Day T- (oh, never mind, it's Wednesday): Through the Mojave in a Windstorm

I hear that Denver is about to have another blizzard. I think we drove through what's about to be the next blizzard this morning. I-15 runs from Las Vegas to San Diego, much of it through the Mojave desert, just south of Death Valley. This morning as we left the hotel, the parking valet guy told my husband that the entire route was supposed to be experiencing high winds and dust storms.

He was pretty much right, although by the time we hit the state border, it was raining, and although I was kind of hoping that the addition of rain to a dust storm would result in our car being pelted with mud, nothing of the kind happened. It was just your average 5-hour drive with 50 mph crosswinds and a lot of traffic.

And the burgers at In-n-Out are just as good as we remembered, although I really couldn't figure out why the one in Barstow was so crowded at 10:30 in the morning. On the other hand, we were a part of that same crowd.

A few more observations about Las Vegas:

• This time of year appears to be a national holiday of some sort in the Orient - it was very cosmopolitan around the strip.
• It is not a good idea to eat sushi from a casino buffet.
• If you spend more than 12 hours in a hotel that uses a perfumed air freshener to mask the smoke of a thousand gamblers, pretty much everything you eat for the next several meals tastes like shampoo.
• Even at 4:00 am, it is possible to tell the difference between the screams emanating from the New York New York roller coaster and the screams that result from onlookers at a shooting.
• Vegas ATMs dole out $100 bills, which is a bit disconcerting if you're expecting your $200 withdrawal to produce a stack.

Hope the blizzard isn't as bad as they're predicting. The storm survival grocery list, according to our former Birmingham realtor is: Bread, Milk, Toilet Paper, and Beer. Get yours now!