Las Vegas, NV

Early this morning we heard a series of sirens going by the hotel, making us wonder what was going on. Later in the morning, just outside of Caliente we came across the remainder of a bad accident. There was debris everywhere and police was diverting traffic to the shoulder.

After looking at the weather forecast for today (110F for Las Vegas) and tomorrow (overcast, chance of rain and a high of 93F) we decided to keep todays riding day short. That kind of heat, even if dry (i.e. low humidity) just wears you out, it’s very fatiguing, no matter how much water you drink.

Continuing on US 93 we passed through the final batch of pinon forest before heading into the valley and Mojave desert. As we went down in elevation (6000+ to about 2500ft) the temperature rose and the landscape changed. There was basically no transition zone – we went from pinon trees to mojave yuccas and later on creosote bush.

You know you are in a remote part of the country when you see a sign that says ‘Next Gas in 91 miles’ :-o. I was desperately looking for places to pull over on US 93 to take pictures. Stopping on the road wasn’t an option since traffic was pretty heavy later in the day. The final picture stop before Las Vegas was just south of the US 93/SR 168 intersection to the east of the Desert National Wildlife Range. By now it was really getting warm. After a brief gas stop on the outskirts of Las Vegas we had some stop and go traffic on black tarmac(!) that cooked us pretty good.

The shower at the hotel was most welcome. Having seen a review for ‘District 9‘ this morning I wanted to go see the movie. Luck would have it that we had a cinema right across from the hotel 🙂 – so we took in a movie in the afternoon.

Todays route.