Day 9 – Friday 21st May 2010

Planner • Traveller • Blogger

We’re now less than five hours away from Las Vegas. But first, a small matter of conquering one of the driest places on earth – Death Valley. We have been advised to bring essentials such as water and food just in case the worst happens and the car/s breaks down and we end up miles away from civilisation. Apparently mobile phone signal is pretty thin out here too. Gulp.

We see numerous signs warning us not to over use the AC in danger of overheating the system. As per the last few days, the weather is hot but not too hot although it’s only 10am right now. It isn’t long into our journey when the scenary changes to a constant, fixed backdrop. Picture a long straight road seemingly never-ending with mountains and general emptyness surrounding it. Can you picture it? Does it look anything like this?

Yep, that’s our Jeep Commander with no other cars to be seen for miles. It isn’t long before the games start. Kev takes a liberating toilet break in a bush at the side of the road so the lads to decide to sneak back into the cars and take off allowing us to fulfill something: leaving Kevo in Death Valley.

Don’t worry he’ll be OK, after all he has the occasional sign to guide him…

We’re now half way through the five hour journey and have therefore have officially entered into the Death Valley National Park area. We are forced to pay $20 per car just to drive through this government owned recreational area.

Here is what we think to paying $40 just to drive through some desert!

We’re now officially in Nevada and therefore very close to Vegas

This is quite literally the first place we come across having entered Nevada. A “Gentlemen” clubs in the middle of the desert! Only in America huh!

We’ve driven hard the last two days and it has paid off as we’ve entered Vegas close to 3pm, on-time and ahead of schedule meaning we have time to check-in to our hotel (The Stratosphere) and head to the pool for some well deserved rest.

Well, by well deserved rest I mean getting on the beers and meeting some girls from Oklahoma.

A few months back I made a reservation for the Stratosphere’s Top Of the World restaurant. I thought I’d keep this as a surprise for the guys so I annouce it a couple of hours before our booking for 9pm. As its name suggests, we were about to dine at the top of that massive tower. Did I mention that it revolves too? Well, it does.

Fast forward two hours and considerably less flush that when we headed out, that was everything I thought it would be and so much more. Both personally and collectively we agree that it was the best dining experience we’ve ever had. The view, the service, the food – all flawless. Special mention to Adriana, Danielle and Kate who we met whilst dining. Girls, it was really great meeting you, we had a blast. Get in touch if you ever wanna come down to ahem London area, y’know, where we’re from, we’ll sort it out.

Tonight was meant to be a quietish one leaving us three BIG nights however it didn’t really work out like that as Kev and I returned to our room at 4.30am making this the latest night I’ve had since I was a wee lad taking on the Canary islands! Can I hack this pace for the next few nights? Let’s find out…

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