Is LA to Las Vegas a boring drive?

[Mark Sedenquist]

RoadTrip America will be publishing "The Road To Vegas: A Guidebook to Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas" in fall of 2004. We are looking for roadtrip stories, roadside wonders and other tall tales about this heavily traveled road between LA and Sin City.

Looking forward to the posts!

Mark & Megan

.....Well, that publishing project was put on a back burner. I have lots of photos, notes, partially-completed chapters... I'll probably put most of what I was going to put into a book onto a web site at some point....

[Plinko]

i could help when you do...

Greg

[Mark Sedenquist]

"The Road To Vegas" could easily include a couple hundred volumes (although not our intention). It could also be the title to a philosophical treatment...

Did you do the trip from NY to LV? When? What route did you use? What things did you find interesting?

Mark

[imported_Ken]

I make this trip 8 or 10 times a year, actually from San Diego to Las Vegas. The most recent was the day before Thanksgiving, 8 1/2 hours of pure joy!

A trip I made last february showed me the joys of living an unplanned life.

A friend and I were headed flat out for Las Vegas so we could visit Hoover dam before the rest of the fun started. Near Barstow we began to "overheat". We bought water, let the truck cool a bit and then barrelled onward.

It became apparent that we were not just "overheating" and later we discovered that the water pump had gone. As a result we spent four hours walking a kind of cool "downtown" section of Barstow while the truck was being repaired.

I normally make this drive with no stops so I never would have seen this area (and a particular antique shop) if this hadn't happened.

The repair shop (I think it was Barstow Tire & Brake, or something similar) has it's walls covered with autographed photos of celebrities. Whether they were all there because they were similarly stranded or not is anyones guess

Never did it myself, but 24 hour drives to Vegas from Minneapolis are more common than you'd think.



AB

[Mark Sedenquist]

I have driven this stretch of road about 300 times in the last ten years. When I started the research for this book I was truly amazed at the depth and variety of cool stuff one can find at every single exit between Devore and Las Vegas.

Thanks for sharing your discovery with us.

Mark

The last trip I took from LA to Vegas took about 10 hours (for a 3.5 hour trip) 6 hours was spent sitting in traffic to get less than halfway there (don't ever go when they're having the motorcycle run in Laughlin), 3 hours stuck trying to get out of a dry river bed on some dirt road we thought would lead to Vegas, and then another hour or so trying to find half a leather jacket and a wallet in the middle of the desert at midnight. But it was worth it.

I'm heading back out there this weekend, hopefully I won't have a repeat of that situation

A half a leather jacket and a wallet? In the desert at midnight? There HAS to be a story lurking in there somewhere...

I'd tell the story about that night, but I don't think my friend has gotten over the loss of his prized leather jacket yet, HA HA! I can just imagine his face if he happens to pick up the book and have to relive that night again. Although I do laugh at him and bring up that story everytime I see him, so maybe it won't be that much different.

[Mark Sedenquist]

I have a theory -- all prized (lost) jackets are having a party somewhere. Years ago, enroute to a wildfire in Arizona, I apparently left my much-worn levi jacket sitting on top of the rack of the fire engine when we stopped for fuel along I-15. It must have blown off -- when we started down the road-- so when I went to retrieve it -- I was pretty darned stunned to find it gone. In those days, the fire engines had outside crew compartments and the since it was the middle of the night in April -- the wind chill factor dropped the temperature close to zero. I was probably as pleased as your friend with his discovery!

Mark