The Great American West Trip - Day Seven
Alarm goes off at 10 PM and about an hour later, we were checking out of the Stratosphere hotel. We had one mission to fulfill before leaving Vegas, and that was to hit up a good buffet for lunch and pig out. We did take a detour before leaving and went to the top of the Stratosphere tower since that was one of the perks associated with my mandatory ten dollar guest package. I had been to the top before so I pretty much sat back while Tiffany got a good view of Vegas during the daytime. After taking a few mandatory pictures, we headed back down to get lunch. Tiffany had been praising a restaurant called Todai since I had met her, so we decided to hit up the Todai of Las Vegas. It met the only requirement that I had of the place, it was all you can eat. After stuffing myself on some surprisingly high quality sushi, we settled our tab and headed out. The Todai waitress ended up chasing me down because I had forgotten to sign the stores copy of the receipt. Now I am curious about what happens in that situation, do they forge the signature or do they void the whole meal? If you know, fill me in.
We hop in the car and start driving towards Death Valley, and discovered that Vegas outside of the strip has plenty of traffic. While plodding around, I took out a map and took a look at the ground we planned to cover before daybreak. The only goal of today was to get as close to Yosemite as possible, so that we could get to the park as early as possible. So I looked at the nice little route through small desert roads that I had planned, that would take us right by Yosemite, but towards the north of the map, I noticed a small “closed during winter” sign over one of the roads. Thinking a little harder about what this might mean, it occurred to me that it was indeed December and therefore made this season ‘winter.’ Some of you might be thinking it was obviously winter, but we had been in 60 and 70 degree weather ever since LA, so it was very easy to forget that a few hours north, things returned back to a chilly reality. Feeling slightly panicky about the supposed closing of the road we planned to take, I pulled over and decided to figure some things out. Evidently all the roads heading west from where we were closed during winter. It slowly dawned on me that separating us from Yosemite were the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, and that would explain why there were no major roads going due east through central Cali. Being a faithful AAA member, I threw away the manly intuition of never asking for help, and dialed up some reinforcements. AAA took up twenty minutes of my daytime minutes to tell me what I had assessed from the get-go, that all the roads were closed during winter, and that the only option he had was to drive AROUND the mountains on the major highways. This was the option that sent me calling for help, because this route would be a good two to three hundred miles longer that our intended route. Refusing to give in, I called Yosemite and they informed me that there was no other way to get there but to go around. Our fate was decided, no Death Valley, just lots of driving. Now I hate being inefficient, that’s one of my pet peeves, and is probably why I am studying Industrial Engineering, so for my route to change from a slant route to a U-Shaped route, I was extremely unhappy. But since there was no other choice, we turned south, headed west, and then headed back north. The drive wasn’t that bad actually, and we got into Yosemite area at around 9:30 PM.
We booked a room in Fresno, CA and went our typical search for a bar of some sort. Luckily, Fresno is a real city, a small city but still real, so there was a street that had all the nightlife. We ended up in a local restaurant/bar that turned into a lounge with a live band after the restaurant closes. That spot was pretty cool but after the cops showed up trying to arrest one of the customers (a non-paying customer) we decided to call it a night. It turned out that we could not escape the cops that night, because as we were pulling into the hotel, a criminal sped past with a couple of cop cars in hot pursuit. We were the car in the police chase video that almost gets hit by the criminal, to which the cameraman inevitably goes ‘Wow folks, that was a close one. He’s clearly out of control.’ I was too tired to much care about the criminals or the cops, I just wanted to get to sleep. The plan was to get into Yosemite early in the morning so we could drive all the way into OR by around midnight the next day, so we went to bed fairly early (aka 1 AM). Not the best day.
We hop in the car and start driving towards Death Valley, and discovered that Vegas outside of the strip has plenty of traffic. While plodding around, I took out a map and took a look at the ground we planned to cover before daybreak. The only goal of today was to get as close to Yosemite as possible, so that we could get to the park as early as possible. So I looked at the nice little route through small desert roads that I had planned, that would take us right by Yosemite, but towards the north of the map, I noticed a small “closed during winter” sign over one of the roads. Thinking a little harder about what this might mean, it occurred to me that it was indeed December and therefore made this season ‘winter.’ Some of you might be thinking it was obviously winter, but we had been in 60 and 70 degree weather ever since LA, so it was very easy to forget that a few hours north, things returned back to a chilly reality. Feeling slightly panicky about the supposed closing of the road we planned to take, I pulled over and decided to figure some things out. Evidently all the roads heading west from where we were closed during winter. It slowly dawned on me that separating us from Yosemite were the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, and that would explain why there were no major roads going due east through central Cali. Being a faithful AAA member, I threw away the manly intuition of never asking for help, and dialed up some reinforcements. AAA took up twenty minutes of my daytime minutes to tell me what I had assessed from the get-go, that all the roads were closed during winter, and that the only option he had was to drive AROUND the mountains on the major highways. This was the option that sent me calling for help, because this route would be a good two to three hundred miles longer that our intended route. Refusing to give in, I called Yosemite and they informed me that there was no other way to get there but to go around. Our fate was decided, no Death Valley, just lots of driving. Now I hate being inefficient, that’s one of my pet peeves, and is probably why I am studying Industrial Engineering, so for my route to change from a slant route to a U-Shaped route, I was extremely unhappy. But since there was no other choice, we turned south, headed west, and then headed back north. The drive wasn’t that bad actually, and we got into Yosemite area at around 9:30 PM.
We booked a room in Fresno, CA and went our typical search for a bar of some sort. Luckily, Fresno is a real city, a small city but still real, so there was a street that had all the nightlife. We ended up in a local restaurant/bar that turned into a lounge with a live band after the restaurant closes. That spot was pretty cool but after the cops showed up trying to arrest one of the customers (a non-paying customer) we decided to call it a night. It turned out that we could not escape the cops that night, because as we were pulling into the hotel, a criminal sped past with a couple of cop cars in hot pursuit. We were the car in the police chase video that almost gets hit by the criminal, to which the cameraman inevitably goes ‘Wow folks, that was a close one. He’s clearly out of control.’ I was too tired to much care about the criminals or the cops, I just wanted to get to sleep. The plan was to get into Yosemite early in the morning so we could drive all the way into OR by around midnight the next day, so we went to bed fairly early (aka 1 AM). Not the best day.
posted by Anthony Jackson at 6:11 PM
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