What Happened in Vegas… Or the Mojave Desert anyway.

I recently blogged about driving from Vegas to Los Angeles By-The-Sea.  Read it for a way to avoid the Angeles Smog.  The journey there was worth a story and has some tips for you if you’re thinking of doing the same drive.

It looks simple.  I mean, it’s a straight line and you’ve seen COUNTLESS film stars take it from The Hangover to Swingers.  Its not like you’re going purposely out the way through Death Valley, or via the Grand Canyon is it?  Its not like you’re going up to Yosemite and down to San Fransisco with the turns and changes that involves. No.  You’re keeping it simple, google maps says 4.5 hours, so off we go!

We left our hotel, The Golden Nugget at 10am – we thought we’ve avoid the rush hour – and thought we’d get there around 3.  We ended up taking 7 hours to do the trip, some of it for good reasons, some not so good.
 

Firstly, on your way out of Vegas you’ll start to climb.  You’ll see the highway stretch for miles to the horizon, bending upwards.  When we took the trip it was in July and there was a heatwave in Vegas. I’ll repeat that.  A HEATWAVE in VEGAS in JULY.  So the temperature was around 120 degrees to start with.  And that’s before we climbed that climb and realised we were in the Mojave desert.  On the way up you might see signs for ‘The Pioneer Saloon’.  There aren’t many signs once you leave the commercial capital of Vegas, but The Pioneer Inn has worked hard to make sure you know how many stops to go before you can visit them.  ‘Well, we haven’t had breakfast, lets stop along the way’. 

A turn off the highway and the sign tells you there’s six miles to drive before reaching the inn.  Screw it, lets do it. So five minutes later down a long desert mountain road there it was in a very small town with old tractors and rusting metal lying around.  The Pioneer Saloon.  Straight out of a John Wayne Western. 

“Sarah”, I said, “we may die here.

“Yes”, she said, “I agree”.

“The plan”, I said, “is to go in.  Just open the door.  You need the restroom so if its as scary as it looks, I’ll order a coke, and you go for a wee, then we’ll leave before they shoot us”.

“Deal”.

We opened the door to a bar that has been there for a long long time. The bar was empty, but the barmaid friendly, and so we got a breakfast menu.  Behind the bar the barmaid was watching a Western, which I loved.  But she put in a DVD and pressed play, and – reminding us we were still close to Vegas and its excellent PR skills, so began a show-reel of TV shows all featuring The Pioneer Inn.  Lots of ghost-hunting shows, history shows, more ghost-hunting shows. And much of it focussed around its two key selling points.

Clark Gable had stayed at the Inn, or at least drank at it, for a week, when his wife Carole Lombard died in a plane crash in the mountains nearby.  One of the documentaries even had people finding wreckage still a century later.

The other most exciting story is one of a man who gambled for a week, playing poker with the locals, and won every hand.  Then after a few days the locals shot him.  They say he had a hand of five aces, and so they flipped their lid.  The bullet holes behind his chair still remain in the wall.

Whether the man was cheating or not, and whether Clark was ‘never the same man again’ (as their website says) because of the death of his wife or the week of drinking, I don’t know.  What I do know is they served a lovely breakfast.  I also know that the spirit of the place is great.  The team who work there are lovely people, and the two rooms of the saloon with a courtyard of tables and barbeques outdoors, clearly are home to some great parties.  Long live the Pioneer Inn, and I hope you track it down some day and rest your boots there.

Back to the journey (and you’re beginning to see why we were late).  I began to feel very strange... I felt nautilus.  I badly needed the bathroom.  Lets put it honestly, I was in dire need of a monumental shit. Why?  I realised why when I saw the sign ‘Mojave, elevation 4000 meters’.  I was suffering a bout of altitude sickness mixed with jetlag and a full coffee fuelled breakfast. 

And here is the most important lesson of the story.  I pulled off desperate for the bathroom, about half na hour later when we finally saw a rest stop.  You’re in the desert for godsake what do you expect? And when I got to the gas station toilet, there was a large queue.  Standing in silence.  Two single toilets and a large queue who would hear every move you made.  It seems many others whilst in the desert, will track down a toilet because they are human beings and need a toilet.  Make sure you drink water when you can in the desert.  Take water.  Lots of it.  But also use every toilet you see because you never know when you’ll be caught short.

Anyway, I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t a) face the wait of the queue and b) I couldn’t begin to inflict the theatre of what may come out of me on those waiting in the queue once I was in.

I got back in the car. “We need to find somewhere else”.

“WHY?!”

“I didn’t go”.

“WHY!?”

“Too many people”.

“You’re so British”.

“Sarah, now is not the time for criticism.  If I could’ve gone, nobody would be happier than me, and nobody is more annoyed than me that I haven’t.  Lets go”.

I screeched out of the car park and back on the highway, desperately looking around for another opportunity, and seeing rocks that may be an attractive alternative to hide behind…  Luckily another stop was on the horizon.  It was a subway.  God bless you subway.  One cubicle, terrible, but nobody in there.  YES. 

I had what can only be described as a spiritual experience. 

After some time I emerged.  Bought a coke.  Drank it.  Felt much better, and started towards LA.

There was then a stop at Barstow.  I noticed a sign for Amtrack and realised it would be great to avoid LA traffic and get on a train!  Sarah couldn’t believe it.  We drove around the town and found what I thought was the station – and literally WAS.  It WAS the station.  It is now a museum.  Wherever the Amtrack station is – and it IS there – it wasn’t where we were.  So, fill up with gas (the air conditioning had guzzled much of it), and off we went.

We got to LA just in time for rush hour, and we sat in basically a car park for four hours.  When it wasn’t a car park it was a terrifiying six lane violent aggressive testosterone filled ordeal, which – after the drive we’d had – I couldn’t handle.  Well, I clearly could, because we got across the city and went down towards the sea.  The beautiful Pacific.  The beautiful pacific and the beautiful Hermosa beach.  It was like we’d driven into a real life Abercrombie and Fitch.  Hollister.  Imagine those things without the annoyingness, just the fine designs and wooden buildings, beautiful views and palm trees.  Summed up by the absolutely perfect hotel on the beach aptly called The Beach House At Hermosa.  (Click and check out the pictures, then imagine its ten times greater than the pictures - over 9/10 in review scores!).  It is a glorious place. Made better by the journey.

I’ll admit that because we were going back to Vegas the next day I spent that night and the morning after stressing about the journey back.  Feeling a little sick with the memory of it all.  But the next day was a much better drive and we did it in half the time, largely because we didn’t stop so much and I knew what to expect. 

The lying on the beach, the swimming in the sea, the Sushi we ate, and the wine we drank were all made richer and tastier by that journey.  And the journey itself was full of stunning views across the Mojave, climbs up and down mountains, and truly a beautiful view.

My cousin told me that in his youth he did the same journey in a car with no air conditioning.  I cannot believe my cousin is still alive.
Do it.  But take water, use bathrooms, and visit The Pioneer Inn.