Result.

Photos (too tired to put them in order)