Time to go home!
I wanted to get on the road early to avoid most of the heat and so that we would be home at a reasonable hour. I woke up at 6:30, but that was much too early so I went back to sleep for a couple of hours. At 8:30 I gave Dan a few shoves and got him going and into the shower. I had to coax him out with promises of coffee and scones. Finally he was up and in the shower.
I threw open the drapes to insure he wasn't tempted to head straight back to the pillow and was successful as he dressed and headed down to get us breakfast. He was back with a bagel for me, latte and scone for him.
We got everything packed up by 9:30 and called the bell desk. They sent someone up about 10 minutes later to take our bags down. Dan headed for the parking garage to get the car and I went to get Dan a coffee cup at the slot club and check out.
I met Dan at the valet and the bags arrived right behind me. We loaded things up and hit the freeway.
We stopped in Baker for gas and it was already 107 degrees. I knew it was going to be a long hot day. I was feeling more tired than I thought I was going to be so I switched places with Dan and let him drive for awhile. I tried to sleep, but wasn't able to do more than doze for a few minutes at a time.
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It was 85 when I drove through on Thursday...
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... and a whopping 107 when we stopped for gas on Wednesday!
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Our book on tape for the ride home was Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic by Terry Adams. It was funny and topical considering we saw the Titanic exhibit the night before. It kept us entertained for most of the drive home.
We turned off of I-15 in Baker to cut over on 58 and saw a sign saying that there would be up to 2 hour delays due to road construction. I called the road information line and they didn't mention anything, so we kept going. I didn't see any construction and the trucks seemed to be going that way so how bad could it be right? WRONG.
We got to Hinkley (the town featured in the recent movie Erin Brockovich) and traffic stopped. It seemed like the road was one way and they were convoying people through and it was in the other direction at the time. Dan was concerned about just sitting with the AC running in the heat (did I mention it was really, REALLY hot outside?) but we agreed to give it a few minutes before turning around.
I got out the map and Dan decided that we'd turn around, cut through Victorville and Palmdale to get back to I-5. It would add about an hour to our drive, but who knows how long we'd have to sit on the road with the car overheating from running the AC at an idle. We turned around and went. At least it would be some different scenery, as I'd never done that drive through the Antelope Valley. Plus, going this way we got to drive right past Dan's old apartments in Victorville. I kept pointing out not so lovely things about Victorville in the hopes that he'd thank me for rescuing him and moving him out of there before his company was bought out and his job disappeared. :-)
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Approaching Victorville
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This is Dan's old office, now the GTE Building
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Dan's old apartment! Actually, his is around the corner
on the 2nd building in. I spent too many weekends there the summer of
1995. :-)
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There's the Roy Rogers Museum! Hi there, Trigger! |
We made a brief rest stop in Buttonwillow and were surprised how hot it was outside. I mean it was like walking into an overheating hair dryer. I got about half way to the ladies' room and thought about heading back to the AC in the car and just holding it for the next 5 hours until we got home. :-)
We took off from the rest area after just a few minutes of stretching our legs and "resting". Unfortunately, some of the stuff in the back of the truck was blowing around and we stopped at the next exit (about 8 miles) and ended up just getting gas while we were there.
I took the opportunity to call my parents and let them know about our detour and delay. I told my dad it was hot and he said, "It's hot here too!" and I laughed it off thinking he was talking about it being 90 degrees or something. It must have been 110 in the valley. Little did we know how far that heat was going to extend into the trip.
We had a rather uneventful drive except for one more rest stop just before we got off of I-5 and on to 580 and the gauntlet to home. We finished our book on tape and turned on traffic to see if there were any problems we needed to know about.
Apparently we were driving through the middle of a huge heatwave. The San Francisco Bay Area had broken temperature records all over and in San Jose, it was 109 degrees - the same as Las Vegas for the day! We got back to our home by the cool bay to find it in the upper 90's and humid! Yuck! We arrived at the apartment after 1328 miles of driving.
We hurried inside as we were very worried about my cat, who had recently come to live with us after being an outdoor cat for about 5 years. He had been inside the apartment since Saturday morning and despite the myriad of toys we had left out for him, he had chosen instead to try to dig his way out of our apartment, through the brand new carpet that had been installed last month. :-(
And so ends another trip to Las Vegas. I'm sure that we'll be back really soon. Hopefully we'll be back to see the opening of Aladdin along with all the other things that didn't get done on this trip. There's always just a few more things on my "to do" list when we get home from a trip.
