Leaving Las Vegas; Ventura Highwayl

After a quiet night in Vegas, we were up early to load the car, catch the free breakfast and get out of there before the morning rush hour. We also wanted to make certain we were through the Mojave before the temperatures rose. Pleep and Delete were a little put out that they hadn't seen anything except for the inside of the Residence Inn. So we headed down Tropicana Boulevard. Pleep was very excited when he spotted the Statue of Liberty because he thought that meant New York City and a trip to the Emerald Inn. He was not very pleased to find out we were not heading there until November.

We headed out of Vegas and into the Mojave Desert. By 8:30 it was already over 90F. There is nothing but sand and scrub from Vegas until Ventura. There was a brief pit stop in the middle of the Mojave. Pleep was not thrilled to be relegated to the pet area. Delete spotted the rattlesnake warning and the two of them hightailed it back to the car.

Thanks to proper planning by Delete in running the Garmin, we avoided the run into the Los Angeles and the bad traffic. We headed west out of Victorville across to Ventura where we picked up US 101. There was only a brief stretch along CA 14 where we encountered several bad drivers and Pleep had to put his patented monkey butt maneuver into play.

We arrived at the Parker house in Santa Barbara and have now fully unloaded the car. Ed's glad to be done with long drives for the next 10 days. We plan on heading to a few wineries in the next day or so.