Ultimate Roadtrip: booked.

[talisman]

Day Seven: Everything At Once. We head out and see an 18 wheeler full of brand new Corvettes, including several Z06es. I wasn’t aware Chevrolet was going to start making a Z06 vert, but apparently they are. We head out to Winslow and… Stand on a corner, ala The Eagles song “Take it Easy.”

[talisman]

I was attacked by a T-Rex, but The Mayor made nice.





Then the Meteor Crater. This thing is awesome. A rock 160 feet long did this. Makes us humans look like we’re playing with tinker toys. Just outside the crater is the original research lodgings of one of the original researchers. In front of that someone dumped a 1958 Impala of all things. Damn shame.

[talisman]

We get back on I-40/Route 66 and I’m doing 100+ again, actually trying to earn my first triple digit speeding ticket since the limit is already 75. Found some more dusty old cars right before we got to Hoover Dam. We make the damn Dam, and it stops raining a few minutes after we show up. We drive over it, then get out and do the walking around thing. Quite a bit different with the new bridge and security from the last time I was here, over a decade ago.

[talisman]

European slut straddling the state line of Nevada/ Arizona.



Our last bag of ships is having problems with the constant altitude changes.





Head into Vegas and The Mirage, and pick up to the Cirque de Soleil Beatles Show. Pure awesome. I was shitfaced.

[talisman]

The show is over and we decide to book it to our motel, which is 2 hours away, in a desolate stretch of pop culture g-spot known as Area 51, off 375, aka The Extraterrestrial Highway, outside Aubrey, Nevada. Our GPS says this town doesn’t exist. We will rely on the primitive maps of Rand McNally. If you’ve seen the movie Paul, you have a vague conception of the “Little A’le’inn” motel. They close at 10, and it’s 9:30, so I give them a call and let them know we’re on our way. They say no prob, we’ll just leave everything open for you.. They don’t even have my credit card info. We stop at the legendary “Black Mailbox”(which is actually painted white) between mile marker 29 and 30, and get out of the car. Except for faint animal sounds it is dead silent out there. Legend has it this is a prime location to see UFOs, and/or classified military planes taking off from the longest runway in the world inside Area 51. It also turns out that mailbox is actually owned by an annoyed rancher who has welded a big lock to it so that people will stop stealing his mail, thinking it contains government secrets. We don’t bump into him, but get back in the car. This stretch of 375 is Open Range, which means we have cows all over the side of the freeway walking next to us or in front of us while we’re driving. In the pitch black. In one of the most remote regions in the United States. We get to The Little A’le’inn” without incident, and start trying to find our room with directions taped to the front door and no key. This is weird. It turns out, this place doesn’t actually have rooms. It has trailers. Doublewides that look like they were spanking new in 1973. Maybe they won’t be so bad? We get inside. What a fucking toilet! I hesitate to walk without shoes on, afraid my feet will stick to the carpet and keep me there forever. These people saw “Raising Arizona,” and considered it the high life. I get a restless 5 hours of sleep. Sorry for the bad picture quality, obv. the government is jamming photographic signals out there...

[cobrajet69]

lol @ the gubnint jamming photo shots.



David

[Osiris]

Whats the story behind that mailbox?

[CJ-95GT]

Very entertaining thread! I'm not opposed to you posting more pics of sluts either. European or not.

[Fern]

that '60 merc wagon is cool and im pretty sure those 'convertible zo6s' you saw are actually grand sports, but i could be wrong.

[talisman]

Whats the story behind that mailbox?

Pretty much as I posted. Somehow back in the 90s a rumor got started that it was some sort of government secret mailbox. There just is a slight turn out, then this big mailbox, and nothing else for miles around. Considering the zip code, it's pretty easy to see where the tinfoil hat crowd got the idea.


Fern, I loved that wagon.

[talisman]

Day Eight: Nothing Can Live Here. We got to the restaurant after very quick showers, and the waitress, Samantha, is VERY cool. Sidenote: Samantha is also the name of Mulders sister in the X-Files. Coincidence? She is telling us lots of stories, and about her life living out there, and being very friendly with the other customers. Apparently she drove two of the other guests out to the gate at Area 51 the night before and got yelled at by the guard. Hell, I want to get yelled at at the front gate of Dreamland, Groom Lake, Area 51. How do we get there?

[talisman]

First, we stop back at the black mailbox for some better pictures, and then Danny sees something terrifying and not of this world in the sky.



Just bullshittin'.




We load up on souvenirs and find a gravel road directly off 375, with just a stop sign and turn in. 8 miles later, in the middle of the desert, this gravel road that seems to lead to nothing suddenly becomes… Paved. That is weird. Usually paved roads become gravel, NOT the other way around. I’m a little disconcerted, but you only live once, and I don’t plan on getting arrested like the guy Samantha told us about that didn’t cross the gate, but instead took a piss over it to see what kind of reaction he would get. He got one alright. We come up to this gate house that says “No photography, and Lethal use of Force is authorized.” We slowly creep the Mustang around, no one comes out. We drive away, the NSA probably already finding my name through the rental car database and downloading through wifi all the weird porn I’ve looked at on my laptop.

[talisman]

We start driving to Death Valley, and see a couple of people standing around a Dakota with the hood up on the side of the road. We offer to help, look things over on the truck, and it can’t be repaired. They seem non plused, a friend is coming to pick them up, and it will only take.. Two hours. We give them a bunch of water, and Dianne and Russ tell us to stop at this bar on our way out called the happy Burro. The smallest bar in Nevada with only four barstools, supposedly. We do, and it’s decent.









Later we end up in Death Valley, and I see an abandoned mine shaft out of the corner of my eye, so we stop.

[talisman]

The heat out there is different. It is the lowest sea level in the United States, and the sun seems to directly suck water out of your pores, instead of you casually sweating it out. I don't remember ANY insects out there. The highest temperature we saw out there was 104, but it felt like 120. We walked out to this “dry lake” that wasn’t quite dry. I think we were both done with Death Valley long before it was done with us, but it seemed to take forever to get out of that place.






We finally made it Barstow and had some Carl’s Jr since it was about 8 or 9 pm and we hadn’t eaten since our breakfast at The Little A’le’inn. Getting back into Los Angeles at night was like a real life version of Cruisin’ USA. These people are maniacs behind the wheel, with huge sloping curves all over the place, and riding asses. I got into it a bit after I got used to it, and started stretching the 5.0 back out again. After getting briefly lost in Inglewood, we found our motel and crashed for the last night.

[talisman]

Day Nine: Back to Texas. We both had afternoon flights, so we wanted to see a few things before jetting. Did Capitol Records, the Star Walk of Fame, Mulholland Drive, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and then got some breakfast at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Holy hell, that was good food. Last but not least we hit the Pederson Automotive Museum, a legend in SoCal. Then it was back to LAX, and flights home. I’ve never been so tired and had so much fun in my life.