Day 3 started off a bit slow with both of our alarms not going off, not something we can let happen again, but luckily not an issue this time. We had one more morning left to look around LA before heading to Las Vegas.
First stop was the Los Angeles River, the iconic concrete river running through downtown LA that you see in all the movies. One of the rougher parts of town I had seen so far in the area, but we found the perfect spot to pull over and get a great look.
We also found the place where ice cream trucks go to die.
One of the last things on the list before we headed out of LA was the Petersen Automotive Museum, located on the Miracle Mile. The museum was full of iconic movie and TV cars like the charger from Fast and the Furious and the Batmobile, as well as some of first cars ever through to modern supercars like the McLaren P1 or the latest Ford GT.
Last stop before we hit the road, iHop. Another American food chain highly reccomended to us. It was pretty much the mecca of pancakes and waffles and anything else you could think of.
And we are out of here! Punch in the GPS co-ordinates, Death Valley, and Las Vegas. It didn’t take us long to get out of LA, not something either of us were expecting but the trip was still going to clock in at about 8 hours. Filled the tank, costs us $30USD from 1/4 full which was the first thing that was true that it was actually cheap.
First place we went through was Mojave, where the was a giant wind farm, a hilarious sign at a Carls Jr. and I grabbed a car invertor to charge my camera batteries on the road since I kept burning through battery charge and the spare battery I got online in NZ was rubbish.
After this point in the trip we started getting off the grid, well at least in American standards. The cars started getting further apart and our little blue dot on Google Maps was headed into the middle of knowhere. Paul ended up jumping out and mounting the GoPro on the front of the car.
Deeper and Deeper into the desert we went and we started heading up, a lot. The bottles of water in the car were popping and cracking from the 2000ft altitude change, but once at the top the views were just immense, a word we would over use for the next 200 miles. The roads were so straight it was hard not to be impressed.
It was the halfway point and we swapped seats at the top, grabbed the tripod out and got the best photos of the drive yet. The Chrylser was looking boss as usual. The road went unsealed for a while, which I had to keep an eye that Paul didn’t go all ‘rally stage’ on me.
We finally descended into Death Valley National Park, right on sunset we couldn’t ask for anything better. The only thing that we kind of underestimated was the temperature. Our thinking of it will cool down later at night was way off, 8pm and it was still 44ºC.
We continued further down into Death Valley itself, we started seeing signs that we at sea level and 200ft below sea level. And as we got closer to Death Valley itself it just got hotter.
And we made it, one of, if not the hottest place on earth, Death Valley California. It was 9pm and 46ºC. It was actually like standing in a hair dryer. I’ve never felt heat like this before, nor will be propably ever again. Ww had to get out of the car and walk around to just to see what it was like. The trusty Chrsyler didn’t miss a beat.
This place was baren, no vegetation no animals just a quiet wind rolling through the valley while took a few long exposure night shots on the Lumix.
From here. We had to b-line it to Las Vegas, it was getting dark, we had no signal ( we did have a map ) and were going to get into Vegas at midnight. We opted out of going through Badwater and Ashford Junction as we weren’t going to see anything and it would add an hour to our trip. We ended up taking an unusal road called ‘State Line Road’, which was tiny, barely sealed and cut heaps of time off our trip. It was at this point we cross the Nevada border.
Once in Nevada we got the worlds worst biggest Carls Jr. It was both amazing and awful at the same time.
We got over the last hill and came into Las Vegas. And it looked as expected at midnight, awesome. Couple of photos, a complimentary room upgrade and we done for the day, the first big part of our trip done.
Day 4 is going to be hot, epic and full of dirt, so keep checking the blog.
Trip Total – 588miles/946km.
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