Las Vegas to Bishop

After breakfast we said goodbye to Mark, Amy and Charlie and started North on 95 towards Death Valley. Unfortunately, the crash pad that I had secured to the roof started making some troubling noises almost as soon as we got up to freeway speeds, so we pulled over, ripped the headrests out, and stuffed the gigantic pad into the car. It meant zero visibility out the back, but it was an acceptable trade off.

As we motored north on 95 past all of the strange mining, military and prisons (no picking up of hitchhikers!), both of us noticed the huge amount of apparently undeveloped limestone to the East of 95. Some of it looks phenomenal, but is probably in a bombing range or honeycombed with mines. There is certainly no limit to the stone around las vegas: Jtree is three hours away, Red Rocks 5 minutes, St. George crags 2 hours, Mesquite/VRG under two hours, Charleston, Potosi etc etc.

We drove into Death Valley via 190 and got sidetracked by the beautiful mud hills around the 20 mule team road. They reminded me of the Elephant Knees in Anza Borrego





We also stopped at Zabriskie Point to share the views with busloads of tourists, and then started heading west again. Along the way, we passed a caravan of Porsche Carrera GTs: sweet! $1 million in cars passing us by in less than a second. A few hours later we were in Bishop at the Huntsman/La Quinta.