When we met Greg and Kerry for breakfast at the Cafe Vettro at Aria, we found out that Kerry had been having such good luck at the slot machines the night before, she didn't get into their room until 3:00 AM! I, on the other hand, was so wiped out that I slept right up to the time we were to meet them and dragged myself to the restaurant without even showering! She's obviously much younger than I am!
Anyway, we had a lovely breakfast, and after our good-byes, we left the hotel and pulled out onto Las Vegas Blvd at 12:00 noon. There are no gas stations on the Strip between City Center and the Flamingo Ave entrance to I-15, so we just got on and headed southwest, figuring we'd get gas at one of the next exits. Yeah, well us and about 15 gazillion of our closest friends who were also heading out of Vegas and towards Los Angeles! Holy cow, the traffic was rough! And when we pulled off at a lonely looking exit, it turned out to be not-so-lonely - the line for gas was about 3-deep at each pump. Oh well. We needed the fuel and knew it was a long time between stops on that desert run.
Oh yeah. The desert. Texas, big. California desert, big and empty. Once you clear Primm, which is pretty much the last exit in Nevada (and home to Buffalo Bill's, with its great big roller coaster!), there's a whole lotta nuthin' for a long time. The mantra for this part of the drive was "How long before we get to Barstow." The standard answer, that didn't seem to change for a long time, was that we were "about an inch to Barstow." Ugh. The big whoop-de-do for this part of the trip was the stop just over the border for the California agricultural inspection. "Do you have any fruits or vegetables in your vehicle?" "No." "Any live plants?" "No." "Thanks; move along." Wheee...
We finally hit Barstow, and since I knew Kelly was going to do the driving through L.A., I decided to keep going until we got closer to the crappy L.A. traffic. Unfortunately, we hit a dead stop in Victorville, and used the diversion to stop for a late lunch at IHOP. After consulting the map, we opted to get off the interstate and cut over to I-5 on CA 18, bypassing a lot of the traffic, although enough other people had the same idea, and the road was still pretty busy. We eventually made our way to the 101 (yeah, Los Angelenians refer to their freeways as "the," as in "the 405," "the 101," and "the 110." weird) and up to Onxard, where Kelly's parents live.
Since it was getting pretty late, we went right to their house, spent about 45 minutes chitting and chatting, then on to the Grandstay Suites, which was a new hotel we decided to try (we liked it; we'll go back on future trips). Our IHOP lunch was still with us, so dinner was a small snack on pretzels and protein bars.
Tomorrow, the end... Day 10, Oxnard to home.
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