Day 12–Leaving Las Vegas

We leave Las Vegas with the only plan being that, by Thursday, we need to be in San Francisco.  830-miles and 16-hours of driving.  Ideally, I’d like to be near San Francisco, maybe San Jose, by Wednesday night, as that would let us get to San Francisco early in the day.

I was up at 6:00 again, but let Aryn sleep until 7:00 while I got ready and packed everything except her suitcase – then we called the bellman to get the luggage and walked to Paris for breakfast.

We said a melancholy goodbye to the Paris buffet … we will miss you, little crème brulee cup. 

And your little friends, too … the fruit tart, the lemon meringue pie, the pear tart, the raspberry tart, the tiramisu in chocolate cup, and the crème caramel.  Miss you all. 

On the way to pick up the car, Aryn headed for the Bellagio fine art gallery and I headed for a blackjack table.  Unfortunately, the art gallery didn’t open until 10:00, so we didn’t get to see it – blackjack was open.

When I’m leaving Vegas I always play one last session of blackjack, consisting of one bet.  I play until I’ve either won or lost that bet and it’s more than I typically bet.  Since my usual bet is $5, that isn’t hard. 

Today I sat down and dropped $40 on the table.  I won the first hand, but lost the second – since even is right out for this session, I put the $40 I’d won on the first hand back out there.  A blackjack, a pushed-18, and three winning hands later, I left the table up $140.  So with the other day’s $80, that’s up $220 for the weekend, which isn’t bad, considering I only played for a couple hours.

Also, I’d taken out $300 cash when we got to Vegas and after three days of tips, taxis, and small cash purchases, I left with $290 cash.  But even with winning $220, this was still my most expensive trip to Vegas ever.  The shows were worth it, though.

We left Vegas and headed for Sequoia National Park to see big trees.

The drive up to the Sequoia grove was, of course, gorgeous and we stopped to walk down to a mountain river on the way.

Once we got to the grove’s visitor center, where Aryn apparently found this interesting enough to take a picture … note that they keep the spares under lock and key …

It was time to make a decision.  There was construction on the road up to the grove and it was one-lane for several miles.  The clerk at the visitor center told me they’d run that section with twenty-minutes each way after 5:00.  The other option would be to continue through the park to the North entrance – and he told me that would add about 30 minutes if we were heading south afterward, which we were.

We opted to continue and see the rest of the park before heading for San Luis Obispo.  It was a great drive through the park and worth the extra time, but when we exited the park we had no cell service, so I couldn’t use mapquest to get directions.  The options were to go back south to Porterville or west to Fresno. 

Since San Luis Obispo was a bit to the south and we hadn’t come that far north inside the park, I opted for that and we took California 245.

The “curvy road” highway sign for 245 also contained the note: Next 31 miles.

When Californians set out to build a curvy road, they don’t screw around.  There wasn’t a straight 50-yards of that road for 31 miles.  Even sections that could have been straight were curved – I’m not a highway engineer, but half a mile across a dead flat pasture doesn’t have to curve five times.

I joked that we’d google “California 245 road” and find that it was some famous curvy road … but it only got 4 of 5 stars from motorcycleroads.com, so I guess it’s not that famous.  Would have been a bad ride on a motorcycle today, though, since long sections of the road were covered in sand and gravel for some reason. 

Midway down and just at dusk, a skunk was crossing the road.  Hit the brakes to avoid hitting the skunk and as he made it to the far side and we slid slowly past, the tail raised into the air … punch the accelerator and get out of Dodge.

Once we had mapquest access, we headed for San Luis Obispo, and really not doing all that badly on time.  It had gotten dark while we were on 245 (which made the road much more interesting, let me tell you), but mapquest said we were only three hours from the coast. 

I drove until 10:00, then pulled off and got on the laptop with my phone tethered for internet and got on Priceline.

I tried to get something in Paso Robles, Atascadero or San Luis Obispo, as those were closest to us, but got no takers up to $70 bid, so I took a Priceline “express deal” and got the Holiday Inn Express in Atascadero for $78 – $120 on the Holiday Inn site.

We got to the hotel at midnight after a very long drive – but it leaves us with only the drive up the coast today and we’ll be able to stay close to San Francisco tonight.

Magic Underwear Update: Vegas was pretty hard on the Magic Underwear.  It was 111-degrees yesterday and topped 100 the entire stay, but a pair washed at midday was perfectly dry and okay to wear by nighttime. The only hiccup was this morning, because we’re leaving and I can’t let a pair hang-dry – enter the blow-dryer supplied by the hotel: within a couple minutes last night’s pair was fresh and mostly dry (waistband still a little damp). 

Sadly, the rest of my clothes aren’t as easy to wash and dry.  I leave Las Vegas with only a pair of jeans and a couple shirts still clean and wearable.  Aryn says she doesn’t have that problem, but that’s because she packed four times as man clothes.  Will have to do laundry before San Francisco.