“...And the sky with no clouds

The heat was hot and the ground was dry...”

Dewey Bunnell was thinking of Arizona and New Mexico when he wrote “Horse With No Name” for America (the band not the country). However, he could have easily been referring to California or Nevada.

Not long after you head east out of the concrete jungle of Los Angeles you are in the desert (the Mojave desert to be precise) with very few roads and even fewer cars. Like this:

After a lonely few hours you’ll come to Baker, famous for having the World’s tallest thermometer (as shown above - only 104 F on this particular day - bring a sweater).

Not much else happens in Baker, but just outside is an interesting sign:

Those of you who are Stone Sour fans will recognize this as the title of a track from their second album.

Zzyzx, California is a real place, so named so it would appear last in any list of place names. In keeping with the rest of the Mojave desert, there’s not much here. These days there’s a research station called the Desert Studies Center and that’s about it.

After a few more hours heading north from Baker, you’ll enter Death Valley. This monument commemorates the route out of the valley found by Harry Wade and the Bennet-Arcane party after they got lost on their way through from Salt Lake City to California during the gold rush era:

The story goes that a woman in the party said “Goodbye Death Valley” as they finally got out and that’s how it got its name.

Heading east out of Death Valley and after some more lonely driving you’ll eventually come to Pahrump, Nevada. It has two obvious claims to fame:

    1.Location of the nearest legal brothel to Las Vegas.

    2.One time residence of Michael Jackson and his three children.

Here’s something you probably only see in Pahrump: a man walking his goat:

The goat’s name was “Bambi”.

Drive east for a little while longer and you arrive in Las Vegas:

The most unusual thing about Las Vegas is its famous welcome sign:

Parking is provided to allow people to take pictures here. The odd thing is that the parking is only accessible as you leave Las Vegas!

Drive south from Las Vegas and you quickly find yourself in Boulder City with a great view of Lake Mead:

Boulder City was created back in the 1930’s to house the workers building this:

The Hoover Dam (very nearly called the Boulder Dam due to some petty behavior by people who didn’t like Mr Hoover) was at its time the largest concrete structure in the World. In fact the plans required the Government to use more concrete than had been used to build all the dams in the US before that point.

Built to control the unpredictable Colorado river, control silt build up, provide a source of water and to provide power to locations as far away as Los Angeles, the dam was opened in 1936.

Aside from being an incredible feat of engineering (many of the methods used had never been tried before this) it is also an incredible project success, coming in under budget and almost 2 years early.

The Hoover Dam currently provides road access across the Colorado river from the Nevada to the Arizona side.

A new bypass is being built which will provide an alternative route across the river. here’s how it looks at the moment:

The Hoover Dam bypass is due to open in 2010, two years later than originally planned. Sadly, project successes such as seen with the original dam project don’t seem to happen these days.

Once across the Hoover Dam you’re into Arizona, and the desert continues...