The Book of Ashes
Legend in his own mind, creator of all you see here, he walks this Earth on the path of the becoming.
On Wednesday, 22, February 2006 Ashes wrote...
Joshua Tree National Park... 10:46PM
Its 7am and I'm outside the motel looking at my first American sunrise. The Londoner's are on a different time clock and were awake by 5am. I'm 3 hours behind so 7am is like 4am but I've had the best sleep (in this crappy, smelly motel on a rollout bed) in two days so I feel great.
So we're back in the beast, driving back the way we came looking for a food stop. First place we find is a nice breakfast diner (for lack of proper terminology). A lady seats us and tells us we have unlimited juice. The menu is extensive, mostly fried stuff, and generous in proportions. We each order a meal (breakfast and lunch in one) and stock up for the day.
Just out of Banning we come across lots of wind turbines. They are everywhere. Not that large in size but large in number.
Further up the road we come across an oasis in the semi desert. Its called Big Morongo Preserve so we stop to have a look. There doesn't acutally seem to be that much water about but Crispin's digital camera with the frog noise starts up some frogs croaking (and where there are frogs there is water).
We do however spot a mountain lion as well as in the distance a mountain covered in snow (not shown in this photo).
After that its time to move on. We come to a little town just short of Joshua Tree National Park. Here we buy maps and water and find that a tea towel with a map of the region is cheaper than an actual paper map.
Joshua Tree National Park was awesome. It was just driving through massive plains of Joshua Trees with piles (or hills) of rounded rock formations. I took heaps of photos and we even managed to have some U2 to play along as we drove through. I loved it.
Where the streets have no name...
Stopping for a climb on the rocks and a look around.
Joshua Tree National Park.
We even managed to find a semi 4WD track to get the beast a little dusty on. Further down the track we came to the cactus gardens. Believe me when I tell you there were a lot of cacti and they were very spiky. You wouldn't want to run naked through these...
From here we drove down into a small town where we had mexican for lunch. We then headed north towards the Nevada border and Las Vegas. We drove down a 30 mile straight stretch of road with lights at the end warning of the corner. There were HUGE expansive plains, a dried up lake, massively long trains (we waited 15 mins for one to crawl by) and lots more straight as roads. It was a great trip, much better than flying into Vegas or taking the normal road in.
Then we saw the border. It was a white line of buildings. Casino's perched on the edge of their legal bounds, tempting the wicked to come gamble their money away. We drove straight through, heading for the greater evil ahead, Sin City.
It must have been around 5-5:30 as we finally caught sight of Vegas. The sun was setting over the cloudless horizon and the cars were driving in and out. It was a strange city in the daytime, lots of strange things to see that didn't quite fit. But at night it came to life...