The good news is that there was an IHOP next door, so I checked out & had breakfast there, then I called Pip at work, we had planned to go to Magic Mountain, but Pip had to work the afternoon, so we blew MM out and instead he took a long lunch & we visited Cassa Pip, Pips house is the treasure trove of LP's CD's & cool stuff that you'd expect it to be (Note to those people reading this who don't know Pip: Pip was at all the shows I wish I was at in the 70's.. his pop music taste is impeccable.. skip this paragraph!..) We spent a couple of hours, playing records, & looking at autographs, posters & stuff, my favorite thing was a huge art book (about A3 size) that served as a guest book at a previous Pip residence, each page had a doodle or full size painting from friends in it.. some famous friends too.. a member of Cheap Trick, a member of the Rembrandts, and best of all Michael Steele from the Bangles did a couple of really nice drawings.. quite the artifact it was.. But, don't tell Pips mum, I think some of the pictures may have been done by "tipsy" or "medicated" house guests.. shhhhhh....

3pm arrived & it was time to take Pip back to work & leave LA, I filled up with gas and headed for the freeway, then I got sidetracked & went to look in the huge guitar shop I'd seen earlier in the day, we don't have Guitar shops this big in London.. thank god.. what a horrible place.. as much as I dislike the guitar shops in Denmark St. they don't hold a candle to this mega barn of inflated prices, inflated egos & crap stock selection.. anything remotely cool ie Gibsons or Fenders of a certain age was priced at over $2500, somethings on the edge of cool were overpriced too.. $450 for a 1979 Fender Musicmaster? I think not.. thats 2x what it's worth..  They did have the full & really uncool range of brand new Danelctro "retro look" guitars at very keen prices tho.. nearly left with a black 12 string at $299, but couldn't be arsed to get it a box & lug it home.. meanwhile back to the freeway...

I checked the map & decided the least amount of LA driving I could get away with was to just get out of town in a northerly direction, so this I did.. for those following on a map, I left LA on I-5 then quickly turned off onto I-14 which took me up to Lancaster, then on plain ol' 14 which took me up to route 178 which took me all the way through Death Valley .. coming in the opposite side to the way I've always approached the place before..

The drive along route178 at dusk with the top down was awesome, it cuts between a couple of US Govt. bases, and on the edge of one of them was a small aircraft museum which I stopped & had a look at, they had loads of old junk lying around in no particular order, mainly broken engines & bits of wing stacked hap hazzardly, they had a few whole airplanes, 2 Phantoms, 2 Corsairs, and a B29 that looked like it was being cut up for scrap.. I liked the rundown look of the place, more of a scrap yard than a museum really.
 

Further along the road was a town that exists solely to house the employees of a chemical plant, it was a VERY small town, more like a trailer park, but on the city limits was a sign which proudly proclaimed "Welcome to our churches" & then it listed the  nine (9!!!) churches they have here.. I didn't stop in town, it looked scarey, a definite ghost town candidate.
 

I arrived at Death Valley just as the sun was finally going down I had the place to myself again, a lot of the road was uphill between mountains which gradually closed in on me until about 50 miles later I turned a corner & popped out the other side of the mountain range..  ..to *the* most awesome view of Death Valley.. quite breath taking.. then it was downhill & onto a looooong straight stretch, eventually I arrived at a fork in the road.. left to highway 190 right to highway 190.. well I wanted 190... but which way to go? right looked more direct, well, it was pointing in the correct direction so thats the way I went.. 20 miles later the road became single lane... 5 miles later all road markings disappeared..  2 miles after that the tarmac ended & it became a dirt track... .. uh-oh... shades of trying to find the racetrack.. except at  night, & on my own.. well, the sign *did* say 190 was this way so I pressed on.. slowly... VERY slowly.. I didn't want to hit a pothole with the car & find myself at night, in the dark trying to fix a rental car.. 3 or 4 miles later the tarmac came back, then 5 miles later I arrived at 190.. whew... ok, back to a decent speed.. But No!  ......Suicidal Jackrabbits!!

The last time I encountered suicidal jackrabbits was when RK & I drove down the Extraterrestrial Highway, this bunch behaved the same.. wait by the side of the road.. run across just as you start to close on them, then change their minds & swerve wildly.. I slammed on the brakes many many times.. I tried driving slow but they just tried to get in front.. mad.. I tried as hard as I could to avoid them all.. and I did manage to avoid all the suicidal mice that were also crossing the road en mass.. but those rabbits were determined to run at the lights......

I eventually pulled into Furnace Creek at 10pm, I was informed by the check-in person that the only things open were the pool & the bar.. well, that suits me, so I quickly found my room.. I'm in one of the swanky super deluxe huts closest to the resturant/museum end.. next to the tennis courts. I dumped my bags, got the swim trunks on and hit the pool.. this pool not only rules at 9am it's pretty darn special at 10:30pm! we've already discussed how many stars you can see out here in the middle of the night, well, floating around in a warm pool staring up at them is pretty darn close to bliss... not even the 10 French people I was sharing the pool with could spoil the experience.. They closed the pool at 11pm and I waddled back to my hut, the trunks are  outside in the 2am 85 degree heat drying for my 9am swim.. I'm looking forward to doing nothing more than swimming & drying all day tomorrow..

After my swim I dried off & went to see what was happening in the bar, it was pretty quiet, I was thristy having not drunk much on the road from LA so I had a cold bottle of girly American beer (Which suits me.. I like my beer girly...) made polite conversation with the rowdy mexicans then retired to my room to write this & get some sleep.

I mite try & visit the charcoal kilns tomorrow, & there was a mining site that I haven't seen, but we'll have to see.. at the moment I'm in total chill-out mode.

Not a lot happened today really, but I drove for 7 hours, and am in my favorite place on earth, so all's well that ends well.

2 Jackrabbits died during the making this trip report. Our condolences go to their families.

Went home the next day.

The End.

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