Cross-Country Vacation
Day 1: Utah Bound
Sunday, September 3, 2006
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After spending the night at my place we got up Sunday morning and packed up the Malibu to start our journey. I quickly showed them some of the sights around Oxnard and Ventura and then we drove up just north of Ventura to Ojai for breakfast and to check out the farmer’s market and some of the sights there.
From Ojai we had some major driving ahead. The plan was to have dinner in Las Vegas and be to Zion that night. We had reservations in Springdale, Utah, which is right next door to the national park. We tried to avoid LA traffic by going from Ojai over to Santa Clarita (passed by Magic Mountain) and then up to Palmdale, where we cut across the desert on Pear Blossom Highway. We did not leave Ojai until almost noon, though, so by the time we made it to I-15 in Victorville we were going to have to pick up speed if we were going to make Vegas by 5. My friend Steve had highly recommended Chef Emeril Lagasse’s Delmonico Steakhouse there, which is in the Venetian, so I had made reservations for when it opened at 5 and planned to treat everyone.
Traffic was averaging around 80 on the freeway, and the Malibu kept right up, although with the afternoon temperature easily into triple digits I was trying not to push it too hard going up the foothills and mountain passes (i.e. I shut off the air conditioning and made everyone suffer). We managed to make it to Vegas just a little before 5 but then when I got off of the freeway things came to a screeching halt. There was gridlock on the Strip. We were not sure if the Jerry Lewis telethon going on had anything to do with it, but after crawling only a couple miles in 20 minutes we decided to ditch Emeril’s and we got back on the freeway and headed to the north side of town. All of us but George had spent a few days in Vegas back during the 2000 vacation, so we were not missing out.
In North Las Vegas we found an El Pollo Loco and a Rite-Aid pharmacy. There are no El Pollo Loco’s back east yet, so I thought everyone should experience it and Del Taco at least once. Unfortunately we never had another opportunity for Del Taco the rest of the trip, but Mary did order one of everything on the El Pollo Loco dollar menu just to try it all. I forget what we needed to stop at the Rite-Aid for, perhaps sunscreen and some other necessities. Cheryl works for Rite-Aid at their headquarters in Harrisburg, PA, so she has a discount card. Unfortunately while we were there Mary found a video poker machine (there were 4 of them and some slots) and plopped in some money. Mary was a maniac the first time we were in Vegas, staying up almost all night in the casino. So we ended up spending at least a half hour or more at the pharmacy while she gambled.
It was still a long way to Utah, and we were going to lose an hour by crossing from Pacific into Mountain Time to boot, so I was anxious to get back on the freeway. Unfortunately, in my haste I forgot that I still needed to get gas. We were about 40 miles outside of Vegas when my low fuel indicator went off to remind me. Normally it would go off with around 1/8 of a tank left but this time it did not go off until just above “E”. It was several miles to the next exit and when we got there it had a “No Services” sign. The next exit was about another 10 miles, but the map did not show any town. There was a tiny town called Riverside just 3 miles more after that one, but it was getting late enough on a Sunday night that who knew if anything would be open. The next major town was Mesquite at the Nevada border (and there are always Casinos and stuff around them at the border for those people who do not want to drive all the way to Vegas too lose their money). But Mesquite was almost 25 miles away, and I was not sure that we had enough gas to make it that far. Of course my passengers were very understanding; … not!
Well, despite their bitching and moaning we made it to that tiny town of Riverside, which consisted entirely of a Sinclair gas station with a restaurant and nothing else. Fortunately the town was open. While I filled up, though, Mary managed to find some more one-armed bandits in the restaurant, so we spent a half-hour or so at that Sinclair station.
At last we got back on I-15. From Nevada it crosses into Arizona for about 22 miles before finally reaching Utah. There was nearly a full moon out that night and it was quite pretty as the freeway wound through some shear canyons for that short section in Arizona. When we got off just north of St. George, Utah, we still had about 30 miles to make it to Springdale. It was 11PM by the time we got there, and the town was completely quiet and shut down. The hotel office had even closed up, leaving an envelope with our room keys on the door. It had been a long first day. We had covered parts of 4 states already.
Day 1 Summary:
Start: Oxnard, CA
End: Springdale, UT
By way of: Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula, Santa Clarita, Palmdale, Victorville, Barstow, CA; Las Vegas, NV; St. George, UT
Route: CA-33, CA-150, CA-126, I-5, CA-14, CA-138, CA-18, I-15, UT-9
Approximate Driving Distance:
This Day: 505 miles
Total: 600 miles
Next: Day 2: Zion National Park