Mammoth lakes to Las Vegas (405 miles about 10 hours)

Once again there was a free buffet breakfast of the same basics but the bonus was a PC with free internet connection in the lobby, mainly we had been paying for connection at about $5 for 30 minutes to keep in touch with our emails. We ate and checked emails and still were able to get on the road by 8.30am. The above approximation was disputed by the guys working in the hotel but we had decided to travel via Death Valley so we were expecting a long day driving. Up to this point Julia had done all the driving but this looked like the time for me to contribute. We knew that we were at altitude (10000ft ish) at Mammoth Lake and Death Valley is below sea level in some places so we reckoned that there would be some ups and downs in front of us which might have accounted for the low average speed. We were also warned by the same guys that we needed to stick to the speed limits in the small towns we passed through as they were very sharp on speeding as the fines were a good steady income for the town.
We set off and established ourselves on US-395, we passed through several towns where the speed limit dropped as low as 25mph but we had been warned – we contributed nothing to their finances. Using our own map we had decided to leave the appointed route and head for Lone Pine. We went through Big Pine on the US 390 but we were not distracted. We reached Independence one of many towns sharing this name across the USA and there I spotted the required sign and we switched off the sat-nav rather than upset our female voiced friend. We were now on the US-136 and passed through Lone Pine with nothing notable to report. There might be towns named Two Pines, Short Pine or even Many Pines nearby but they didn’t figure in our plans. Our next target was the town of Keeler. It was strangely missing from the signs but we stayed on line and in due course passed Keeler. The mystery was solved, the sign by the road proclaimed “KEELER, Elevation 3600ft Population 50”, having since looked it up we should have stopped to check it out. It had been a major industrial centre for local ore smelting and shipping by rail and “gave out shortly after the mines”. It is now registered as a ghost town. Notice I have refrained from any jokey mention of a twin town named Rice-Davies, well I would wouldn’t I.
We continued through the well-named Furnace Creek (elevation 175ft) and we were truly into Death Valley. We pushed on to Stove Pipe Wells, I don’t know if there is a modern Stove Pipe Wells, but where we stopped there was a general store, a saloon (closed), a motel and some old ruined wagons. We took a break there where we had a sandwich and a drink. There was a thermometer over the door of the general store and the temperature in the shade was 115oF, the maximum it had reached was 120 so we were lucky to have a more temperate day. Having driven down some of Death Valley we were in awe of any wagon train which had survived it, of course, not all did, we also decided that we had seen enough. We turned the sat-nav back on ready to follow her instructions to get us to Las Vegas. Perhaps it was affected by the heat but twice it tried to get us to turn off an admittedly very basic road onto pure desert. Having no “Mark Thatcher spirit” in us, we refused, and grudgingly it agreed to plot us an alternative route. It seemed quite quickly that we came upon a town; I have no memory of its identity, and through it ran a freeway signed for Las Vegas. The next hour on this freeway was uneventful, then we started to hit the city and its outskirts, we, and the sat-nav, found our way brilliantly to the Americas Best Value motel which was on Tropicana Avenue, an easy walk into the casinos and onto the Vegas strip.
We checked in smoothly and found the motel to be Americas Most Basic but it served us well. Julia, as yet our only driver needed to take a nap, and in her absence I walked to the MGM casino/resort. It was about 4.40pm and the heat was intense, but as everyone will tell you, the casinos are air-conditioned to chilly and there is no time to tell day from night once you are inside.
I returned to the motel less than impressed but things improved when we got dressed and went out for the evening. We managed to book a Grand Canyon experience, which was our main reason for coming to Las Vegas, for the Wednesday, it was now Monday but nothing was available for Tuesday and we travelled onwards to Anaheim on Thursday. My father always said if something was a one off you shouldn’t worry about the expense so we booked the deluxe version of the trip, Helicopter to the canyon floor, boat ride on the Colorado River, helicopter to the Skywalk, included meal and helicopter back.
Having sorted this out I discovered that Julia had signed us up for a time-share tour to get us a free magic show and comedy club; we used to do this sort of thing on the Costa del Sol but haven’t done it for some time.
We continued down the strip and watched the impressive free fountain show in front of the Bellagio hotel, we finished our outing eating very reasonable Mexican food and drinking Corona beer before walking back to the motel. There was an excellent 24 hour store right next to it, which provided us with milk so we were set up for the following day.