Distance travelled today: 495 miles Distance travelled from start: 10835 miles / 17436km
Get up early, beat the heat, and blast down I-15 to home.
Didn't take much to get out of the room, it was not a place I wanted to linger. Note to motel owners: making planters out of 5 gallon cooking oil buckets and empty laundry detergent containers is thrifty but not particularly welcoming. Also not welcoming: parking your own car in front of the lobby doors. Also: putting a little fridge in the lobby with a paper taped to it with Scotch tape scrawled with WATERS $1. Also: an envelope taped to the desk in the room with TIPPS FOR HOUSEKEEPING in that same scribble.
I just couldn't sleep, so packed up at 4:30 and took stuff downstairs and was going to go in for the coffee when I heard thunder and saw a flash of lightning and opened the Radarscope app and oh it's coming this way and see you later yes I will drive at night if lightning is scaring me away. Probably best I didn't get gross motel coffee anyways, I thought, then guzzled half a big Gatorade bottle and got on the road.
It was a pretty ride down I-15 past Cedar City and the west side of Zion National Park as the sun came up with the storm far behind me, and then ugh, wtf is wrong with St George? Ugly angry traffic and ugly new sprawling suburbs, just a mess, no I'm not finding food here, and where are they getting the water for these new golf courses and all those new developments scattered in the pinyons and junipers are all going to be destroyed in wildfires in a decade or two.
Got gas once I got through the Arizona Strip to Nevada and chomped a Clif bar... and the mild temperatures were now pushing 100F.
Pushed past Vegas--sultry and not in a good way, humid and gross and 98 degrees with puddles of rain scattered about--and found some Starbucks at a rando suburb named Southern Highlands, where the barista gave me someone else's iced drink, which tasted OK but off, like vanilla-y, and she said oops and had put my the label for my drink on someone named Andrew's who came in from his car and said his drink was wrong too and there was no vanilla in it. We got new drinks as I enjoyed even more air conditioning and dehumidification... and bonus caffeine.
Then just down I-15, a rehydration break after an hour, and a left at Barstow to Yucca watching the temperature climb to 106F as the skies cleared up and the humidity dropped to where it should be. More rewetting the towel and t-shirt before the drop down into the Coachella Valley, where I knew it'd be 110+ but mercifully only for 30 minutes or less, just about how long it takes to completely dry out the t-shirt and cooling towel.
And then home and the pool felt great and I weighed myself (no weight gain) and noticed that I'd grown some new strange arm muscles. Good to be home for a little bit before heading off on the next adventure, this time with my bear.
