The Mojave Desert is worth exploring during the Spring or Winter, the only times you won't wilt in the blazing blow dryer heat.
On the 12th Day of the PapiBlogger Family Road Trip we left the comfort of our spectacular suite at the Rio All-Suite Las Vegas Hotel & Casino for a nearly five hour drive west to California for a little Disneyland magic in Anaheim.
A HEAT SCARE
One of the most spectacular desert drives in the United States awaits you when you go from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. The Painted Desert is probably my favorite desert drive but the Mojave Desert drive is a strong second with some of the coolest-looking, roadside cactus trees and mountain views I’ve seen yet.
As we partially drove through a remote part of the desert’s Death Valley, where temperatures frequently exceed 110F and once hit 134F, we kept passing stranded cars with passengers fixing tires. Angela and I were discussing the extreme blow dryer weather these folks were enduring when our own PapiMobile (2010 Chevrolet Traverse) sounded the urgent alarm that we were overdue to refuel.
Unique McDonald's: This McDonald's Restaurant in Barstow, California has restaurant seating inside railroad cars. Barstow is on the way from Vegas to Los Angeles.
This time I was desperately concerned. There didn’t appear to be a gas station in sufficient range to refuel, Briani was feeling very fuzzy and the temperatures outside the car were easily more than 110F. If you can imagine what it would feel like to get a continuos blast of oven air, those are the conditions we were talking about. Even with a short turn-around time for help, any OnStar rescue would be unbearably long without continuos AC.
We must have been down to our last mile in the tank when a gas station suddenly appeared in the middle of nowhere. We refueled, made sure that we continued to religiously monitor that we had a half tank or more of gas as we set out to do during a similar scare in West Texas and before you knew it we had arrived at Disneyland’s Pier Resort.
SPRINT NEXTEL TRAVEL TIP OF THE DAY
XM Radio has made our iPods virtually unnecessary for the trip.
Before the road trip, Angela and I stock-piled songs on our ipods believing we would desperately need them for our trip. Well, guess what? The XM Satellite Radio our Traverse brings is so complete that we have, so far, not opted to do anything but hear satellite radio for our favorite stations including: 1st Wave (80’s New Wave/Classic Alternative), Alt Nation (Alternative), and Classic Rewind (Classic rock from the 70’s and 80’s). There’s even a channel devoted to Bollywood music, Bollywood & Beyond. Occasionally we change the channels to catch up on news as well.
I have to admit I was a big skeptic about satellite radio but not any more. It’s very compelling. A bonus about the way the system is set up on the Traverse is that while your kids are in the backseats watching their DVD movies on specially-equipped, wireless headphones you can simultaneously listen to your XM Satellite Radio stations. The satellite radio sound quality and reception are impeccable.
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