Day 6 started very very early .. 4:30 am Vegas time (7:30 am in my home time zone).  That was by far the earliest we had stumbled out of bed the last week.   Thank goodness for the time zone changes or it would have been not a happy time.   We said good bye to our upgrade suite and lamented for a moment that we didn’t have enough time to really enjoy the upgrade.   Easy come easy go.

Our first stop was probably the most important of the day .. to load up on donuts from Ronalds.   To help the decision process along, we ordered one of each of everything that Sarah could eat .. and a chocolate covered glazed for me.

Not a bad haul .. i was only allowed one donut out of the batch.  

The California border wasn’t a far drive from Vegas:

And once you get into California the first real town is Baker, which has the worlds tallest thermometer.   The thermometer is 134 feet tall in honor of the highest recorded temperature in  North America (which was in nearby Death Valley).  

Also in Baker is the ‘Mad Greek’ where we stopped for breakfast:

Sarah enjoyed a falafel sandwich and I the Denver omelet

Continuing on to our appointment at the NASA Goldstone facility .. its pretty much straight desert:

The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex is located at Fort Irwin which is the National Training Center where army units do full simulated as close as you can get to real combat training.   We were greeted with a Blackhawk fly-over:

One of the more interesting things, along the drive in, were the rocks painted with the logos of the units that had rotated through the training facility:

Another thing you don’t see every day is Tank Crossing warning signs:

Its probably hard to see in the picture but just in front of the vehicle in this picture, a concrete strip had been put in place to keep the tanks that do cross from ripping up the asphalt.

After 3 hours of driving, and a heck of a long entrance road into the base, our destination approaches:

The  first radio antennas that we spot:

A picture of our tour group.  The person on the left, in a red shirt and jeans, is Karla Warner who would be our guide

The first antenna we see, ECHO, is the oldest at Goldstone and is decommissioned to active NASA use.  When it was decommissioned it was donated to a school and now is actively used by students around the world to do actual research as part of the GAVRT project.   You can read more about that Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope.   Pretty fascinating stuff

After a short history lesson we head out to the cars to drive to a couple of the antenna arrays:

Along the way we see that the folks at Goldstone have had some fun in the desert:

We come up to the Apollo valley set of antennas

Karla explained that the antennas are set vertical (pointing straight up) when they are not active and at 90 degrees when undergoing maintenance so in the above picture the right most one is not active, the middle one is presumably doing something and the left one was being worked on.  These antennas had their electronics in a 2 story bunker below the antennas.   You can see the entrance in this picture:

We pile into the cars and head out .. just as we leave the antenna being worked on shows some life and rotates up!

Sharks in the desert .. who knew!

After a (i think) 15 mile drive we come upon the grand daddy of the antennas, the Mars antenna. 

This antenna is 230 foot across and weighs 6 million lbs.   Wow! 

I didn’t get a very good shot but this station, according to the schedule posted in the command center, is talking to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around Mars.  Pretty cool stuff

That concluded our tour.  Karla was a great guide and a very enthusiastic NASA representative.   We really enjoyed ourselves .. so much so that we forgot to get out the thermometer and show off the temperature.  Its was hot.  Deserts are like that i hear

We left the base and headed down to Temecula which is halfway between San Diego and Los Angles to meet up with our friends Brett and Wendy.  We got there in the early evening and kicked back and relaxed a little.  Here Wendy and Sarah take a look at the photos we had taken.

Today we start off from RockFord, IL, meet up with an old friend and his wife for lunch, then do the last 3 hour leg to home. 

I got caught for speeding Mt Rushmore.  I think we came in the back way as the roads were really twisting around.   I whipped around the 2^nd to last turn to the entrance at a clocked speed of 40 MPH in a 25 MPH zone.   I knew i was busted immediately and the Ranger police followed me to the entrance of Mt Rushmore then flipped on the lights.   I pulled over and became one of those people you look at on the side of the road as you drive by.  I figured honesty was the best policy.  After a quick check of the registration (their computer records said it was expired … great work by the Indiana BMV …  but all my paper records were in order and up to date) he thankfully let me off with a verbal warning. 

We holed up in Oacoma, SD for the night.   A pretty good run from Rapid City were we had planned to stop, taking off 3 hours of travel time from the next couple of days.  For today we are shooting for Madison, WI which is a good 575 miles.   It’ll be a long, flat day.  

We have a ton of pictures left to put up (we have taken over 4000 at this point) and will get those up after we get home.   Sounds like a good relaxation task on Sunday.

We made it to Sheridan, WY and bunked up for the night.  The drive through Montana was a long one and we didn’t even go through the whole state.   The last couple of hours, from Billings, MT to Sheridan were pretty barren.   It reminded us a lot of the desert.   This leg went through Indian country and had no development what so ever.  

Today we are getting ready to head out to see Devils Tower National Monument, the Crazy Horse memorial and Mount Rushmore.    These will encompass the last of our planned out destinations and we begin our mad dash home to recover.

Day 12 is a travel day so i don’t think I’ll have much in the way of internet access.   Our goal for Day 12 is to get from Wallace, ID to Sheridan, WY, passing through Missoula and Billings, Montana.   Lunch will be in Missoula and if we aren’t totally beat we’ll try to see the Custer Monument on the last leg of the day.

This part of the trip we start losing time as we head east.  Its been pretty nice being 3 hours behind home.  

Today starts day 10 of our western road trip.  We start off from our current location in Weed, CA  (it makes Sarah giggle every time i say it) at the base of Mt Shasta.  Mt Shasta, a mountain that reaches over 14,000 ft, really dominates the landscape.  Its my idea of what a mountain should be.

Here is a view from the parking lot this morning:

And a couple as we approached last night:

It towers above everything else so much we spotted it on the horizon when we were nearly 100 miles away.  Pretty impressive.

On tap today is to make it to Portland where we will spend some time with Sarah’s cousin Elijah and his wife, Kelly.    It looks to be around a 7 hour drive.

I’m trying to catch up a bit here.   On Day 5, we traveled from Kingman, AZ to Las Vegas.    There really wasn’t any breakfast place that served anything for Sarah that we could find so i took the opportunity to try out a Route 66 diner type place.  I found just a place .. Mr D’s Route 66 Diner where i had the Denver Omelet. 

It was quite tasty and with my protein fix i head back to get Sarah and our things.   We stayed at the Best Western Kings Inn and they were nice enough to show us the temperature at 9am:

Kingman AZ is has a pretty strong Route 66 heritage and they play it up quite a bit.  I noticed more Route 66 stuff in Kingman than anywhere else, tho references to Route 66 were all over the place along our route:

and

Once we got out of the Grand Canyon area, we hit the real desert.  Since we made the Grand Canyon to Kingman journey at night, the day 5 morning was our first real look at the southwest desert:

This is our first sighting of the Colorado river since the Grand Canyon.   This is below the Hoover Dam which were were approaching:

The blue really stands out in contrast to the grey and browns of the desert.

Here is our first sighting of the Hoover Dam.   We stopped at an oversee at the top before you started weaving your way down to it:

At this point we notice it was rather hot so we’d thought it was time to bring out a visual aid:

This was taken at around 10:30 in the morning.   Its turning into a hot day!

From this you can see how low the Lake Mead is compared to where it traditionally is (where the water has marked the canyon walls with white).  To emphasize the point, its that low and the lake spans 150 miles at its farthest points.   Thats alot of water!

They are building a road to bypass the Hoover Dam because of the security concerns of a vehicle damaging it in a fatal way while driving across it.   They don’t allow truck traffic over it any more.  Tho there were a few trucks that crossed.  My guess is they were associated with the bridge construction (or submitted to heavy inspection).

One of the things that surprised me was you get a much stronger feeling of vertigo looking over the side of this thing than we did at the Grand Canyon.   Not sure why, maybe because of the straight drop factor but it was a very weird vertigo-ish feeling looking over the edge. 

I stuck the camera over the edge and pushed the button while looking straight down:

We take the tour which leads us way down into the guts of the dam.  The first half of it takes us to a room that is above one of the intake pipes that brings water to the power generation turbines.   I didn’t think to put a person in the picture to give an indication of size so let me just say .. this was a big pipe!

Next stop was to one of the power generation rooms.  As you can see there are 8 turbines being turned by the water (on this side … another 9 on the other side).    An interesting tidbit was that the power generation was added as an after thought.  The dam was conceived of and built for flood control purposes.   It was after they were building the thing that they decided to harness the power of the water that would be flowing through it.   You could feel a low level vibration from the sheer power of the water flowing through the system.

Here’s another couple of shots before we leave:

Now off to Vegas.   We got there a little early to check in so we had lunch.  I don’t remember what Sarah had but here’s a picture:

I had sweet & sour chicken:

This is this place doesn’t serve any meat so the chicken was out a meat substitute.  It actually was pretty good.   The key to sweet and sour is the crust on the meat and they did that correctly.  A crisp shell with a meaty, soft interior.  It worked and i really didn’t notice that it wasn’t real chicken.    Lunch didn’t take long enough so we thought we’d cheat and go ahead and sample the real reason we came on this trip.   Getting Sarah real donuts, vegan donuts.   See, there’s this guy named Ronald that makes vegan donuts, and they are supposed to be identical to milk and egg laced donuts that are normally available.

So we take a look:

They look normal enough .. but how do they taste?  Sarah volunteers to answer that question.  Here’s Sarah eating, for the first time in 7 years, a real donut:

This was a creme filled one and it passes the test.  I try out a glazed donut … perfect.    This man is a donut genius:

Once last set of photos to share.  We were lucky enough that the hotel ran out of the suite (the A suites, the cheap ones) that we reserved so they upgraded us to the B suites for the same cost.   It was a ton cooler .. it was as big as some peoples apartments.  It had 2 rooms, a stand-up shower, whirlpool bath, a bar (not stocked!) and a big screen TV. 

And an extra piece of hardware in the water closet (I’ll let you guys figure it out):

That was day 5 in review!  

This is a small fast food joint.  You order by picking a bag corresponding to the type of sandwich you want (ham, chicken, vegetarian, whatever), and mark which sandwich and toppings you want.  You give this bag to the cashier, pay for your order, and the kitchen staff fills the bag with your sandwich.

Joe had a Cuban:

I had a Hummus and Bell Pepper wich:

Superior sandwiches, indeed.  These were very tasty for fast food.  The variety of toppings was impressive, and the bread was good and toasty. 

While we were eating our wiches, I happened to look up and see that ESPN was showing a Rock Paper Scissors Championship.  The players were taking the “sport” way too seriously – one guy even called it a spiritual experience.  Of course, the winner won $50,000.  That is just wrong!

Anyway, I would recommend this place.  Maybe they could expand to Indy someday.

*Restaurants reviewed offer vegan food.  They are not necessarily all-vegan.

This place is a combination bead shop and coffee bar. 

This place was full of wonderful things: the awesome food, great people and pretty beads, pendants and crystals.  I couldn’t resist a beautiful chakra pendant I found.

The restaurant portion of this shop is all vegan (plus honey), unless you request milk in your drink.  The menu is not super large, and the food is not prepared super fast.  They focus on quality.  The owners and locals are very friendly, and we chatted quite a bit with them.  It was a great experience.

Joe had Gazpacho and an Orange Banana Shake

 I had a Waffle and an Almond Date Shake

The gazpacho was garlicky and chunky and fresh. It came with a side of bread and olive oil.  The waffle was topped with cashew butter, lots of blueberries, flaxseeds and maple syrup.  Joe’s shake tasted like orange sherbet, and mine tasted very almondy.

I definitely recommend this place.  It’s worth driving to Joplin just to eat here.

*Restaurants reviewed offer vegan food.  They are not necessarily all-vegan.