Death Valley National Park
From Zion, we headed west, skirting Las Vegas and headed into the Nevada desert.
A place once billed as "The valley where the giant mushrooms grow."
No aliens or UFOs were seen, either in the sky or in the parking lot.
Initially we stopped at the very posh Furnace Creek Inn to see if we could get a bite to eat. We probably could have, had we thought to bring our tuxes and gowns. It was a little more upscale than we were prepared for, and the dining room host directed us to the nearby Furnace Creek Ranch, which had a very nice steakhouse that was more to our taste (and didn't have a dress code.)
And then the sun went down.
Our plan was to drive to Pahrump, where we had reservations at a Best Western for the night. On the map, it only looked like a couple of inches from Death Valley back across the border to Nevada. However, scale in the desert can be a tricky thing. We continued on through the dark park, zipping along at 65mph, with nothing but road ahead of us and not much else. No landmarks, no other traffic and certainly no signs of civilization. On and on it went, and now I had my eye on the gas gauge, which was reading 1/4 of a tank.
At one point we stopped along the side of the road to "kill a rabbit", as my dad used to say. Bodily fluids were surrendered willingly to the desert, and we continued on. However, the act of stopping the truck somehow made the gas gauge go from 1/4 to 1/8. Now I was getting nervous. I kept checking the road and then glancing at the gas gauge, trying to not let Jess and Marc in on my concern. However, they can read a gas gauge as well as anybody. We pushed on into the night.
We were never in any danger, as we had plenty of water and could sleep in the truck overnight if we really had to. We were in a national park, and a frontcountry NPS patrol was bound to run across us if the truck sputtered to a stop. It still wasnt the way I wanted to spend the night. Eventually we exited the park and found ourselves heading into the town of Shoshone, California, population 52, which seemed to consist of one bar, one casino, and luckily, one gas station with self-serve pumps.
At the time, $2.84 a gallon was quite a bit, as most gas prices ran around $2. I didn't care, and gleefully put about five gallons into the tank. The lights of Pahrump shone on the horizon, and we made it to the Best Western with no other problems.
Next...Back to Vegas
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